MicrostockGroup

This devastating drop in sales gives me a sick feeling in my stomach.

Hi SJ,

 Sorry for any confusion. I'll try to be a bit more specific.
 Before Istock built their exclusive RF contract there was never an exclusive for stock by photographer. The exclusivity was based on the images. Istock changed that with their new contract and based it off of photographers not the work itself. That limited photographers to their promoting their work at other RF agencies. That is the change I am referring to Istocks Exclusive contract compared to what used to exist.
 Even in RM I can shoot for Corbis or Getty or anyone I want as long as I am doing different work, but I don't need to tell you that you are very savvy to the industry.
 I will say the best part of the contract at Istock is you can pull out at any time and move your work on. I hope they don't change it down the road and add a 2 year or 7 year exclusive contract that would really lock you guys in.
 Does that make more sense or am I still talking in circles. Let me know I really want to try and clear up that there is a difference to Istocks contract that did not use to be part of the industry. I didn't mean to infer that they had changed their contract if I did that was my bad. I was referring to the change in the industry.

Best,
J

IS is getting sad 

It could be only that IS is less popular. Because I get mostly the same earning than before elsewhere

Remember the Alexa graphic. Google trend see the same as Alexa. Maybe a less drastical drop but a drop anyway



That's 30% less traffic than a year ago

Gotta Back SJ on this one,

 It is a very difficult job tracking these kind of huge collections. There can often times be numerous resellers that the original distributor or photographer has zero control over. The best thing is to politely bring it to their attention ( weekly if you must ) until their is resolve.

Best,
AVAVA

I would more expect to see that all new contributors after a certain date must be exclusive and exiting non-exclusive are ok.

However now that I say that, there are a lot of well established stock professionals locked into image exclusivity contracts for long periods (ie 5yrs), even for those are not, you are asking them to remove all other collections to join istock, also many people are also very seriously put off by that exclusivity contract as no other agency has anything like it.  I would think (and it is only my guess as I dont know) istock would always want to be trying to attract a number of already professional photogs, and being exclusive only would wipe much chance of this.

Phil

The worry about IS forcing everyone to be exclusive first surfaced around the time they introduced exclusivity; it has reared its head several times since and each time - in the IS forums - various admins (including Bitter more than once) have said that they have no intention of doing this.

I think it'll be interesting to see how they integrate Jupiter's offerings into Getty's mix, especially StockXpert and its sales through photos.com and JI unlimited. I cannot imagine that IS would walk away from the huge business that their independent content represents. What would they gain over their current position where they can say you should buy at IS because they have all the independent stuff plus their exclusive content?

Once you incorporate StockXpert, they'll have a lot more of the independent content IS currently doesn't have - either because of upload restrictions or the types of raster illustrations IS currently rejects, but SS, StockXpert and others thrive on.

Clearly the best match changes have been a very big deal - although my vector sales are still AWOL, the last shift did something to let new images see the light of day again. I'm happy as otherwise this year's Christmas collection (of mine) would have just vanished. If you don't have Christmas images, you might also count that among the reasons that sales are down. Over the last ~2 weeks, it's been almost entirely Christmas images, and a nice mix of old and new ones.

On the best match bias for exclusives, I would point out that (a) I know nothing about the rules for best match and (b) when I did a search for senior couple, although Lisa's stuff was much further back than I'd have expected, the first three images were by monkeybusinessimages, an independent. Yes they were all in blue flames, so I'm sure that helped

I don't pretend to understand the new best match at all. Its sad to hear all the non-exclusives suffering, myself included. Especially with Istock generally being one of the top 2 earners for most.

I uploaded a couple of very similar Christmas files recently, both started getting regular sales and were on my first page of best match. Then one of the images got about 5 downloads in one day. In the past this would have bumped that image up in best match. Instead, the exact opposite happened and it dropped back to page 4 under best match in my port. The other similar file is still on page one with half the downloads. Huh?

I'm confused, shouldn't files move up for selling?

I also wonder if this change is benefitting Istock or is it just a failed best match experiment. Maybe will never know.

There has been a lot of arguing here and on IS as to whether sales are down and whether best match is at fault. This is my IS sales graph for 32 months. The big spike was a flurry of ELs. As you can see, I am pretty much back to where I started.

Files that have too many downloads to views get pushed back.  The dead last image in your port has 282 views and 39 downloads which is around 1 download per 7 views. Any files that cross the 1:7 or 1:8 line get banished to the back of your port and get spanked in best match search results.

No idea what they're trying to do here but I'm not overly thrilled that I'm starting to get a collection of formerly good selling images at the back of my port.

Oh well, I can't figure out how to make it bigger, but you get the idea. 

 HI All,

  For me it's like trying to figure out a Rubics Cube. I can get one side the right color but when I try to start on the next side the first side gets all screwed up. I thought the cube was out of my life years ago but my sons just bought one. Dreaded thing still the same results for me 20 years later. I just stare at it on the table with mixed feelings of defeat, the desire to beat it, or just throw it out the window.

Best,
AVAVA