I emailed Istock support about my 24 refunds and they said my refunds were legitimate sales. They also stated that "As a general rule, we do not void downloads after a two week period." So why did they refund after a whole month?

Its the credit card company that makes that decision. IS has no control over that. Maybe IS shouldnt put it on the contributor, thats maybe a different discussion, but the chargeback cant be stopped.

Well, that's exactly what I meant; IS shouldn't put it the chargeback on the contributor. They get 85% of our sales, part to provide a (working!) shop where customers can buy our goods, part to -in my opinion- cover any expenses from legal issues/fraud.

*major roundhouse kick*

1. With regards to sales, we're looking to more than double the figure. 2011 was great for us, we're looking to make 2012 greater. Ultimately your sales as a whole will more than just improve. We are having month after month of improving sales, spurred on by the growth - We are spending more on advertising and promotions than ever before with more campaigns coming up soon, we're allocating a large proportion of sales revenue into various marketing channels and this is bearing fruit - I believe that most have enjoyed the increased sales throughout 2011. We're not slowing down on this.

Well, 2012 is almost over, and sales haven't 'more than doubled'. An 68% increase, which means I'll be dropping to a lousy 35% commission. Thanks a bunch. I feel really valued now.

So I went up from 15% to 16% somewhere in september, but the percentage on my stats page stayed 15% for a while. I also haven't noticed an increase in RPD (however small), and apparently, other contributors haven't either. But the topic has been deleted from the Istock forums and now I have no idea what the latest news is. Lobo promised updates, but nothing so far.

Does anyone know anything about it? Istock is taking ages to respond and is holding back on info.

I'm getting a 503 error when trying to access my personal page. Is it maintenance time or is it yet another problem? Anyone else having the same problem?

Whenever the time comes that iStock's sales revenue is not in my top-2 anymore, I'm out.

Those who have reached a new RC level mid-year (such as I have) have not even been compensated for that extra 1% we should be getting for each sale. Its ridiculous, they said they would sort it out, but it's been weeks and supposedly, they first want to fix their site issues before handling our money concerns. 

We all received an update on this matter, new message in your account:

Quote

Now you can change the price of your entire portfolio!

We have had many requests to raise and lower contributor's portfolio pricing. Now you can easily change the pricing for your entire portfolio by going to your profile and selecting the Portfolio Pricing drop down.

Choose $6, $10 or $15 and click update. All images will immediately reflect your option. Please note that this changes ALL previous pricing with the exception of images marked as free ($0), so if you had some priced higher or lower, they will change to the new pricing.

The $6 price category, which makes up about 70% of the site, sells the most. Why is that? Because the $10 minimum deposit is the most popular and allows Buyers to purchase one or more images that are priced in the $6 to $10 range. If images are priced at $15 then the buyer has to choose the next higher deposit amount.

Please note, if you have simple images such as icons, isolated objects, backgrounds etc. raising the price to $15 may hinder sales for those images. You can edit the pricing on those images individually, which is explained below:

Editing/deleting images in your portfolio:
To change pricing or to delete a specific image from your portfolio, rollover the image and click the "edit button". Select the new price and click update or click DELETE to remove from your portfolio.

Thanks!

Kelly

Thanks for the support Kelly, much appreciated!

That's a load of bollocks; so they're asking you to price your stuff at $6 or $10, simply because their minimum deposit is $10? Why not make the minimum deposit $15 to increase $15 sales?

I have experimented with different prices in the past (when the $3 price option was still available). I noticed that $15 dollar files sold just as well.

With the 'new' pricing ($6, $10, $15 + smaller sizes), I sell most files at $15, simpler images at $10.

I think with $6 prices, you are undercutting yourself and the value of vector images as a whole. So please, just increase your prices. It shouldn't be a race to the bottom. The best buyers are looking for quality, not the cheapest price available.   

Decided to offer an exclusive license only. I don't see it as commercially viable for microstock.

Someone asked me to do a custom illustration based on one of my stock images. I quoted her an exclusive user license (production price + user license price) but she now asks if there's a non-exclusive option as well, and how much that would cost.

Would it be wise to sell a non-exclusive license of a custom illustration? What would you do?

Take a look at the middle one. It's in the list of sold images, but there's no sale and I didn't get paid for it.

Does anyone else have the same issue?