I've been on FAA for about 5 years.  I sell a couple of sizeable prints every month, sometimes more. 

I'd like to see more discussion of FAA here, because the FAA forum admins won't allow any critical posts on their forum. 

FAA has good points and bad.  The big positives are: you set your own markup, and they have a keyword search function which can bring you some sales even if you have no marketing.

The big negatives are: their search ranking is heavily weighted by previous sales; the site looks clunky and hasn't been updated in years; and the page coding seems to ignore current SEO principles, so your images probably aren't well represented on Google.

One way to improve would be changing the best match in our portfolios. Best Match for my portfolio shows an alarming quantity of old , crappy, outdated files, from 2015 and on. Years ago, following their suggestions then, I deemed them as "non-signature". More than 10% of my portfolio... that NEVER sells (about 0.05% of my sales), although being well positioned in the best match. This is a consequence of giving preference to non-exclusive and cheap stuff. Because, of course, my cheap stuff can't compete with independent stuff. I regret not having deleted these files when I could.

Photos from 2015 are "old" and "outdated"?

I live next to a major airport.  Over the years there have been numerous "studies" of the noise issue.  Meetings, surveys, sound measurements.  Public hearings, complaint "hotlines".   After a while you stop paying attention because you realize you're just being played. The airlines are in control and are going to do what they want regardless of your input;  they're really only interested in gauging the resistance they'll face and in deciding how fast they can move without generating too much negative kickback in political terms.  They want to be able to say that people were listened to.  Which they were; and then ignored.

Ok let's talk TripAdvisor.  We recently travelled the western U.S. by car for 2 weeks, and I tried using TripAdvisor to find better mid-priced hotels along the way.   I found it useless.  Every 'name' hotel (Holiday Inn, Best Western, Quality Inn and all rest) had roughly the same rating, typical 4 or 4 1/2 stars,  based on hundreds of reviews.  Most of the reviews were glowing, a few really ripped the place up, but they gave me no basis for decisions.  It was clear that over time, human nature being what it is, they all tended to reach the same rating.  Many were from parents who only cared whether the kids liked the pool and the front desk was friendly; nothing else seemed to matter; but they swamped the voting.

The thing is, though, that some of these hotels really are much better than others in the ways that matter:  noisy room air conditioners, musty odors, trucks idling under windows, lousy blankets and pillows, breakfast offerings, and so on.  Some were great, some sucked big time. But they were all equal on Trip Advisor.

As with microstock,  crowd-sourcing never really creates quality content. 

I quit doing microstock. Now I'm gathering material for my own book, "The Hope-Crushing Guide to POD Sales".

As a former software engineer, I'd always expect a project like this (major site upgrade) to take considerably longer than any initial estimates.  Several months for sure, depending on how deep the changes go.  And you can't really rush it or you'll just end up with a mess. 

Read past the techno babble BS which tries to make them look cool and tech savvy and they basically are stating exactly what the glass door reviews were saying

they are an insular mess of unco-ordinated business managers that allowed anything and everything to happen with out exerting any guidance or control.

Great! They had 13 years to realise this.  I don't give them another 13 years

That's how I read it too,  and I did 30 years in the technology/software business. It's a nice meal set out for investors: a thick buzzword soup, with a side of breathless hype about their industry-leading, state-of-the-art software development process.  And basically nothing about the actual product, its quality or value.   Anytime you hear a CEO talking like this, short the stock. 

Why all the hoopla about calling on the phone? That's just more pointless hoop-jumping. It's the 21st century, this is a web based business. They either respond to email or they're scamming.

Sometime last year, I had a sale - the only one ever.  And I had my markups set wrong, so I made $1.85.   They have a rather confusing markup arrangement so I emailed support to be sure I understood it.  I received prompt and helpful replies.  So the ship is "manned" but seems to be adrift.  I suppose I could email them again and ask what's happening, but that seems sort of rude, somehow....  I guess I'm just not motivated. 

Another 6 months have gone by, and it's time once again for me to ask if anyone has heard anything about Crated.com.

It's weird.  Nothing on FB since last October, the main page on the web site never changes, Google turns up no news or activity.  And yet the site is still there and apparently 'live'. 

Anyone?

Or maybe people decide to just use the crappy free images. 

Really, at this point, I have no problem being patient.   I've gotten out of microstock except for GL and Alamy,  because those are the only ones not madly slashing prices and giving things away.   I won't be shooting stock again unless a better opportunity comes along.   So as long as there's a plan, and an announcement now and then, I'm not worried about leaving my work on GL's servers.

As a former software developer I know all too well how long these things take. 

Photo4Me just announced they'll no longer accept anything but 1:1.5 aspect ratio - and will be deleting any previously updated photos not in that ratio.   I do a variety of aspect ratios, especially square, so I'm out.

I never sold anything there, and there's no way to see if you're even getting traffic. So, time to close the account.

Now the good part: when I asked them how to close my account, they said they don't have a way.  You have to manually delete all your photos, one by one, and then erase all the personal information in your profile.