10 cents / image?

Now seriously. I don't shoot models, but I do know that some of them, starters, are willing to do it for free in return for the images/video's which they can add to their portfolio.
If you're starting to shoot models too, and need to develop your skills, it might be a fair deal. But be cautious with subjects you shoot, and explain them very well what can happen with images when they end up on stock sites.
Read: https://www.microstockgroup.com/general-stock-discussion/sensitive-use-complaint/msg0

Professional models might be on the safer side in regards to future hassle, as you can expect them to know what they're doing, but more risky for you as you might never recover the investment.

I see many contributors using themselves or a close relative/friend as a model. I think this is the better option, but needlessly to say: explain what the consequences can be of modelling for stock. The image can be used in a context the model doesn't want to have any affiliation with.

mostphotos site is having an error 403 Forbidden. The site seems down since yesterday. Not sure what happened to it.

Working just fine here. Not that anybody really should care. Sales are very scarce.

No it wasn't sent to everyone at the same time. I got my notice in July. That's when the new Instant Pay program was added. The article you linked to was also in an alert posted here using that December date. Someone new will be notified shortly after joining, as they are new. Logically impossible to be notified before they joined. He joined in November or December, he was notified in December.

Yes maybe it wasn't sent, maybe you got it in spam and maybe it just looked like spam? Look at July 1, 2020?

Update: I contacted their support and explained the situation. They seemed to understand my concerns and opted me out for instant pay. Well done by them, and I appreciate how they handled it. I also opted out for extra channels, and I'm now able to select instant pay and extra channels per image. What happens in the background remains somewhat unclear for me.

I still don't like the way they implemented instant pay or extra channels. It feels like they want to have the complete freedom to include whatever agency they sign up for in the future under extra channels or instant pay without giving notice or transparency to contributors. Canva seems to be one of them, why not add an extra "Canva" checkbox next to the other ones? Same for instant pay. Why not just include "Freepik (instant pay)" as an extra checkbox? Both are worth mentioning, and contributors still want to know to which agencies their content is distributed to. That way they can check royalty rates and decide whether they agree with it or not. And as far as direct marketing to premium customers goes: I think sales like that are scarce yet profitable enough to make the extra effort to contact the contributor directly and discuss terms. With Extra Channels you give them the complete freedom to sell a premium image (which I don't recommend uploading to Wirestock, but that's another discussion) way too cheap.

I thought the article you linked to was interesting. Facts mixed with opinion, but at least he took the time to find real information before jumping to some presumptions. I'd have to say, I did look around when I joined and did find the Armenian connection. Nothing unusual about someone starting a company and being in a few places for tax reasons or other benefits.

Deposit Photos, pretended to be a US company incorporated in Florida, has a NY address, but they are really, Kyiv Ukraine, and Limassol Cyprus.

Part of my assumption about Wirestock that wasn't in the German blog, was they are trying to mask the identity of the investors as well.

The terms being lifted from SS was pretty amusing. Not saying it's a good idea, but that's not the first one to do the same and miss words like Shutterstock or some other agency name, Getty was in one, or the wrong country. Welcome to Microstock? There have been self hosted that did the same thing. Nice to copy some legal boilerplate, which is common, but there needs to be better proof reading.

Well, I actually care very little about where an agency is located or who's behind it. Same for their tax optimization. Not that I agree with it, but every company tries to exploit legal loopholes to optimize earnings. Totally different discussion that goes way beyond microstock. If I had to take ethics and contributor treatment into account, I would not have a lot of agencies left to upload to.

The copied terms from Shutterstock is indeed another example of them being sloppy and in line with their buggy interface. Both feel like they rush to get things in place and afterwards slowly fix their errors, or don't fix them at all.
Now, I had a good experience with their support, and that's not nothing. Way better than most of the microstock agencies. 

Hopefully more people will read your questions and answers, and those from kall3bu, and be able to make an informed decision for themselves.

I think I've added this to every post but I don't know any reason why anyone would enable Instant Pay, unless they only uploaded non-selling images to Wirestock.

I use Wirestock to have access to agencies that I don't want an account. I use Wirestock because the automatic payment is $35 accumulated earnings and I don't have to deal with the agencies. I upload on my own to SS, AS and Alamy, because I want 100% not 85%.

There are some hypothetical advantages like placement, maybe higher earnings because the agency will be at the highest level and rank. That could possibly make up for the 15% fee for distribution. I don't think it does.

#1 reason I upload to some agencies using Wirestock for distribution? I'm Lazy, but also because I don't care about those agencies.

That's what we're here for Pete And I appreciate the discussion. I use Wirestock for the same reasons as you, and that would also be my advice to others.

Use it for uploading to agencies and content you don't care about, but keep the agencies and content you care for under own control. You never know what happens with Wirestock in the future, and how they will change their terms of condition. Removing your content via them from agencies can be a lengthy process: 30 days per 100 images, considered their support remains on par.
Opt out for both instant pay and extra channels, include content separately and carefully (in other words, content you even care less about and again: keep control).

