Quote from: ShadySue on August 30, 2013, 10:37

"Tell us News, not history". I.e. tell us what's about to happen and why. Don't suddenly spring half-functioning features on the website without telling us first. More, timelier newsletters would be more welcome - people can opt out if they wish.
Don't always be caught up in amelioration.
In other words, be proactive, not reactive. Tell us the benefits of the changes, and make sure before you launch them that there will actually be benefits. I and many others (not everyone) have seen nothing but falling dls and $$s for many months now. If they are only targetting a certain kind of customer, tell us - so that those of us with different subjects in our portfolio know that iS is not the place to put these, even if it used to be.
Let us know they know what they're doing and that they have a solid plan and strategy (I have seen no evidence of either for several years).
Don't keep trying to tell us there's 'something great just round the corner'. There hasn't been much of that for several years either.

You seem to have a very negative outlook. And yet many exclusives have been reporting another strong month of Getty sales - whilst many on the non excluive subscription side have been reporting strong Thinkstock sales and income. It certainly is not all bad.

And from my point of view the site and search changes at iStock seem sensible. I think they are improving the site. I don't expect to be told everything in advance. It's not my site. Shutterstock, Alamy and GI don't tell everyone everything in advance. Why should iStock ? Things seem to be going in the right direction.

Given all the often infectious negativity about iStock I was surprised when I looked at the numbers to find that my income from iStock-Getty combined has been remarkable steady for the past 3 years despite the dreadful world economy; despite massively increased competition relative to the size of my own portfolio; despite microstock per se likely being in decline etc. Moving some of the income to Getty has definitely worked for me and I think for many others too. Moving stuff to different price points represents something like a diversification.

Meanwhile: Shutterstockers continue to be enthusiastic about Shutterstock; Stocksy has an awesome body of work and seems to have made a very impressive launch; Alamy is still a great outlet for the sort of RM editorial content which sells well at Alamy. There is a good range of options and things seem surprisingly ok really.

Even with increased GI sales month after month, my total income is still declining comparing to what I had in IS alone last year.

However, I agree with you, the recent changes seem to be in the right direction, or I hope so. It will tell when the peak season comes in September.

Alamy now sells at least 5 times more of my RM images as it used to, but the income is just 1/5 or less than what I used to earn.  Nowadays they often license unique images for both prints and e-books for 10 years period for less than $100. Due to the uniqueness of these images, they cannot sell in volumn. At much reduced prices, it definitely is not a wise idea.

Quote from: Freedom on August 13, 2013, 21:35

How do you know when you become a pro seller?

I have earned well over $100. Some of my earnings are from third parties which do not count and others may have not been cleared yet, but I am not keeping track of the details.

Do they actually send you a message to tell you that you have reached the status of pro seller so you can enter the pro seller forums?

I believe you get an e-mail as I recall.    To count towards your $100, it has to be from the US store, so no foreign sales count.   3rd party sales DO count.   There is a delay because all the earnings have to be cleared, then they don't get to it until the month afterwards.   I remember that I was well over $100 for long enough that I sent a message to support to ask about it.   Got a non-answer from support, but did get the pro-seller notice not long afterwards.   Dunno if that was coincidence or not.

Thanks for the reply! My cleared sales are over $100, but there may well be some foreign sales. It's not a big deal, just curious.

I may be lucky. I just started to re-upload in recent months, the previous port only had a handful of images. I almost stopped uploading since they announced no promotion if our cut is over 14.9%.

July was slow, just one order, but it contained 10 sets, the money wasn't too bad. Have had 5 orders in August. Didn't think it was a big deal.

I am not on FB, Twitter or any social media sites and have never made any promotional efforts to family and friends.

I know for sure Fotolia has or had partnered with 1&1 as early as 2006 or 2007 because I was involved with both.

I had good Zazzle sales in May and June, but July has been really slow. I wonder if it is related to the BS deal.

Yep, GI sales are coming.

How does SS sell video? Do they sell it as subscription only? How much does a videographer get per dl? Thanks.

Quote from: Freedom on June 13, 2013, 18:09

Quote from: ShadySue on June 13, 2013, 17:59

Quote from: fotografer on June 13, 2013, 17:48

When I use the slider all of mine are in the lowest pricing.  That is worrying.  Also I only have collection filters for Main
or Value Bin and about 80 of my worst sellers are now in the value bin.

I didn't think they were retaining the Value Bin. Is it actually five collections/price points, rather than four?

I have never had anything in the Value Bin, my slider only has 4 choices. What are the prices for small size in Value Bin and S?

If you look in My Uploads at the dropdown for Collections, there are 5 choices, one being Value Bin. All my old VB files seem currently to be in the main collection, from the two which flamed there, to those that never sold even in the VC; as usual, I can't find any link to the value collection  , but others can usually help me with this.

I did what you said, I don't have the DB choice, perhaps because I don't have anything there.

There are only 4 choices from the slider, $-$$-$$$-$$$$. For $, the lowest price is $5, right?

When I used the slider, I can see some of mine were moved into different collections.

Are there any new icons for the new collections? I can't see any, except Vetta which is shown in text below the file name. For S+, below the file name, I can see "Stock Photo", the same as S. You can only tell it's S+ because the price is higher than S.

Is there a way to globally change my royalty on business cards? I want them all to be 14.9% but too lazy to go into them one by one.

edit: oops, never mind, found it.

I think we only have the options to a) apply the change to all previous products or b) all subsequent products.

It is certainly a worrisome trend.

For those items which I set at 15%, I will change my rate to 14.99%.

He was banned for breaking the agreement.  If you break a contract and announce you've broken it that is different than being banned for stating an opinion.  I'm not saying it's never happened just pointing out that this specific case wasn't over an opinion but an action. For accuracy.

Amanda, do you know the context of this?

At that time, if I remember correctly, Laurin said he had asked his friend who was an exclusive to upload one of his images which was initially rejected, so as to prove that the exclusives got preferential treatment. He was bragging about it here.

"Come on, people, she just showed what she thought was a great collection, it is her personal choice, your choice may differ understandably. She is not an agency and takes no commission."


I believe "she" is actually a "he."

Oops, my apologies.