For me with PP and subs they are still #2 after SS, although much closer to the others than before.  iS by itself is now unfortunately only middle tier, but with PP and subs still top tier.  I'm sure with their next brilliant change they will probably change that though and then your thread title will be accurate.

Wow, great job!  I had none last Oct-Dec, got 1-2 a month from Jan-April but none so far this month.  I think they are random.  Hope your luck continues, but also that it spreads to some others as well!

For me last month was a BME there and this month so far is about the same - no complaints

When I was an undergrad I played in a brass quintet.  It was fun and good experience but we were mostly doing it to make some extra money.  We occasionally played a free concert for promotion but mainly did weddings and churches.  When anyone asked, we repeated the same mantra, "no pay, no play".  Some of the church people got kind of upset and thought we should play for free, but we told them sorry, we would only do it for money.  Our prices were very reasonable so they usually hired us.  We never did do a free gig while I was a member.  I'm not about to start now!

Some agencies are very limited in what they will accept for editorial and anything that looks artificial will be rejected.  I don't recall BS being particularly restrictive so it might just be a particular reviewer.  What I hate is when they reject one that is perfectly fine for regular RF (and accepted that way everywhere else including SS) but they say it has to be editorial.  At BS sales of individual images are low enough that it isn't worth worrying about or trying to resubmit - I'm not going to take the time to make up an editorial caption only for them.  Just submit, forget and move on.

For me it was down about 34% from last month (which was a BME) and a little over 11% from April last year.  So not great but not horrible either.

Yes, the key players stand to make more money if they drive the stock prices higher by squeezing contributors. However they do not rely on that solely to make money from SSTK

They regularly grant themselves stock at a cost to themselves of 0$

For instance  on 04/13/2015 they granted the new Chief Marketing Officer Aditi Javeri Gokhale 42,000 shares of SSTK - Award at $0 per share

They also set up automatic trades to sell this stock and then grant themselves more at a cost of $0 every few months.

http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/Stock/SSTK/insideractions

Wish they would do that for contributors...

Yes, iS has their own format.  If you use DeepMeta it helps.

Quote from: sgoodwin4813 on April 04, 2015, 09:35

Interesting discussion and we will see how it all plays out.  I doubt the place raising prices by 21% really had their costs go up by that much, and it sounds like their customers are mostly supporting labor.  In general I don't have a lot of sympathy for companies whining about increasing costs while dramatically increasing the pay of their CEOs.  For example, a couple of years ago McDonald's increased CEO pay over three times despite decreasing sales (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/12/mcdonalds-ceo-pay_n_3070833.html?).  How can they justify that?  CEO compensation rates are made by other CEOs or retired CEOs who sit on their boards - and get paid handsomely for a few meetings a year.  It's obscene.  When the CEO of McDonald's gets paid more than $27 million in a year I certainly think they can give a bit more to their employees.  It's the same with the cable companies - they always raise rates and complain about rising costs while their CEOs get $15-20 million a year.  I would think you could survive off the first couple of million and there are plenty of equally qualified people who would do just as well or better for a paltry 4 or 5 million.  If they want to cut costs they should start at the top.  Then they could pay their rank-and-file employees more, who would stimulate the economy by spending most of what they get, rather than giving more to people who don't need it.  They will also find that by paying employes more they will have less turnover, less theft and much more loyalty when they need to ask for something extra.  Progressive leaders know this already and that is why most of those companies are thriving.

The thing you don't understand is that a lot of those McDonald's are franchises, owned by people running a small business. They aren't rich CEOs. They're people living in small towns trying to squeeze as much as they can out of their budgets so they can pay their employees and themselves. People who own small businesses often work 7 days a week for no pay in the hopes that they will turn a profit. And you all are talking about hitting them even harder.

