Yeah, I think I had the same sales last Saturday! It was OK-ish up until lunch time here in the UK, and then it crashed. Nothing since!

FWIW, my october is OK so far.  On par with last month which was a BME.

Quote

signs do point to buyer migration as the cause.

I agree this may be some of the cause but  I also see many lower category contributor reporting good sales, and it has been suggested they are favoured in the current best match. It would make sense, if sales are down, for istock and Getty to maximise profits by favoring people who are paid a lower commission, thus more money for IS.

Thanks for that info.  I haven't been on the IS forums lately. Didn't know anyone (other than Aeonf just now) was doing well.

 Makes sense that IS would be shuffling what sales there are to lower canisters.  They've already proven they will do anything, including sabotaging their business, to save a few bucks in the short term. 

Quote from: vlad_the_imp on October 07, 2011, 16:05

Quote

signs do point to buyer migration as the cause.

I agree this may be some of the cause but  I also see many lower category contributor reporting good sales, and it has been suggested they are favoured in the current best match. It would make sense, if sales are down, for istock and Getty to maximise profits by favoring people who are paid a lower commission, thus more money for IS.

Thanks for that info.  I haven't been on the IS forums lately. Didn't know anyone (other than Aeonf just now) was doing well.

 Makes sense that IS would be shuffling what sales there are to lower canisters.  They've already proven they will do anything, including sabotaging their business, to save a few bucks in the short term. 

Also Franckreporter is doing extremly well.

Ok, I think I just had a WWE (Worst Week Ever)!
I had one, that's right just one DL all week.
I have been exclusive since late 2009 and that has never happened before.

I am very seriously thinking about dropping the crown and spreading myself around more.

Maybe that is IS new agenda. Get rid of all exclusives so that they can pay everyone just peanuts.

It makes me wonder if the Vetta Vector Rebellion, in March, made Gold/Diamond vector exclusives a little to expensive for the accountants. March was my best month this year and after "we won" my sales have been down ever since despite uploading consistently. I know there is much more to the problem than just that, but the conspirator in me is speculating that is a big reason. I hope its not but no one is giving answers.

Quote from: vlad_the_imp on October 07, 2011, 16:05

Quote

signs do point to buyer migration as the cause.

I agree this may be some of the cause but  I also see many lower category contributor reporting good sales, and it has been suggested they are favoured in the current best match. It would make sense, if sales are down, for istock and Getty to maximise profits by favoring people who are paid a lower commission, thus more money for IS.

Thanks for that info.  I haven't been on the IS forums lately. Didn't know anyone (other than Aeonf just now) was doing well.

 Makes sense that IS would be shuffling what sales there are to lower canisters.  They've already proven they will do anything, including sabotaging their business, to save a few bucks in the short term. 

I don't see a different behaviour from the big players. You definitely don't behave any different than if anything was just ok. You're not going to stop uploading and there's no chance of you pulling your port. And as we all know nobody cares about bitching, talk is cheap

That being said, besides all the reasons stated so far, they're motivating lower rank contributors and when they'll become too big to pull their ports, they'll screw them over with best match not favouring them. A very distasteful business strategy, but it maximizes their profits. You big contributors really are a bunch of sheep, you're letting them do anything with you, they're wiping the floor with you.

Small contributors can't do anything to change things, big can. The big won't since they're getting greedier and greedier and are only thinking short term like IS, FT etc. This cuts are mostly caused by inaction of the big players. If agencies knew they won't get away with it, since every big contributor would start deactivating their content, they wouldn't do it. There's no agency without contributors.

Small contributors can't do anything to change things, big can. The big won't since they're getting greedier and greedier and are only thinking short term like IS, FT etc. This cuts are mostly caused by inaction of the big players. If agencies knew they won't get away with it, since every big contributor would start deactivating their content, they wouldn't do it. There's no agency without contributors.

If your hypothesis is right - that they are transferring sales from big contributors to small ones - then the big contributors have no clout, anyway. Agencies can only transfer sales if everybody can be replaced by someone smaller.

I have noticed October started slow but last week I had pretty good sales. I will ride out the winter and when it goes quiet at the new year I will drop my exclusivity and get my images in as many places as I can to spread my chances of making up the lost money. It's no good dropping it now as I may be missing out on a brief period of exclusive rate sales.

Yep.

Quote from: lagereek on October 10, 2011, 00:59

Again we are looking too deep into it. Its simple, you get a bunch of wannabee business-men, trying to run the show, computer-geeks and left-wingers ( photography business is full of them)  there is no "old" money anywhere, just upstarts, exploding brains, with the smell of money,  thats it.
The IQ level is on par with someone putting their pants on back-to-front and instead of changing,  they walk backwards all day long.

You've got it wrong again, Christian. It was the left wing weirdos and geeks who made the thing work in the first place, it's since the billionaire money-men in suits clutching their MBAs have been giving the orders that it stopped working. You're right about their IQ, though.

+1.  I think that most of the big problems with istock seem to of happened since the hedge fund Hellman & Friedman bought Getty in 2008.  I wouldn't call them "left wingers".  They don't seem to care about istock contributors and buyers but they appear to be good at making money for their investors.  If istock isn't sold, I don't see a good future for most of us there.  It looks like their policy is to take as much money from us as possible.  If they are sold, will the site be too damaged for the new buyers to turn it around?  It really looks like buyers are moving over to Shutterstock, as most internet sectors are dominated by one company, I think that might happen here.

We just have to hope that Shutterstock are more interested in building a good long term business than giving investors a short term return.

Haven't written a line here for sometimes....amazingly, although I haven't uploaded that much to any site this year, my total sale have been the same as 2010. However, I must say that there has been a big shift of buyers no longer buying my images at IS but buying them elsewhere. In 2009, IS was my number one, in 2010 it felt to number two. Last September it felt to 4th place, and now so far this October 6th place.

So far this October SS is first, FT second, DT third, CS fourth, Ala fifth and IS sixth.  I am getting some increased sales at SS not so much at FT but definitely more at DT, CS, BS, Veer and 123rf.

I think one of the main problem with IS is that they don't stick to a working formula. I do believe in changes but only when the market calls for it or when there is a genuine reason to believe that the market would want it. IS has too many various collections at various price points overlapping each others which therefore confuse the buyers. These days you want simple, quick and no hassles...that is why I think SS is a winner on that front. They kept one formula since they started while adding some very subtle changes without confusing anybody. SS works...no fixing needed....only subtle, small changes once in while. Furthermore, SS best match works great....I say let buyers decide and favor who ever they want not the agency. IS has a way of changing there best match to favor a particular group over what buyers really wants. To me this is a big no no, hence why buyers are moving elsewhere.

so who has the traffic these days?

FYI... I'm seeing the same thing as Nico_blue.... I've been a member since 2002 and my Octobers have always been up....  this year, for the first time... not so much.... and I'm uploading at a higher rate than ever.....