So far this month they are second for me.  They were really great in 2016 - fighting for first place with SS, but have dropped dramatically and now usually around 40% of what they were that year.

I just got a big batch reviewed and what is more worrying is that they used to accept almost everything, but in the last batch, rejected almost everything, including virtually all isolations.  I spend an extra 20 seconds on every isolation to make a PNG just for them but it won't be worth it if they start rejecting them all.  Part of their USP was that you could easily make compositions with isolations that are submitted as PNGs.  Those will not be available from iStock so not sure why they are now rejecting everything that used to be accepted almost 100%.  Other rejections also seem totally random - they will accept one and then reject others that are shot under similar conditions, and the (S) rejection provides no information about why.  I guess it doesn't matter too much anyway, because I only seem to get downloads there on images submitted more than two years ago - new images seem to get no traction.  I really had high hopes for them in 2016 but I guess it was too much to expect it to last.

SS has just about died as well - they are no. 3 so far this month, with Adobe in the lead for the first time ever.  Usually Canva starts out ahead and then gets beaten by SS but so far no SODs (even low-value ones), ELs or clip sales and they can't catch Canva on subs and the occasional OD, which this month are 1/21 DLs compared to 1 every 8 or 10 DLs in a good month.  Overall so far this is my worst month since 2012.  Rapidly getting to the point where it is no longer worth the effort.

It would be nice if they allowed you to 1) change the payout currency and 2) used the current exchange rate rather than one fixed years ago.  Both should be very easy to implement - after all computers are very good at that sort of thing - but I have asked several times and they always say it is not possible.  I don't understand why but maybe Matt can clarify.

copy space

Better than last month and Jan. 2017 but pretty poor overall.  Those 4 and 5-cent sales really don't warm the heart (or the pocketbook) but at least had enough credit pack and premium access sales to get the RPDL to 66 cents - not great but better than some of the others.  I haven't submitted anything there in 5 or 6 years so I guess something is better than nothing, and still better than a lot of the other sites with far more images.

I submit RM there exclusive and everything else is nonexclusive.  Searched my portfolio for RM and then made them exclusive - easy.

Do you mean what percentage do they pay to contributors?  It is supposed to be 35%, if that is what you are asking.

Mine came in the mail today.

In my experience anything can sell there - the same kinds of images that sell everywhere else.   For the images that I make at least - not sure about other subjects.

Has Canva ever has an explanation for how 35% of $1.40 equals 35 cents?  I've had a few of those lately and am not thrilled to see a 35-cent commission on a $1.40 sale.  Maybe they explained that somewhere but I can't find it.  New math is one thing but I'm pretty sure they never changed the rules of multiplication.

The reality is that climate change is a natural phenomenon. The climate of the planet has been changing for billions of years and it will continue to change in the next million years.

There is no denying that climate change is real, but at the same time, there isn't much that we can do about it. We can try to cut back on emissions and pollution, but it needs to be done around the world and not just be used as a political tool in the United States.

This is certainly true, and there have been many instances of dramatic natural climate change during recorded history.  For example, the "year without a summer" in the northern hemisphere in 1816 resulted from a volcanic eruption that caused extensive famines due to crop failures.  The explosion of the volcano Krakatoa in 1883 depressed temperatures in the northern hemisphere by over 1 C in some areas and it took almost five years to get back to normal.  The "little ice age" in Europe lasted around 500 years - those paintings of people skating on the canals in the Netherlands from the 1600s and 1700s were because they really could do it then.  There are lots of other examples and all completely natural.  And of course we seem to be in an interglacial period anyway.  However, the changes during the past 30-50 years are more extensive and due almost entirely to people.  It will be impossible to provide an exact estimate of how much is due to people with a backdrop of natural changes but we can be confident that much of what is occurring now is preventable.

Climate change is a real phenomenon not just a political tool, but I agree that the whole world needs to do something, not just the US.  We should be leading on this, not retreating.