No, I understand that completely, that's why their recent raising of minimum wages only applied to 10% of their workforce.  The franchising system is designed so that owners can make a good profit, otherwise nobody would do it and the fact that 90% of all McDonald's stores are franchises attests to that.  In an interview with a franchise owner in New Zealand who was retiring and selling his stores (http://www.business-opportunities.biz/2014/07/24/what-its-really-like-to-own-a-mcdonalds-franchise/), he said he was making well over US $500 K per year, so still plenty of room to pay his employees a little more and live very well himself.  He also said he typically put in around 48 hours a week, 5-6 of them a day working hard.  Here's a quote from the article (it was question and answer format):

In that time did you make enough money to retire? I know someone who started up his own comic book store and in only ten years he claimed he made enough money to retire and shut the store down and sold everything off.

After having my first store for 5 years, I could have retired and lived nicely.

So after owning one franchise for 5 years he thought he could have retired and lived a nice life.  In the US they say franchise owners can expect to earn at least 10% of total sales and the average sales amount per store is $2.6 million so the owners should be pocketing at least $250 K per year (per store!).  Of course they work very hard to achieve that and the hard part is coming up with the initial investment, but your supposition that franchise owners have to squeeze costs to barely eke out a living is not supported by reality.

I agree that salaries in general should be determined by supply and demand and that those with better skills and abilities should be paid more.  This works well for many jobs but there are severe problems at the top and bottom ends.  CEOs, sports coaches and many others often make far more than they deserve.  At many US universities nowadays the most highly paid people on campus are the football and basketball coaches, which is obscene.  The person at the top certainly makes a difference and they deserve to be paid well, but I'm sure there are many other people who could do just as well or better for half those salaries if they were allowed to submit bids for those jobs.  At the bottom end employers will pay as little as possible.  If left to market forces we will have what we have had in the past, which was basically slavery and/or people working under horrible conditions.

The minimum wage was not meant to be a living wage, just as social security was not meant to be a pension plan.  However, it should have some measure to keep up with inflation and to protect those at the lowest levels so that they are not taken advantage of by those in power.  Ideally, only those starting out would be paid minimum wage because others should be paid more as they increase skills and experience, but in reality this does not seem to happen.

Companies are always trying to cut costs and of course the CEOs have to if they want to keep shareholders happy and keep their jobs.  We've had a big period of outsourcing to maintain profits by sending jobs to China, India and other countries with lower labor costs.  That works great for individual companies for the short term.  However, that means that huge amounts of salaries are being paid out to people in other countries, who are not going to spend their money in the US (or other developed countries), so eventually your own sales dry up and your economy collapses.  It's better in the long run to pay more and put the money in the pockets of people at home, even if it means a decrease in short-term profits.  The leaders in Seattle seem to have realized this and I suspect the city will benefit in the end (to get back to the OP).

It's immediate as far as I can remember

Quote from: Uncle Pete on March 31, 2015, 09:30

Interesting, I thought I was doing poorly as far as ELs. 1 in 337 from 2008 through 2014 totals. Had to pick the closer number 1:300

But as someone probably pointed out we all have different content, subjects and primary areas. (or should?) Some people may have images that lend themselves better to EL use? I have no Editorial ELs and roughly 85% of my images on SS are Editorial now.

I'm fairly sure all mine are for illustrations or line drawings, not photos.

That seems to be the determining factor. I get the impression (but it's no more than that) that ELs  go more frequently to cityscapes especially those at night. Having said that, I occasionally get one for a food shot or picture frame.

I've had ELs for all kinds of images including isolations and editorial but almost never cityscapes and never one at night (despite having some in my port that get good DLs).  I have had cityscapes get lots of SODs before, especially those at night, but not much on ELs.  I assume it varies a lot for all of us.

It is odd to get more sales this month than the previous 4 months combined, but since they are almost all subs the total isn't worth writing home about.

That is my experience as well - a BME for # of sales, but only near last year's average monthly earnings.  I assume it is a computer glitch with delayed reporting of previous sales but probably no way to find out for sure (unless it continues this month).