This is all useful info. Perhaps the site admin should Sticky this thread.

I'll setup a buyer account and buy each of my pictures 3 times that day in XXXL. That should sort out all my current RC and best match issues. Thank you iStock.

Quote from: cobalt on May 06, 2014, 15:30
For persepective:

From February to March Shutterstock saw an upswing of 94%. So if it dropped by 57% from April to March, I am on par with February and overall on a continuing upwards trend. In March I also earned more on SS with around 700 files than I did with 3600 files on istock.

I think a very tangible takeaway on all this from Cobalt on the big question if you can match your iStock exclusive income by going independent is that in March she earned more on Shutterstock with less than 25% of her portfolio online than she did on iStock with 100% of her portfolio online.

Granted she is at a much lower royalty rate right now on iStock than when she was exclusive, but I think we could fairly assume that if she uploaded all 3,600 of those images to Shutterstock that she would probably earn at least 50% from Shutterstock of what she was earning on iStock when was still exclusive.

That tells me that she should be able to replace 50% of her previous exclusive income by uploading all her images to one Indy site. And hopefully the other 50% can be made up from uploading all 3,600 images to Dreamstime, Fotolia, and 123RF.

I would think dropping your crown and your downloads on iStock will go up as your content gets cheaper. Of course you will be making less from both lower pricing on your files and a lower royalty rate. But you will be in a more price competitive level with your portfolio. That makes you more attractive to buyers. Who knows. If your downloads double or triple because of your new, lower pricing you might end up making about the same on iStock as an indie as you were as exclusive.

Also very good point about new files not selling on iStock. The future isn't so bright anymore. Shoot, upload, repeat seemed to stop working on iStock shortly after they removed upload limits. So if only old content is selling then it's only a matter of time before your income starts dropping on iStock to irreplaceable levels.

Thanks, that did it. Sheesh, what a mess.

I have some files I uploaded showing as approved/accepted, but when I click on the file to go to the image display page it says the file is pending and not available for sale. If I logout and click on the link to the file display page then I get the Woops page saying the link does not exist.

Are other people experiencing the same thing?

I am hoping it is just a database update delay, but I've never experienced that before on uploads in the past.

It could be especially bad if buyers are looking through recently added images wanting to purchase a file and get that pending page and preventing them from making a file purchase.

I also assume potential views would not be recorded when the pending page comes up for the buyer, which could impact the file's best match placement and increase the file's chances of falling deeper into the new file abyss.

Does this apply to home interiors too or just exteriors?

What boggles is why they didn't test their little code push to see what problems it was causing on the site before they called it a day and went home for the night.

The above post doesn't mention My Uploads being affected specifically either. So maybe they weren't even aware. Either way they should have caught the problems the code started causing before they let it run live.

It's been like this at least 4-5 hours already and no word from iStock about it. But that's typical I guess.

Usually from August to September I see an immediate increase in sales right after Labor Day of about 20-30% above my August sales.

So far I have seen no increase in sales this month on last month's sales and we are into the second half of September already.

Perhaps the wave of high season sales isn't coming. Maybe there is no longer a high season on iStock.

Considering my downloads have fallen to 1/5th of what they were at the peak, I guess this is par for the continued downward sales spiral of the new iStock post Sept 2012 when the pressed the self destruct button.

Perhaps the gig is really up this time.

The right and fair thing to do for the contributors would be to move all the pending files to Getty first which are in the E+ cue. Meaning those files that are supposed to be moved over to Getty should be moved before making any changes to the collections. I guess fair isn't part of the equation though. And to make things even more fair iStock should give all contributors a cut off date for moving files before changing collections and then adhere to it. But they couldn't really give a toss. So that's why things are happening all hodge podge the way they are.

In all fairness, it seems fairly obvious at this point that Sean has been involved with the development of Stocksy for a few months already and had already made the decision to leave iStock prior to being pushed out by Getty. So the outcome would have been the same either way and Sean would have eventually left on his own volition when he was ready if he hadn't been asked to leave first. So as everyone's looks down upon Getty for throwing him out and feels so bad for Sean, I think it's fair to say this is what he wanted anyway. Had Sean not been planning to leave in the first place then he might not have been pushed out by Getty and may still be there today. So isn't this the outcome Sean was planning and wanted anyway but perhaps was only forced to speed up his already intended departure plan?

Don't shoot the messenger who perhaps shows you the other side of the coin. 

Meanwhile, a company like Getty, which is only about the money, is not about to kiss off one of their strongest revenue streams unless there is seriously strong provocation.

Writing software to get rid of your competitors to the detriment of your main and only client, while putting a spin on it that you were in fact trying to help your competitors, appears that it was enough provocation.

Maybe if he wasn't being so "helpful" he would be able to keep his client and still have his job.

It appears Sean wrote a script to help a lot of his competition remove themselves from his game.

Sadly for him that act of trying to be clever backfired and blew up in his face and then ended up earning him a microstock Darwin Award instead.

I guess he is a bit shocked by it all because he was just trying to help, right?