You are grasping the problem, but don't seem to have a good understanding of scientists or the scientific process.  Scientists search for the truth by testing hypotheses.  If your hypothesis is contradicted by your research, then it must be wrong and you come up with a new, hopefully better, hypothesis that accounts for the new results.  If your hypothesis is not contradicted that doesn't mean it is correct, only that it wasn't contradicted by your experiments - it might or might not hold up in future work.  Because the truth is unknown, you have to always be cautious and there are often multiple ways to interpret the results of scientific research that can appear contradictory.  It is all part of the process and hopefully you eventually end up at the truth.  However, scientists have no vested interest in getting certain results - you report what you got, and if it proves your hypothesis wrong, then you start over.  Whoever turns out to be right in the long run usually gets the glory so there is an incentive to be the first to be correct, but certainly no incentives to get preordained results - it doesn't work that way.  The only exception might be if someone is being funded by an entity that wants to slant the results, but no ethical scientist will take funding from such groups without assurance of being able to publish freely whatever the outcome.

Climate change is not my area but we certainly know many facts, some of the most important being that the concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses are higher now than they likely have been during the past several hundreds of millions of years at least, that the climate overall is warming, sea level is rising and the vast majority of all these changes have occurred very recently due to the activities of Homo sapiens.

What to do about it?  The rational world already decided on a way forward - the Paris accords, signed by almost 200 countries.  Those are not mandatory and are far from perfect but at least are a start.  To make a real effort we should eliminate coal and other fossil fuel sources as much as possible, plant trees, and promote birth control to reduce the size of the human population and slow its growth rate.  I'm not sure what else - I'm sure the experts have many other ideas for what can be done.  Wind and solar power can make a great contribution - come out to the midwest some time and you will see all the farmers making tons of money having wind turbines on their land.  They should provide tax incentives for the development of solar roof tiles and installation of solar panels on every rooftop.

We know a lot of what to do, the problem is getting anything implemented through the political process.  Developing countries want what everyone else has and don't want to slow their progress.  Developed countries are used to their advantages and don't want to give anything up.  Companies in energy industries - who have known full well the global implications of their industries for decades at least - buy off politicians and fight tooth and nail against every regulation.  Religions fight against birth control because it slows their plans for world domination.  Of course it doesn't help when some countries elect complete idiots to positions of power and many others are ruled by autocrats who only care about personal wealth.

Human beings have an amazing ability to ignore or deny problems that they don't understand and especially if it doesn't affect them directly.  If you don't live on Tangier Island then sea level rise so far is a minor a annoyance at most.  People think a cold snap in the northern hemisphere means climate scientists are wrong, ignoring the facts that those can be explained, temperatures over the world as a whole are up and Australia is experiencing one of their worst heatwaves on record.

Unfortunately, the political will for real change likely will not be there until it is too late.  Most people don't care if sea level rises a few inches or hurricanes get a little stronger.  When the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melt - and they certainly will if we don't make any changes - then sea levels will rise tens of meters and almost everybody will be affected, but by then it will be too late to go back and could take millions of years to correct, and of course would not go back to the same anyway.  This is the real threat to our security and I hope people will make significant changes while they still can. 

However, I am not hopeful.  For example, I wanted to put solar panels on my roof.  Where I live the cost of energy is too low and the state has been bought off by energy companies to make solar more expensive.  I would have to pay $30 K up front, and might get it back over 10 years if lucky.  Since I will likely be retired and moved somewhere else by then it doesn't make economic sense to make a big cash outlay that someone else will benefit from.  I am fully aware that this would be best for the planet in the long term, but am making a short-term decision to benefit my greedy little self.  Most people do the same.  This is where we need enlightened governments.  If there were a 25% tax credit for installing solar panels - as there really should be - and if the state would allow net metering so I could sell any extra back to the energy company I would sign a contract to install solar panels tomorrow.  We need to provide economic incentives for people to do the right thing.  This would also likely stimulate the economy possibly being revenue neutral in the long term.  Although we have seen that increased revenues following tax cuts only exist in Republican fantasy land and don't pan out in reality, a tax cut to install solar panels might actually work.  In any event, to make any meaningful change requires resolve by governments and for voters to make intelligent choices.  Neither of those seems likely in my (hopefully overly pessimistic) experience.

You missed your chance - it was last year, and you had to have at least 300 images accepted with an overall acceptance over 50% or make more than $500 during the year.  Not sure how many activation codes they gave out but I'm sure it was quite a lot.