Exception: I think Wirestock is a good platform for newcomers to microstock to test the water, but once you see things are taking off, sign up for the agencies you think it's worth for having personal accounts.

I think Instant Pay is IN or OUT so there's no choice which images are included. Unless they changed that also? But you hit it. Images that have never sold anywhere, might be good for that.

I'm very sure that I never opted in for extra channels or instant pay in the account settings.
I'm also very sure that I did had the option to select it per image, which I also did for a few.
When checking again today, I see all of my images are selected for instant pay!

I think they track sales and earnings just fine. There's nothing to gain by cheating someone out of pennies and losing the trust of a whole larger group of potential artists.

I don't say that there is a problem with sales reporting, or if there is a problem it's on purpose, but for sure their interface is full of (intermittent) bugs and this makes me suspicious.
After I just found out about the sneaky enablement of instant pay for all my images, I'm even more suspicious.

There's clearly something fishy going on there (on purpose or not) and it creates a lot of confusion.
I currently have the feeling of having no control at all, and would recommend halting uploads to WireStock until they cleared the air.

Significant slower second half of the month here, on all platforms.
But I had a decent first half with average volume, more OD's than usual, and one pretty exceptional S&O on Shutterstock which are compensating the current drought. 

And I thought I was old-fashioned by preferring text with images over watching videos.
But I guess it's different for the younger generation with gen-z'ers strongly preferring video or audio over text and I don't believe the demand will slow down. On the contrary.

Not great either, with Adobe being the exception. Heading to a best month in half a year there, which is the only good news to report. Smaller agencies continue to dry up even further, and for SS I see on par amount of downloads, but terrible RPD which has something to do with the big reset, but there's more to it if you ask me. Almost every sale is a 10-cent'er sub and in addition to that my best sellers suddenly dropped significantly during this month (going from several downloads a day or per week per image last year, to one or two downloads per image for the complete month). They were replaced by sometimes pretty odd sales from images that never sold before and I can't recall uploading, or images from which I think: commercial value? Where? Maybe I should rethink my position on the "our portfolio's are capped" conspiracy.

Istock is actually rounding to 5 decimal places, and the smallest royalties I saw is of 0.00002 $ (in the connect file). Also, based from the info provided, many of these ridiculously low commissions are from Cost Per View.

With a counter reset per image at the end of the month, making many images don't even reach the threshold. At least, that's how I understood it.

As a former employee of a stock agency you potentially have a great background and inside information on how stock agencies work.
I'm sure a lot of us are very eager to hear you out on your experiences.

You might consider expanding your scope of work, and contact professional studio's which need keywording and descriptions for the content they are producing.
Contact them directly, explain your skills and experience. You can also offer your services on fiverr.com (don't know if it's worth it, never tried) and fill the gap with some freelance jobs.

I hope you are right about Adobe, but I fail to see why they wouldn't - at a certain point in time - start dropping prices and commissions too either to match competition (and gain market share) or just to optimize their own earnings, or ... both.

It's hard business, not charity.

Only violence will solve this issue. There is no other possible solution.

The only thing that violence does is creating misery that makes things worse, so in the end people would realize that violence isn't the solution, and they start talking again to find a way out of their dispute leaving both parties behind with bitter memories to what happened.

So why we need violence in the first place if we know that it doesn't really solve anything? Hell I don't know.

All of the reasons mentioned above. Shutterstock's holdup on contributor earnings, global pandemic, and a very quiet last months in terms of development with other agencies made many contributors apathic or just focusing on their own work. Feels like we are witnessing the silent death of a comatose patient. Many discussions are probably scattered around on  social media (which I don't use that frequently) or discussion boards in the native language of other contribution clusters, e.g. Russian.

The upcoming reset at Shutterstock in January will give us some juice again, but not in a good way, and probably nothing that hasn't been said already.

I wonder what became of the Stock Coalition. Many joined, a lot more didn't. If they are serious about what they are doing, January will give them a good momentum again to gain some traction. Their protest has my sympathy, but until now, it seems they didn't realize the impact they were hoping for. 

Shoot more, worry about �ranking� less.

Best advice someone can give to you.
Don't worry about profile ranking, if that exists at all, but do worry about your keywording.

And about deleting images I give you an anecdotal fun fact: I had an $$$ sale recently from an image that lingered around for years without ever selling.
Not a bad picture, but not a masterpiece either.

My advice: don't delete, because you never know... Algorithms change and events can trigger a demand in certain kind of images.

EDIT: and to answer the OP's question: BigStock ranks your images via "hotness" which you can see via "commissions -> statistics".
Not worth much, as volume there is pretty low, but as far as I know the only agency that gives you a limited peek into how they rank images (apart from trying to find how far up or down your images are directly via the search engine)

I never saw any indication that profile ranking is kept to influence individual image rankings.