Not a thing for me yet. But their uploading process is so painless (in comparison to some sites) that it's not a huge deal. I'll hang on in there for a while. See how it goes.

Ease of uploading is about the only thing Yay's got going for it now. Still, I won't even waste that time on a site that has, in my opinion, a zero future. If I was the financial backer I'd seek a buyer for the site's software.

I was about 6% OD last month. This month OD is almost up to last month's $$$s. Great trend. SS is now beating iStock almost daily. Love the quick reviews and fast sales.

Yay has been strangely quiet in the news/promotion area for some time. Looking at my best 270 images with zero sales in months I'd have to conclude that someone has pulled the plug on this site. Yet their blog and forum are both active.

Has anyone received any news at all about Yay?

Personally I haven't found that sales fall if I don't constantly upload. I've gone for months with just a few (2-4) new images per month uploaded and seen a consistent growth in sales there.

Like most here I've noticed a quick spike in new image sales within hours or days of uploading, but the main sales trend has been up regardless of new work.

The most frustrating thing about SS is the lack of good tools to track my images. It is impossible to see my portfolio there with meaningful numbers by each image. Why they can't give us tools similar to IS's "downloads per month" by image is beyond me. I've emailed support with their meaningless answers referring to their "Stats" button with its nearly worthless information.

I'd like to return to the good ol' days when I was getting at least some sales from LuckyOliver. This Snap thing has been a fiasco.

What has bothered me with the same IS emails I'm getting....  is the words they are objecting to...
          I never uploaded!!   Heck,  some of them aren't even in my vocabulary! So,where'd they come from?   I mailed back those sentiments several days ago but have not gotten a reply. =tom

p.s.  I agreed with their observations, the words weren't applicable,  but the fact remains,  those words aren't in my data base, I didn't upload them.

Now that you mentioned it, I too had some strange rejected keywords a few weeks ago that I would never had used. I didn't pay much attention to it at the time because there was another rejection reason with it.

Can anyone make sense of this keyword rejection with this image of a lone football goal post? I can't. I've had several goofy keyword rejections lately but none to top this one.


We regret to inform you that we cannot accept your submission, entitled Football goal post ( http://www1.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/7226776/2/istockphoto_7226776-football-goal-post.jpg) for addition to the iStockphoto library for the following reasons:

The following keywords used for this file do not appear to be fully relevant to the subject.

{[ American Football (Team Sport),  Sport,  Competition,  Competition,  Sport]}



The keywords used for this file do not appear to be fully relevant to the subject.

 Under the new controlled vocabulary system that we now use, images need fewer keywords to do well in searches. The site handles translations and synonyms, so you do not have to.

I don't believe we have the responsibility to support any site, new or otherwise, that doesn't offer reasonable results in a reasonable time frame. It costs us time and money to upload and we bear the loss in income if a site fails before payouts are reached. It's up to the sites themselves to give us a reason to upload. If a site chooses to hide their marketing plans from their contributors that's their right. But I choose not to play their games anymore without some convincing reasons. So I'll keep tuned to the forums and see what sites, if any, will be worthwhile adding.

It'd be a lot of work for a scam. I don't fault their intentions so much as their planning and executions.

<rant>

If we contributors hadn't been so naive years ago these new sites would have had to "sell" us on their worthiness. They would have had to put up some convincing reasoning that included: management resumes, a solid marketing plan and a believable commitment to spending significant money. We'd immediately discount any promises of "alternative marketing" of the sort we swallowed whole from Lucky Oliver as the BS it is. The current crew at Yay is destined to fail if for no other reason is their treatment of contributors as minimum wage chumps deserving no real information as to what's going on there. And we'd never believe that just because a site pops up started by a big name macro site, it would be successful. Especially following months of inept marketing/advertising, management shakeups,  as well as dismal sales.

</rant>

Whew! I thought you were going to say that the financial sector was in collapse. Now that would be scary.

The only explanation is that they have some sorting procedure that they think gets them more sales. It has nothing to do with the search parameters that you select. Trust me on this one. Ever since FT's newest software version there is no way you can find your own images in any logical fashion using searches that use more than one (sometimes) keyword. Try it for yourself. Search for your best selling image using five of your best keywords. Lots of luck. Just accept it and move on.

I stand by my earlier comments that SV will soon close down or be bought by an outside entity. If Corbis is losing month SV must be hemorrhaging money. I look at SV's demise in the very near future.