....... no matter what you upload or how many, earnings will not increase nor decrease.

Do you offer a guarantee policy for $100 regarding this statement 

Has anyone else noticed the following:

1. My account balanced went to zero dollars at the start of the new year, I presumed I'd receive a Paypal payment but four days later I'm still waiting.

2. I've recently received a few images rejected for keywords, they were put back in my pending area where I subsequently removed some leaving only absolutly relevant words, rejected again with no explanation.

The keyword thing is making me reconsider whether it's worth uploading there, for so few sales is it worth my time individually re keywording images that had relevant keywords in the first place. Without any guidance or appeal procedure I think I'll hang back for now.

And before anybody asks yes I sent a message to support last time this happened and received no reply.

Many people were outraged by commissions cuts on Istockphoto, and some pulled their stock portfolios or stopped uploading, and yet the lowest commission per image I got on Istock ever was still above 20 cents. Now someone's offering you 13 cents per download or lower and it's worth trying? Doesn't make sense to me.

Exactly the reason sites like iStock do and will continue to lower our commissions, as long as people support sites like this we will never have an argument against other sites lowering commissions, Ingrampublishing is another fine example, I just can't understand seeing people uploading there and then complaining that iStock have lowered commissions!!

I'd imagine it's probably the same problem that's happening at all the other sites, too many people have read books and blogs saying how easy it is too sell their photos on microstock, now any new images you upload are just getting lost in the crowd.
I don't think there's much you can do about it other than finding one of those who encouraged all this competition by book or blog and thanking them in the way you feel is most appropriate 

Looks like Istock has reached the level of success that it may no longer be advisable to announce the entire administrative staff is taking off for the holidays...? 

It wouldn't surprise me to find out that they left a note of the front door saying "Back after the new year, key is under the doormat is you need anything"

The flash seemed to work well and loaded well.

Not if you're using an iPad!

The frog kitten has been on greeting cards in drugstores all over the US for years, and has inspired hundreds if not thousands of microstock 'derivations'. But there is still only one real frog kitten, my all-time favorite microstock image..

Just to be clear, the frog cat is a great shot, and I've nothing against the baby either (apart from there's too many) I was just using it as an example of the Dreamstime reviewing standards on similarity.

I've just had another image rejected at Dreamstime with the reason "Too many photos/illustrations on the same subject or from the same series....etc etc", the image in question is based on 2011, I have a one similar image based on 2010.

I am totally amazed that reviewers there have so little knowledge about the stock industry to believe somebody searching for an image to represent next year is going to purchase one that features last year, and of course I can't appeal because it would go back to the same incompetent pea brain reviewer that rejected it in the first place.

Ahh just checked the latest additions to the Dreamstime collection, I can see where I went wrong, I did the stupid thing in thinking that submitting one single image based on a popular selling image that I did last year, stupid me I should have concentrated on submitting 17 images of a baby dressed in a frog outfit all laying on a plain studio floor with the same identical expression like the one's they've just accepted, naturally they'll sell like hotcakes because it's such a sort after theme.

If like me you're struggling to understand Dreamstime reviewers way of determining what makes a similar just search 'baby frog outfit' which may help you know what exactly it is they would like loads of.

They don't even have a site that works correctly anymore, not sure what an iphone ap for that would be good for. 

anymore? Don't tell me I missed the day when it did work correctly 

Nothing personal but if you can't beat them why would I want your help?

Sorry, I don't understand your question.

Have you heard the saying "those who can't teach", or in other words if you're so good at creating saleable stock footage why aren't you doing it instead of "helping" others. It's a bit like taking advice from a reviewer on what makes a successful stock shot!
If I want advice or help on stock video I want it from someone that's successful at doing it, but of course the successful one's don't tend to bend over backwards to help complete strangers - hence they're successful.

Bear in mind, that once a file has been inspected and is added to the collection, its overhead is tiny. This isn't like a traditional business. A few years ago (before they banned chocolate in schools) I ran a fair trade snack stall at interval in school. The profit was essentially a flat 10%. I mentioned that to a class, and one of the pupils came back a few days later and said her father wanted to know how on earth I could get as much profit as that, as he was running a (small, independent) shop on a lower profit margin. (my stall was raising money for school children in Malawi and had no overheads apart from buying the stock.) Watch my lips: lower than 10%. Of course, the family wasn't living in a luxury Manhattan apartment, but the three children were well dressed and well cared for. On less than 10%.

Bit OT but there was a programme on TV the other night about the food production industry, it mentioned that one of the biggest growth products within that industry reached a profit margin of 17% which apparently is astronomically high within the industry, on average food producers aim to reach a 15% profit.

I'm sure if Google did set something up from scratch they might take a lot of the causal buyer business, but I'd imagine the majority of sales on Getty are from account buyers and people who go direct to the site because they want to buy from a reputable stock agency.
Add into the equation that somehow Google would have to weed the 'professional' stock shots out from the billions of images people post on social networking and community sites which would be a logistical nightmare if not impossible.
So if they did want to enter the stock imagery business the most sensible route would be to buy an existing site, in which case I'd imagine they'd look at a site like Getty/iStock who keep saying how unsustainable the business is becoming, why would Google want to enter a business that's unsustainable.
More likely if Google did do anything it would be to set up a dedicated feature to allow people to market their own images directly from which Google take advertising revenue, win win situation for them.