I had a look yesterday at my views and I have over 200 files that have never been viewed. I've got quite a few images with one view one download. Once it gets a download the views trend up significantly. So maybe it's a case of hard to get first sales and if the file shows promise it rises rapidly in the rankings.

Exclusive means you only submit rf images with them and for that you get a few extra beans per image.

Mysterious royalty rate appearances. Emails saying "we got your royalties wrong for the past few weeks and we're on to it " with no explanation of how or why. Halfprice on everything with no announcement to the artists. Unannounced leadership changes. The end is nigh for western artists. The future of stock is for those who can live on $10 a day.

Quote from: goober on May 31, 2013, 08:13

Quote from: ShadySue on May 31, 2013, 07:50

Quote from: goober on May 31, 2013, 07:48

Yuir, yuri lets all talk about Yuri. I wonder what he did today...

It's not about Yuri. It's about iStock/Getty.

I think you'll find the thread is about Yuri and IS. 17 pages of conjecture.

It's more about iS/Getty and their different strokes for different folks.

Well it is their sandbox. They can make and change the rules in the sandbox, and they do. If Yuri has the balls to ask for a better deal then good for him.

I made more money on the sale day but less in the next two days. I still wonder if they limit the amount of income artists earn per week with some tricky algorithm to stimulate contributions. My income is dropping steadily now with each week. I think the new 999 upload limits are killing views. The inspectors are accepting images now that would never have passed two months ago. When I started a file would sell within 10 views. Now it may never be viewed or sold. After 8 years fulltime with IS I am about to look for a job. The baton will be taken up by thousands of part timers. Cue the bugle. Glug, glug...

Allow me to pontificate on what Yuri is doing based on very little real information. If he's feeling the pinch like the rest of us who have been fulltime for the past 8 years, he's consolidating, retiring and getting his income into real assets because he senses that the end is near. I bet he has a deal with Getty that allows him to sell on his own site and exclusive with Getty. Oversupply is killing everyone no matter how good they are. Good for him. You Getty do what ya getty do.

Do any of you indies have any advice on how, who or where to go for creating a general all purpose EULA for selling stock direct? Thanks.

Quote from istockphoto communication email today

"The massive increase in imagery available on many stock websites over the last 10 years has produced a mass of generic repetition that is feeding an image �landfill� typified by our customers as �stocky� and therefore less attractive."

Soooo close to Stocksy.

I'm a exclusive illustrator at IS and I've had a rather large drop in income in the last two weeks.  As a result I have been combing over my stats today and have noticed that on a monthly basis there has been a 15% reduction in the number of sales from December 2012 onwards.

Does anyone else concur? I'm wondering if it is due to istock taking a downwards plunge in general or did they change the best match algorithm again? Maybe my keyword style is now working against me. Maybe it's a combo deal of many factors.

 So on top of the 15% reduction from Dec onwards, I've had another 15% drop in the last two weeks.

@goober - yes, no BS. If I didn't I would not feel like I had anything new to offer in an ebook/training

Well, I hope you invested a good part of that mill. I wish I had put all I got into property instead of taking timeoff and living like a rockstar.

I can't find a reply to my first post. Did you make a million dollars from stock in 3 years or is that a marketing ploy?

I think illustrations have proven to be good sellers and their current approval queue is less than an hour for an Illustration to be approved (from my recent experience)...so I think this is a way to strengthen their illustration area and promote the new acceptance of Raster illustrations. Makes sense...approval time will probably go longer now. Not everything is a huge conspiracy

No...there's no conspiracy. I know of several mid size companies producing just under 1000 images per week. Make sense.

iStock announced today that upload limits for illustrators have been lifted to 999 per week. The reason for lifting this limit to 999 is that nobody comes even close to the current upload levels. So, why would you then lift them to 999? What message are they trying to send?