I've had this before. I was very excited until I realised that that amount of views in a short space of time was unreal (thousands). I didn't submit a ticket at the time because it wasnt a big deal > the problem persists. Such is life.

It took me about 5 tries in about as many months during 2009. I could have easily given up in that time. Keep going if you don't get in first time.

Payments are coming through now.

I've submitted two tickets over the last month - both responses were along the lines of "were working on it". I've not hit them with the spiel about endeavouring to pay me by the 15th of the following month - I will today (thanks Jsnover). I'm also waiting on unpaid subscription sales from December. I can see that I've had quite a few green sales in December but still no green on the royalties chart for that month.

I've checked the istock "help" forum this morning and a contributors are starting to report royalties where there were $0 royalties before.

Still $0 royalties on all of my downloads in the last month. Anyone with the same experience?

Quote from: Herg on February 02, 2011, 15:08
Can anyone else give me any advice on some of these images ? I don't intend to submit more than one flower shot, I am just giving examples here. Do they want the more unusual type of subject ?

I like all 10 of those photos. I'm impressed. Personally the weakest photo is the 2nd down - its the least interesting subject and had the least colour. Maybe if you showed more of the flowers and the record. SS doesn't seem to like a cropped shot of an object.

Quote from: MicrostockExp on January 31, 2011, 04:38
10% more than January 2009 only because I had 2EL this month.......

What about 2010 (is that what you mean)?

I've not had an EL on iStock yet. What kind of royalty does one return on average?

There have been (more than) a few issues with the site recently. Your lack of sales could be related to that.

Quote from: Herg on January 31, 2011, 10:50
I am going to have another shot at submitting but before I do, is it worth getting in at SS ? I mean, I am exclusive with IS BUT my sales are dropping like a lead balloon and I can't get images accepted anymore. is SS harder to get images accepted/sell than IS ? If so, then I can't afford to waste the time. I would like to take more editorial shots that don't require model releases. Thats the thing that initially attracted me to SS.

The initial batch of 10 at SS is subject to a lot of scrutiny. It led me to believe that it will be difficult once I was accepted. But once your in I would say that its significantly easier to get an image accepted at SS than at IS. And you will sell far more images on SS than IS, at a much lower royalty obviosuly, but it won't be a waste of time. Your likely to make at least one sale on the images that have never had any sales on IS.

I don't know what the potential is for editorial sales on SS.

FEED THE BEAST!

Well done! You could take a trip to the shores of Lake Baikal and photograph the ticks on the long grass in early May. Or you could drink with the drunks in the streets of Irkutsk and avoid getting stabbed in a drunken argument..

I've traveled through Siberia (maybe not as far east as your are based) and I made a blog a couple of years back: http://ontrains.blogspot.com/2008_05_07_archive.html
If you have time check the photos in the posts from this date onward. If you have a chance to visit Mongolia there is lots of wildlife to be seen.

I went through several submissions on SS over a few months and it was frustrating. I believe that those other 7 images are reviewed so are likely to be accepted, but is not clear in the rejection email.

How to get approved in your situation? Well there is no right answer as it will depend on who is reviewing your 10 images.

Submitting 10 new images is a good plan. In the worst case scenario that you are rejected again you will hopefully have a total of 10 images that have not been rejected and you can submit them. If you are rejected the following attempt  I would suggest that you submit an email to SS and they will review the situation. I did this and they reset my account so I could submit 10 images that had not been rejected in previous batches and I was finally accepted - lots of effort by worthwhile.

Somehow its been my best month ever for downloads, but I don't have a clue how much I've made as all of my royalties have been $0 since 17th Jan!

They are fixing this: http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=294962&page=1

Did iStock ever do a Beta for the F5 update? A rhetorical question.

I was expecting this reaction. I'm not saying that istock is the best site anymore, or that it ever was, but it was up there a year ago before many of these changes were introduced.

I've put a support ticket in and its with their development team now.

I hope they fix it soon. I'm a big fan of istock. It feels good to submit there because your photos are at the go to site in the industry, but thats rapidly changing when I can't see my balance increasing with each download.

Quote from: ShadySue on January 19, 2011, 11:48
My account jumped about $6 and I now have no 0% sales (I had 3), so maybe this one has been fixed.

Its still a problem for me.

Quote from: lightscribe on January 18, 2011, 21:23
I can't even find where to look to see a list of individual sales broken down....please help! The normal stats bar graph doesn't show this info?  how do I know if I had a 0.00 sale?

I did My Uploads > Sort by Last DL > Look for your latest download and on the royalty value of that link > this will show the price of each download of that image and you might find that your latest sales show $0.00 royalty.

All downloads (all 4 of them) in the last two days have had $0 royalty. I've submitted a ticket.

If you uploaded the same photos to all three sites you might experience what I have:

• Shutterstock - gives you lots of downloads
• Dreamstime - wont satisfy you like SS (a moderate number of downloads)
• Fotolia - wont satisfy you at all

But then that the nature of the Shutterstock beast. If you feed it...

At the end of 2010 I reviewed my 12 months as a submitter and decided to focus my efforts submitting to Istockphoto and Shutterstock. DT and FT were not worth the time and effort I put in.

Quote from: Herg on January 18, 2011, 14:04
Well, over a month since I last got my initial rejection. I have had an email from SS since then but how on earth can I read it when it's IN GERMAN !!! Unbelievable.

I went through the same thing. Persevere with it and you will be rewarded.

I better get cracking.

Thanks Sue. I had a scan but I didnt see any mention of 0% royalties. Oh well, its only an xsmall. May as well kick back and wait for someone to wave their wand.

Sunday January 16, 2011, 02:23 PM XSmall  Regular 0.00

I guess this is why my balance is not updating.

Thanks. I think a flat rate for the contributor would be better, I'm sure thats been discussed on here before.

I've noticed that royalties can vary. Two downloads of the same image, the same size, same type, both Pay-as-you-go, even on the same day can earn two different royalities.

Does anyone know why?