I also had a large sum in my account (about $9,000). About three months ago, when I was considering pulling my content, Craig paid out $1,000 to me. I saw that at least he was making an effort, which convinced me to keep my content up. Craig and I had been writing back and forth for years. I believe he did everything he could to stay afloat, and in my opinion, there was no scheme to accumulate the money and run. It was definitely frustrating though, because I was getting sales almost every day until the end. It really made me wonder where that money was going, especially since he must have been saving a lot on expenses after letting most of the staff go.

I'm glad I found this thread. I was half-way through uploading a thousand clips to dissolve, but I think I'll hold off for a while. It's not the $49 price tag that bothers me, but the fact that they betrayed the contributors' trust by changing prices, and that there is nothing stopping them from lowering it further. Also, despite what the CEO may have said to someone in an email about deactivating clips, a contract with a "5-year lock" is terrifying to me.

On the plus side, I learned about Videoblocks' new marketplace and their 100% commissions, so I'll be uploading there instead!

Just want to confirm to everyone that ClipCanvas has paid out all $6,000 dollars that was owed to me. I will be resuming uploading my clips there and I wish them luck! 

Very positive news on the ClipCanvas front. I have been corresponding with them via email. This is their latest:

I am happy to say that Clipcanvas has reached final agreement to be acquired by a single owner. All terms have been agreed upon, and those of you with payments outstanding will be happy to know that this is one of the very first things to be addressed.

Going forward, Clipcanvas will get a lot more resources to grow, and both your voice and work will be an integral part of this. I believe we have a bright future ahead of us, and I hope you do too.

More information about the next steps will be sent to you as soon as the acquisition has been approved by our General Assembly. This is a formality, and the final stage of the process will be concluded within the 14th of October, as required by Norwegian legislation. As always, you may reach out to me directly, using my personal email given below.

I want to thank you for staying with us during this period. The new owners believe in you, just like I do, and without your patience this would not have been possible. Thank you.

Sincerely yours,
Mr. Christoffer Berg
Chairman
Clipcanvas AS

Think that's bad? They owe me 4,278€. I requested payment in April 3rd.

My clips continue to sell. It's a hard decision for me to remove my portfolio, because the only chance I have of seeing that money is if the site succeeds. It's not in my best interest to make it harder for them. And then there's all the work I put into uploading - I don't want it to go to waste and I certainly don't want to have to upload all my clips again, should the site rebound someday. I went through a similar ordeal with Revostock, and now they've recovered and I've received my payouts. So I'm waiting, hoping...

I accept some of the blame because I forgot to request a payout for a full year. I upload to 13 sites and most of them make automatic monthly payouts. I mistakenly thought CC was one of them. Moral of the story? Request regular payouts on all the sites you contribute to!

I've had you guys bookmarked for a long time because I like your commissions. You're still around, which is a good sign! And it seems that you're growing, so I'll upload a test batch and see what happens.

I'm curious, has anyone here thought of filing a Better Business Bureau complaint against iStock? They have an A+ rating somehow, which means they've settled all of their complaints in a way that was satisfactory to the customer. My guess is, whoever files a complaint online would get to keep their "overpayment" money simply because it won't be worth it to them to tarnish their BBB status.

like stockmn, my sales at clipcanvas have been good, so I'm not buying this. They're just doing what iStock did, but being very nice about. There's no excuse for promising a certain commission, and delivering something different. ClipCanvas has joined the ranks of microstock sites I can't trust or recommend to others.

Update: 
Pixta has just announced they have launched an English version of the site for buyers. It's by invitation only for now while it's in beta mode, but will be viewable to the public soon.

Oh, I think those commissions are for photos. You're right, I can't really find any clear info about video commissions. Pretty unsettling.

found this:
http://www.123rf.com/contrib_structure.php

Hmm, I can't really remember what the guy said about that. I was required to submit a spreadsheet with the keywords. I believe they use the english keywords as well as make a japanese translation, but I'm not sure. I would contact them and tell them you're interested, because they walked me through the whole upload process and answered all my questions.

And if you get your portfolio up, please come back and let us know how it does!

No. Not sure how they would perform on pixta. Let me know if you ever find out.

Quote from: morning.light on April 05, 2013, 15:08

Quote from: nopow on April 04, 2013, 17:23

Quote from: gigidread on April 04, 2013, 17:10
Is there a non-Japanese version of PIXTA? Or did you translate with Chrome? (Or do you speak Japanese!??)

There's no English translation of the site, but they have a few English pages for contributors, like one that shows some statistics. My whole process of uploading was overseen by one of their reps. We communicated over email. Here's a page I found with their info: http://www.pixtastock.com/footage/

I can't make any promises. I've had 3 sales in three months with my best 30 clips (mostly time lapses and animations), so there's not much to judge by. Uploading was a pain too. But Japan's a big market, so it might be worth it.