There is something to be said for keeping your head down, not stoking the fire, nor pissing off your boss if you still want to keep your job.

I think you are all one short of a six pack.

@mstock - I agree the site could be hurting iStock traffic. It could also be hurting E+ files if the illegal site is downloading the files from iStock and then reselling the same files cheaper.

But if you are still credited by iStock for the sale each time the illegal site downloads and resells a file, then you shouldn't have any net drop in sales on iStock as a result, either on regular files or E+ files. So I think the theory that iStock contributors are earning less because of this site is a flawed theory and most likely isn't the real cause of many people's 50% drop in sales.

Nonetheless, this site must be stopped. It is illegal and they are stealing contributor content. And who knows what they will do eventually with all the stolen files that they have downloaded to resell.

Reply from abuse @ cloudflare.com. Although they can't take the site down they can stop providing service to the site:

"Please complete the abuse/phishing reporting form located here to
submit your report --> https://www.cloudflare.com/abuse/

Future abuse/phishing reports will only be accepted via that form.

Please provide specific and direct URLs to the content you claim to be
infringing. Lack of specific details may result in the report being
denied.

Note -- CloudFlare is NOT a web host for this or any other website. We
don't provide web hosting services for any site except for
cloudflare.com. We have no way to remove content from a website."

That does sound like a very real and possible scenario.

It may also be that when the istockreseller site downloads the content that the iStock site automatically credits the contributor for the download as if it is a legitimate sale.

So the illegal site isn't necessarily trying to directly credit or protect the contributors. It is just what happens automatically on the iStock site when the file is downloaded.

If that's the case then contributors aren't actually losing sales to this site at the moment, but contributor content is being stolen nonetheless and everyone will be in for a big load of chargebacks at some point.

I guess rather than downloading millions of files from iStock all at once,  the illegal site just does it one file at a time whenever a purchase is made by a buyer via the illegal reseller site in order to make it more difficult for iStock to track.

If thats the case I still think they would have an interest in discontinuing service to a site that is using their service for fraud. Godaddy should also be interested in locking the domain for the same reason.

How else can we find out then where the site is actually being hosted?

I think all of us should write an email to CloudFlare, which looks like a legitimate company, and tell them they are hosting a fraud site that is selling illegal copyrighted content.

If we all flood CloudFlare's abuse box with threatening emails I can imagine the site with be taken down in less than 24 hours.

We should also send emails to GoDaddy informing them they have registered a domain for someone that is using it to commit fraud.

Hopefully GoDaddy will lock the domain soon as well.

My emails are already sent to both entities already. The more the better though. Please join the effort and send emails as well.

If we can get this domain locked and the site taken down then its game over for these fraudsters.

Obviously whatever efforts iStock has made to take the site down has been unsuccessful so far as the site is still up and running as of now. If you want to protect your work then I think you should all make a joint effort to get the site taken down as soon as possible.

How do most contributors upload their content to iStock? Using Deep Meta?

It sounds like a phishing site trying to get PayPal login and passwords from people. They probably don't have an actual account with PayPal they are using. They probably just put up a fake Paypal payment screen to get you to enter your Paypal account details thinking you are logging into your PayPal account. Then once they got your PayPal account login details they would rob you later.

They are also probably mining for email addresses to send other types of scam emails to in the future. They probably figure if people fall for this site then they will fall for other scams too. Anyone who signs up for this site can probably expect a barrage of assorted scam emails to follow.

@ShadySue - Thanks. But it is the quality of the mix on this search which as I mentioned is also the problem even on the CV word "elevated train". Sure, sorting by DL will give you all the top sellers, but the art of the best match was it used to give a mix of pictures across the range of categories, like top sellers, E+, pictures with high views, recently sold pictures, etc. Now you get mainly new pictures with few downloads and/or views. Only showing those pictures means the results aren't going to pop out at buyers. That's a problem.

As I said on elevated train, you get your first E+ at 40 and your first 100+ image at 199.

@ShadySue - Thanks, what you mentioned about the difference between controlled vocabulary terms and separating these two search terms makes sense in this case. But getting so many new pictures coming up and hardly any good sellers, E+, etc is also a serious problem as you mention. Sure, it will help to sell some new pictures, but if the results aren't mixed enough the buyers still won't be happy.

On the controlled vocabulary search term "elevated train" the first 200 pictures you don't get an E+ file until you get to picture #40. And you don't get your first picture with over 100 downloads until you get to picture #199.

@Poncke - You are correct if you enter the keyword "elevated train" as a single search term.

Enter the keyword "train" by itself. Then enter the keyword "elevated" to your existing search results on train.

The results have changed a bit for me from when I first did the search yesterday to what they are now.

That photo that was in first position, Hiking in The Swiss Alps, has now dropped down to image position 16.

The results are a bit better now in terms of being more related to my search term, but the results are not nearly as good as if you enter "elevated train" as a single search term.

The first image I get now is an editorial image of a train parked in a train station in China with 0 views and 0 downloads. Not expected best match results at all.