Some of the agencies are starting to reject photos because of keyword spamming. Istock� have started to get very strict about it with the new images going up the problem is people go in and change the keywords once the image has been accepted.

 Can I sign it as the witness as well?

No, you can't , you need to get an independent witness.

They also get a additional promotion as I think the images on the home page are always exclusive.

 Not true I have had a FIOTW and I'm not exclusive and some AOTW aren't exclusive.

I've deleted a few images like this one which I just saw as innocent kids photos but reading about misuse of photos in one of the forums made me think twice about some of the images.  It's really not worth the risk involved just to make a few dollars.

I had one removed at IS -- it was my daughter playing in the water and I suppose the reviewers, on second thought (a few weeks after they had accepted it) decided that her "look" was too appealing to pedophiles!� They didn't want to be responsible for some perv using the image on a child porn site so they took it down.� I appreciate their looking out for me... but the other sites that had accepted it have left it up... I'm actually thinking of removing it for that reason.

Here it is:�



What do y'all think, too appealing to perverts?

Hell, I had the best month ever at IS, but things are back to normal at iStock now. I made more money the first 12 days of October than I did in July, and July was my best month until now. Every time people searched for "metal texture" they'd only get 200 hits, and half of them were mine!�
But now, they get 4000 hits�

I haven't noticed any difference on the other sites though.

Same here,   October has been amazing for me.  I've got just over 300 images at IS and one day got over 50 downloads. one image that was coming up first in a search out of over 6000 images has had 49 downloads in the last week but hasn't appeared on the popular list even though the lowest on the list has only 46 downloads.  Does anyone know how often they update the list as mine should have appeared on it 4 days ago. Also another search was bringing up only my images and they were getting a lot of downloads.  I hope they take their time sorting the 'problem' out.

My dt accectance ratio has gone up over the last few months.
Acceptance ratio:
November 2005 - 33.3%
December 2005 - 100% (only 3 uploads
January 2006 - 63%
February 2006 - 66.6%
March 2006 - 62.9%
April 2006 - 79.4%
May 2006 - 89.3%
June 2006 - 100%
July 2006 - 91.2%
August 2006 - 100%
September 2006 - 100%


I was thinking the opposite �that it is getting easier to get approvals. �I even �had 3 approved today that I hadn't bothered putting up before as I didn't think they would get approved but thought I'd give it a go because of such a good approval rate lately. Maybe certain reveiwers are stricter, maybe some of the newer ones are taking their job rather seriously.

Normal orange flame - 100
red flame - 500

Thanks just wanted to know that it wasn't my computer error.

It's not going as planned, by changing the language of the keywords they have somehow cocked up the english keywords.� One of my images of my children is now keyworded as group of wild animals(maybe they've met them.LOL). amusement park ride, spanish currency, and nerds.� and a piggy back picture just has them called pigs.
I think that is probably why the forums are down so that they can sort it out before everyone starts complaining. I've had quite an amusing half hour reading them.

The istock forums can be a bit daunting at times as they can treat you like an idiot depending on the question you ask so sometimes I prefer to go to my CN friends to ask for help or advise.
Also if you have any buyers in your CN they will often look for images in their CN first before doing a general search so that is obviously to your advantage.
Sometimes they are just people that you make friends with in the forums and you have them in your CN to make it easier to site mail them and check on their progress and uploads.

eyckmans:  Are you exclusive?  If so, what is your canister color?  And what do you submit (photos, vectors)?  If photos, do you have images that requires MRs?

I am non exclusive,  Just recently turned silver canister and almost all my 300ish photos are people with model releases.  I realize that istock take the highest percentage and make a lot more out of me but having quite a few  1$  commisions soon bumps the total payment up.
Last month was my first full month on shutterstock and I sold about 1500 photos(I'm selling a lot less so far this month) and on i.stock I sold half that but made about the same.  Dreamstime the average is about 70c per sale but I sell much less there and make about half what I do on the other two sites.   I put up 30 photos on fotolia about a month ago after having only 3 there for about a year but haven't seen more than about 4 or 5 downloads a week but will probably put up a lot more to see if a bigger portfolio makes a difference and I haven't got any of my best sellers up there yet

I have recently had a free image used at both dreamstime and istock.� At both places I had really good sales around that time. At istock I have had a few designers add me to their creative network. What really surprised me was that on both sites the images carried on selling reasonably well. The first working day it came off at istock it sold 3 times after getting more than 17000 free downloads.
So to sum up, yes it is well worth putting one up .