How are you being paid? Paypal works? I know japanese and I could submit to them but I always thought they don't need foreigners anyway and I was too lazy to check the website.

I haven't requested payment yet, but this is off their site: "You can submit a payment request when your account balance reaches 100 credits(10,000 JPY), which is payable by PayPal or Skrill(Moneybookers)."

Quote from: gigidread on April 04, 2013, 17:10
Is there a non-Japanese version of PIXTA? Or did you translate with Chrome? (Or do you speak Japanese!??)

There's no English translation of the site, but they have a few English pages for contributors, like one that shows some statistics. My whole process of uploading was overseen by one of their reps. We communicated over email. Here's a page I found with their info: http://www.pixtastock.com/footage/

I can't make any promises. I've had 3 sales in three months with my best 30 clips (mostly time lapses and animations), so there's not much to judge by. Uploading was a pain too. But Japan's a big market, so it might be worth it.

Here's an update, for anyone interested. Since I badmouthed PIXTA in my original comment, I've actually gotten 3 sales. That's from 30 files. So I may end up uploading my entire portfolio after all.

Because of people's suggestions, I uploaded to CanStock. I've had 500 files up for a month. No sales yet.

I've been trying to upload to 123RF, but I'm having a very hard time. It seems they only allow you to upload a few at a time. So while I'm waiting for the upload limit to reset, I tend to forget about uploading there. At this rate, it's going to take a year to get it all up. No sales yet.

This is a good list. iStock (obviously) and Fotolia, in my opinion, are both greedy, shady agencies that seem to not value their contributors at all.  Fotolia really needs to work on their contributor relations (aside from their extremely low commissions). Both these sites have been performing worse and worse for me, so I guess it's catching up with them.

Quote from: BlackJack on February 07, 2013, 18:52
Just read in the other thread you have AE templates too. So you can try Videohive. It is good for AE templates but not for footage.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I doubt I'll ever upload to videohive. Their prices are very low, which I wouldn't have a big problem with, except that their commissions for non-exclusives are low as well. So for a basic template, I'd be looking at 2 or 3 bucks per sale. I don't need any more sites to screw me over - I got enough of that at iStock.

Quote from: BlackJack on February 07, 2013, 18:34
The only one I am contributing to you did not mention is Canstock. My earnings almost match exactly my earnings at Clipdealer. And uploading to Canstock is not much work. So if you would add sites I would recommend 123rf and Canstock.

Interesting. I've considered Canstock before, so maybe I'll put that on the to-do list.

any commission less than a 50/50 partnership is extremely annoying.

Most of us know how the main sites perform for video (shutter, revo, pond, istock, fotolia). I'm curious, what have been your experiences when you ventured into new territory?

I recently uploaded a test batch to PIXTA. I thought Japan might be a good market to get into. No sales, so I won't be uploading the rest of my portfolio. I also uploaded to AlwaysHD a long time ago. It was worth it a few years ago, but I have since taken down my portfolio for lack of sales.

However, I tried a couple other sites which have paid off. I made a couple thousand dollars on ClipCanvas in 2012, which is a couple hundred dollars more than Fotolia. ClipDealer has also been worth it for me, with $960 in 2012.

I'm thinking I will upload to 123RF next, so if any of you are already on there, I'd be curious to know how your sales are compared to the main sites.

several thousand clips spanning three accounts on all the main sites.

Consistently on all three accounts, January on istock was down 50% to 75% from January of last year. And last year was down 25% from two years before that ('10). This is all while continually adding content. They're dying and good riddance. I've been disgusted with them from the beginning. They did this to themselves.

Overall, though, my sales are still up for the year. Revostock sales keep growing. They're my favorite site - they do everything right. My AE templates do well there too.

Pond5 is the number-one earner, followed by shutter, then revo, then istock, clipcanvas, fotolia, and clipdealer.

Best to worst, mostly from stock footage.

Mar
Apr
Oct
May
Jan
Feb
Jun
Nov
Sep
Jul
Aug
Dec

I might as well post this, although it might not fit in with the other sites on the list. It's just After Effects Templates now and the site is in its infancy. After I get my other templates up there, I'd like to put my stock footage collection on there, and possibly my photos/vectors later down the road. Good for you for doing this article!

Name of Site: Creation Effects
URL: http://www.creationeffects.com
Owner/Artist/Photographer: Noel Powell
A brief one or two sentence description: After Effects Templates and visual FX for video producers.

Quote from: aeonf on April 07, 2011, 20:12
^^^ Nobody serius into stock makes 15% at IS.
The OP makes 25K that means he hit the RC for 19% easily !!
That is a 10% drop, not 25% .

Not if his income is split up between multiple media formats, like illustrations, audio, photos, and video - which is common for the big players.