But your rate is 30%, so your number to check for would be 19.5 cent (19 cent?) multiples?

Now they've taken away the leaf and butterfly it's much harder to track - you have to keep the subscription page for my_uploads in one tab (to get the right dates) and then check the file download list in another. And as we don't have the credit prices at time of purchase, sometimes figuring out how many credits is a guess for a given size

This type of underhanded currency manipulation isn't new - see the thread from 2010 about Fotolia doing much the same thing.

It's not right, but other than pressure from buyers to be permitted to make cash purchases in US dollars (where they have to deal with credit card exchange rates and fees) I don't expect much will change. IS has been ignoring a number of issues that enrich them at contributor expense (remember the rounding issue from subscription sales where certain royalty levels were getting shortchanged on every subs sale?), including some currency issues that surfaced a couple of years back - See here and here. There may be other discussions as well.

I just went to check, and still $0

They made it virtually no work for me to get my portfolio up there, so I'm quite happy to let the files sit while they work things out, but I don't expect to upload anything new unless we see some sales.

Stockfresh - I had great hopes for that site given StockXpert - has been so slow that I'm not uploading any more. In just over a year there (with only 1,500 of my images uploaded) I'm sitting at $48.60, which is sad. With only 800 images at Veer I've had several payouts in the same period.

@Artpuppy - thanks for a chuckle. I'd prefer a working site, but lampooning the idiots who keep breaking stuff is a reasonable second best

I was just amazed at this e-mail - they're nothing short of delusional.

I'd have to leave every other micro agency to meet the minimum $2 for the smallest size - that's not even true at iStock where a buyer can purchase an XS of a 1 credit image for 46 cents and up.

I am not unsympathetic to the overall concern about subscriptions and the long term effect, but I don't get the doomsday talk about single digit royalties being around the corner - at least at SS. I started there getting 20 cents a download and I'm now getting a minimum of 38 cents and am averaging much more on a monthly basis. I already get single digit royalties from IS on a few sales, but still the overall RPD (including PP sales which I'm now forced into unless I quit IS altogether) is around $1

And as noted by another poster, my balance at PocketStock is $0 so asking me to give up my entire microstock income for that is a non-starter.

As a disinterested bystander ... It seems there is a lot of hostility in many of the posts about iS... not just Exclusives but iS in general ... and anything/anyone associated.

but... I don't have a dog in this hunt.   

There are a number of long term contributors, exclusives, independents plus some like me who've done the indie-exclusive-indie shuffle, who are deeply angry with iStock. In my case it's fury at greed throwing away something really great - and some of that anger can spill over into impatience with newer exclusives who haven't yet had anything bad happen. IS's ongoing software incompetence - bungling every software upgrade (and I do mean every single one) and continuing to pick dreadful times to cripple site operations - is a pretty rational rock to throw at them.

 I think there's also a periodic burst of "exclusive content is better than all that rubbish on the other sites" which certainly doesn't sit well with anyone but a subset of exclusives. Probably not reasonable to assume that all exclusives feel that way about indies, but it has certainly primed the pump for some "full and frank exchanges of views" to become dust ups. There's a ton of ill will towards Getty that rubs off on IS more and more as it's absorbed into the parent company.

This is just me, but although I largely ignore what IS is up to these days, if I think about them too much I can get angry again very easily. Hearing all the positive and optimistic chat from current exclusives (who need to believe they've made a wise choice in picking exclusivity) seems to be very dismissive of those who got hurt by the past lies and about faces on a number of business issues. Probably isn't deliberately planned that way, but for anyone without the history, might take them by surprise.

On another forum (no longer around) I was told I was in need of a mental health evaluation for considering exclusivity Some people feel very strongly about spreading the risk and that's not anti IS, but they're the only agency where even considering exclusivity makes any sense.

As I mentioned in this thread (same topic but for BigStock) my SS split over the last year was 42.1% US and 57.9% non-US. I'm based in Washington State

I haven't submitted more to Veer since the Alamy debacle, but I found them to be wildly erratic in reviewing (as well as very slow). Some patches they'd take everything I submitted and other times they'd reject 30% or 40%. As all of the submissions were images already accepted elsewhere, this wasn't a situation where I was uncertain about the image quality.

They do have pretty strict property release rules, so don't submit house images unless you have releases. A number of location shots - of specific cities or beaches - they'd reject as "too editorial for Veer customers". When they have no/very few images from those places, it seems they're really surprising rejections. Beyond that, I can't see anything consistent enough to form an opinion of "what they like"

...With the changes to royalties IS only gets worse. IS used to be a great place to sell as an independent. Now it is just for a very exclusive crowd. I would not take images down but not keen on uploading. Still not sure how they sell an image for 8 cents commission to me...

I happen to have an image (#17206019) I uploaded last July (2011) to IS which provides some data on why it's still an agency worth contributing to, even for independents. I became independent again at the beginning of June 2011 so none of the sales of this image were influenced by me once having been exclusive. 117 sales for a total of $305.17 - an average of $2.61 per sale. There were no ELs for this image but it has been Photo+ for all but the first 3 or 4 sales.

I uploaded that image to SS (81634720) and it's had 101 sales for $83.90, an average of  83 cents a sale.

IS is a miserable excuse for an agency but it can still earn for us, so I'd say you'd do well to upload there if you're looking to maximize your earnings.

Edited to add that at DT the image (20451278) has sold 13 times for $17.38 (average $1.33 per sale). Rather lackluster showing IMO.

I have both IS and DT user names entered, but I don't see gauges for my forum posts - I can see your gauges. I had my portfolio links in place from when you updated the site, so unless I need to delete and re-enter them to get the gauges to appear, I'm not sure what I might have missed

My performance at BigStock since returning to independence has been pitiful - someone commented here that it was largely older files they were selling, which would obviously be a problem for a newbie. However, I just looked at the payout reports to date and 7.15% of the total has been from non-US sources. It makes no difference to me in terms of money as I'm a US resident, but I thought it was interesting it was so low.

One might conclude that my portfolio doesn't appeal to non-US buyers, but if I look at SS for the period of June 2011 - July 2012, my percentages are 42.1% US sales, 57.9% non-US

This morning I received a reply to my support ticket saying that it had been incorrectly assigned and was going to be forwarded to the correct department.

I think it's nice they're going to take a look at it after 4 months, but the system needs improving when a ticket and two follow up questions (at 1 month and 2 month anniversaries) can just get "disappeared" and there's no flagging of unanswered tickets. Especially important to track unanswered tickets as we no longer are permitted to phone them.