Unification
The recent Unification changes made to iStock's systems have had significant effects on contributors. A large part of the Unification project involves the retirement & replacement of many old and unreliable pages that contributors have had to use in the past to manage their accounts. The pages that currently may seem to have very limited function will actually no longer be needed in a few weeks. It's important to stress that this current state of affairs is a temporary and transitional phase for the site.
We'd like to thank you for your patience as we make these changes. Please be assured that we do understand the concern that the Unification changes are causing our contributors. The developers have made massive efforts to minimize the disruption caused, but we are looking to see if we can make the process a little less disruptive. Uploads are still working though and the inspectors are still inspecting.
It's important to state again that we are in the middle of a huge undertaking with regards to how contributors work with iStock. Almost everything is changing for contributors over the next few weeks and how you interact with iStock is getting a giant and overdue makeover. It's basically the biggest change to how iStock and contributors interact since iStock started charging money for downloads.
ESP - Enterprise Submission Platform
Contributors will soon be managing their accounts via the ESP. This is the system that Video contributors have been using to upload files for several years. You will be able to upload via ESP, as well as via DeepMeta and qHero which will still be available. In addition though, ESP is where you will access your stats, sales data and generally manage your contributor account. ESP log in credentials are due to be sent out at the beginning of February.
Pay
One thing that is not changing though is when you will be paid. If you had $100 or more in your account balance on the last day of December then you will be paid as normal i.e. on or before the 25th of January, just as in other months.
Stats charts & CSV files
Regarding your old stats charts, those can still be accessed. You will need to be signed in to the iStock site, but they are still available here - it's possibly worth you bookmarking this link:
http://www.istockphoto.c...;DownloadsGraphFileType=
That linked page above also allows you to click back and forth to see the charts for other months.
You can still access your CSV files from the links on that page or by using this link:
https://secure.istockpho...fset=0&userID=000000
That link above will show you your 2016 stats but, if you change the number for the offset value by 12, you can look back at previous years. You just add twelve to the value to look back an additional 12 months e.g. this would look back to 2015:
https://secure.istockpho...set=12&userID=000000
Credit Sales
You should still be able to see your most recent credit sales on the page linked below. It doesn't show the royalty amount or date, but the images that are top of the list should be your most recent credit sales. Hopefully that should help to fill in a few blanks when it comes to tracking what's happening with your sales.
https://secure.istockpho...1&order=LastDownload
Account Balances
The contributor account balances are no longer shown anywhere on iStock. We appreciate that not currently being able to see your live account balance on iStock is inconvenient, to say the least. It would certainly have been ideal if we had been able to seamlessly move from the old system to the new but the sheer scale and complexity of the changes mean that unfortunately this just wasn't possible, but we are working through the process as quickly as we can.
For now though, it is still possible to check your account balances with DeepMeta . It's also still possible for those who already have the iOS contributor app iLucidata installed.
Other Affected Pages
You will no doubt have already noticed the changes made to the my_uploads pages. As we explained in the October newsletter, there needed to be a transition month between the two systems. Originally this was scheduled for December, but it was pushed back to January. This means that all royalty earnings data will be unavailable for the month.
The my_uploads page is therefore not showing royalty amounts any more but all sales are being correctly recorded. The my_uploads page is also not showing the file status column to indicate if files are pending, publishing or accepted. We will try to bring further clarity when we can regarding which sales data pages and stats etc will be accessible throughout this transition month.
We appreciate that these changes will cause some discomfort and upset but the decision to finally break away from our old and creaking technology platform had to be made. Fortunately it won't be too long before we are migrated to the new system. Thanks again for you patience and support. We will update this thread with any updates that we have regarding the Unification Project.