I do remember live stats and now it feels a bit like looking at those old airplanes where they had tables and chairs set out for the passengers as if on a country house patio.

However, I'd settle for rock solid data with complete reporting of all the sales details, even if it was once a week, over continued live reporting with insufficient information to have a clue whether anything is correct. Contributors need detailed accounts, and much as I'd love things to be complete and timely (my bank can manage it, even if they are scum of the earth, so I'm not sure what's stopping iStock/Getty/H&F), I'd pick complete over timely if forced. At least that way we'd have a prayer of keeping track of what's going on.

I think the amount of time between the site problems that at a minimum paid us at the wrong royalty rate for a few days and "...the end of next week" is outrageous. And that's just their goal, not date certain.

I suspect that iStock is tight lipped about what has to be done to pay us because their internal systems are primitive and teetering on the edge of being functional. There's no point in railing at them as I don't think they're lying about the shambles the system is in, but if I got notes from my bank about running a script and it taking several weeks to straighten out an error in my account I'd be in touch with the regulatory authorities to report them. It's an utter disgrace for the custodian of our funds to be (a) this inept and (b) this lackadaisical about a prompt fix.

My mood is not improved by seeing my balance go up and down this morning. And Lobo's rude "sorry" didn't help either. OTOH I doubt customers seeing random objects in their search results are any happier.

Last year they effed up the site during the busy season. How could the dumb clucks have done it all over again - anyone see the old move "Same Time Next Year"?

It's not clear how one should calculate that number - what about deactivated files that go on sale but didn't sell? If people regularly cleaned up their port and removed things that didn't sell they could make the number look good. I don't clean house and my number's about 81% (I removed my vectors earlier in the year, all of which had sold, but the numbers were relatively small)

There might have been one or two first-time sales since November 1st, but not enough to skew the results

...
My real fear lies in the initial earnings crash that must follow dumping the bling. I have to support aged parents, young children, ex-wives, you name it. I have employees to pay. I lack the cash reserves to tide me over for more than a couple of months. What is someone in my position to do?

I think I'd be looking for a lawyer to help set up a company (possibly two) where you can start one company out on all the other sites - with new content for the moment. Leave your IS portfolio earning for a while so you can build up your earning power elsewhere (SS pays you more the more you earn them as I'm sure you know). When your IS income starts to fall, then you can switch to independence and do what you need to with copyright transfers and move your IS portfolio to all the other sites along with your new content.

Obviously it needs to be legally solid to avoid jeopardizing your IS status, but I think it could be done.

I asked exactly that question and was told it would be OK to have images in the batch that didn't use all of the model/property releases attached.

I haven't tested that out - my first big batch with a release was for a single property release. If that encounters no problems (i.e. images are approved) I'm going to test out a batch with four people and one property release where not all the people are in all the shots and see if all those pass inspection.

You may post any non-exclusive images to multiple micro sites. DT has assignment photos that are exclusive to DT and other sites (eg FT) offer you the option of images being exclusive. These images must stay at the site to which they're exclusive. Otherwise you may post your images to any site you choose.

I can't say I'm surprised, but I think it is a disgrace that a whole week has gone by with no e-mail follow up on the missing royalties from the time when all sales (we hope!) were being recorded with the minimums. I would have liked the money and the accounting by now, but at the very least a mass e-mailing to contributors apologizing for the delay and giving a deadline by which the payments will be made.

I suspect that their internal systems are so inept that it isn't trivial to do the mass e-mail and they don't know when they'll make the payment because their tangle of script-running catchup procedures is a mess too. So they tweet things and ignore the forums and hope. Not good.

I don't have a crystal ball either, but I would say that the folks at PhotoDune have been unfailingly polite and helpful. Growing pains is about right for the state of software on the site (for uploads, dealing with model/property releases, finding a list of what's pending, what's rejected, etc.).

And this morning I checked and a good portion of what I uploaded as a test batch was approved (was very surprised at the high rejection rate, but as I can't see any rejection reasons for the "hard" rejections I have no idea what they didn't like), plus I had my first sale.

I've opted out of ELs; once I can figure out how to keep them happy regarding content, I think they'll be a good middle tier site for the time being. Things are not spectacular with the established sites so I'm not about to turn my nose up at a solid middle tier site to add to my roster.

I have a Drobo S and in addition use Backblaze for an offsite additional backup. Every so often I make another copy of my files on external drives I keep on a shelf just in case both the other systems crap out somehow.

...It�s causing me to seriously question staying exclusive at IS and for that matter, it�s causing me to question the concept of microstock in general (yeah, I know that sounds a bit dramatic). I really don't know what to do but it�s clear that something has to change and they say that change begins with "me". It's just hard when you've invested so much with one agency and now you're getting a big fat turd in return.

It's certainly a time of change for microstock - in particular, agencies getting powerful enough that they think they can throw their weight around and increase their slice of the (in some cases shrinking perhaps) pie. On the other hand I don't see the demand going away and in spite of the many free options, I don't see the paid microstock market going away either.

So, that leaves you a few options other than the "hanging and hoping" one of remaining an exclusive. It was probably easier for me to leave exclusivity than some because (a) I'd been an independent for a long time prior to being exclusive, (b) I'd already given up Vetta in Sept 2010 and (c) I'm part of the successful middle class at iStock, not one of the top sellers. However, at some point you have to look at past success, loyalty and all those hopes for the future at iStock as a sunk cost and just look forward at what your options are. I do think there's a realistic option to stay with microstock and become independent, but that's obviously only one.

Given the eagerness to dump Getty content onto iStock, I have to believe that thinking about Getty as the salvation when iStock sales decline is a strategy that probably doesn't have long term legs. But others can give you data about how that's performing for them (I never contributed to Getty). There are lots of people here to answer questions and give perspective on independence so you can consider.

Welcome - hope you can find something useful here as you consider shooting stock.

This site isn't geared to tutorials - but I assume you've already found other places on the web for that. I also assume you've had a browse through what's currently available on the top tier stock sites - that'll give you an idea of what you need to be able to do if you want to contribute stock (and focus on the D40, not the Coolpix as you work towards stock images. Lighting is a subject lots of people struggle with at first, and if you haven't looked at the strobist blog, I'd highly recommend it - their Lighting 101 is a good place to start

Re PPD versus Subs sales on SS and IS:
Like IS, SS has another site. If we are going to talk about the ratio of Subs to PPD on SS, should we not include the PPD sales we get on BigStock?

Probably, but in my case it wouldn't alter anything much as the BS numbers are so small.

I sent info to kelvinjay about my examples and I see the Help forum post has been updated with other examples, so I hope they have some clue as to what they broke from those.