O.K. I know there was a holiday in both Canada and the USA on Monday. That being said I have never gone 4 days without a sale since 2006 no matter the holidays. I do this full-time and have a family to feed. Please tell me it will pass, I am actually scared.

it will pass... I think. I was under the impression that video was doing better than photos though, so who knows?

Ahh thanks, Oct. was a good month for me but this is really strange

Quote from: jjneff on November 13, 2012, 20:16
Ahh thanks, Oct. was a good month for me but this is really strange

are you an exclusive?

Sales are slow, no doubt, but I have had sales in the last 4 days. The past October was really bad for me though.

Quote from: cidepix on November 13, 2012, 20:20

Quote from: jjneff on November 13, 2012, 20:16
Ahh thanks, Oct. was a good month for me but this is really strange

are you an exclusive?

Sorry to tell you... but as as a full time photographer EXCLUSIVE on IS is a very, very risky job this days. Hope your earnings will catch up this month; judging the last two years changing on IS ( sales, commissions, management)  nothing good is on the horizon regarding this agency.

Sales are absolutely appalling today.

I don't how they've managed to drive so many full time exclusive artists into the ground, but they're intent on screwing us it seems.

Sales are better than usual for me. I think we are being (re)-cycled.

I am exclusive, just someone saying it will pass is a help. If this trend continues I will have to drop my exclusivity! My port is linked below so you can see if my concern is legit or not.








www.istockphoto.com/jjneff

Wow...if you can go four days without sales on a portfolio like that it's more than a bit scary.  You have so many files I can see why dropping the crown would be a lot of work.  I'm sure its something to do with search tweaks so hopefully it will come back around with the next adjustment!  That was the scariest part of being exclusive for me.

I see most of your files are videos. You have less than 500 photos. When I said I had sales in the last 4 days, I meant photos.

Today is extremely slow, but sometimes the sales got reported late in the day, if it could be a small comfort to you.

Quote from: jjneff on November 13, 2012, 20:25
I am exclusive, just someone saying it will pass is a help. If this trend continues I will have to drop my exclusivity! My port is linked below so you can see if my concern is legit or not.

www.istockphoto.com/jjneff

the idea of exclusivity is scary enough for me.. hopefully it's a temporary slowdown for you..

Quote from: jjneff on November 13, 2012, 20:25
I am exclusive, just someone saying it will pass is a help. If this trend continues I will have to drop my exclusivity! My port is linked below so you can see if my concern is legit or not.

www.istockphoto.com/jjneff

Your consern is very legit.
Thats a port that should sustain a living.
Im impressed.

If I were you i would begin to read about legal entities.
Evt PM me.

I agree with others that your portfolio quality and subject matter should be selling well daily.  Very scary indeed that it isn't! 

You mentioned you are exclusive to IS.  I understand how difficult it would be to upload all those videos to other sites.  Have you considered going independent, just for photos?  You could upload your existing photos and maybe devote a bit of time to building photo ports on the other sites.  It might be a way to weather these sorts of stoppages at IS and try out independence without losing the bulk of your IS income... Just a thought. 

Well acoording to Alexa, istock traffic is just going down:

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/istockphoto.com#

And compared to shutter stock:

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/shutterstock.com#

If you combine both graphs you see that the istock downward trend is unbroken. Obviously all the recent problems don´t help to attract customers.

By the way, I just clicked on a couple of ports of my friends. The ports showed 0 images. Maybe today IS is tweaking the site again.

Oops, one of the ports is showing now, but it took a while.

Quote from: Freedom on November 13, 2012, 21:22
By the way, I just clicked on a couple of ports of my friends. The ports showed 0 images. Maybe today IS is tweaking the site again.

Oops, one of the ports is showing now, but it took a while.

For me the site was loading very slowly today and with lots of timeouts and blanks. Was the same some days last week from various computers and locations. Even when it sort of works it is one of the slowest web sites I still visit.

The search function is broken.  It's been broken since they made the site changes on Sept 4th.  Lots of searches show page after page after page of files with zero downloads.  Many best sellers have disappeared.

This problem is particularly noticeable in a search with more than one keyword.  Try searching for Beach then adding Copyspace and see what results you get.  Or try Ribbon + Gold.

Also, the keyword priority system is broken.

The entire system seems to have become corrupted when they implemented the site changes on Sept 4th.

These broken search results explain why so many people with popular files have experienced a sudden reduction in sales from Sept 4th, and why some contributors with lots of zero selling files have reported a healthy increase in sales.

The problems have been reported ad infinitum in the bugs and index threads, but istock seems unwilling or unable to do anything about it.  They must be experienced disapppointing overall sales because many of the search results are nonsense.  Buyers aren't stupid.  But still they let the matter roll on and on.

The overall IT function at istock seems to be deteriorating.  Very likely that they were starved of cash by H&F and are trying to run the ship with a server and database system held together by band aids and pieces of string.

Lots of criticism of the IT team, with daily crashes and server malfunctions, but it might be that they are simply struggling to hold the thing together and don't have any spare time to fix any of the database and structural problems.

It's possible they think it's working as they intended it to - a case of we see a bug and they see a feature. Not arguing that it's good, but possibly that it's intentional.

Looking at a series of mine where some rather odd things happen on a best match search if you add a term to refine the search, it appears that the ranking of the newly added term in the keywords of the image affect placement. So, for one of your popular sand images with flip flops, copy space is lower down in the rankings for that image, so that probably accounts for positioning.

I would argue that if I'm refining something - in other words I got into the right ballpark with beach - I might not get the best results if the additional terms are ordered by overall ranking. But I think that's what they've done

As you can see I would prefer to stay exclusive just because of the work involved. I am taking steps towards being independent in video but I am going to give it six months. Thanks for the kind words on my port!!! I have a lot less talent then a lot of you! I love shooting stock and even with the down trends I wouldn't trade it. The past 2.5 years have been amazing and I hope for many more. ShutterStock pays less for video files but I really love what they are doing with their site and advertising. I make a fulltime living on iStuck so if I drop exclusivity I can count on 70-80% income loss out the door. Pretty scary when you have a wife and two kids to feed!   

Quote from: hatman12 on November 13, 2012, 22:14
<snip>
Lots of criticism of the IT team, with daily crashes and server malfunctions, but it might be that they are simply struggling to hold the thing together and don't have any spare time to fix any of the database and structural problems.

I still think they're trying to band-aid it and keep it running until they can finish working on how to adsorb it into Getty Images. Priority #1 is keep it running until the absorption plan and technology are done. Everything else isn't a priority.

I think we'll see another big announcement in 2013. Either IS will have a different backend technology, possibly the Gettyimages.com system, or IS becomes collections with GI.

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on November 13, 2012, 22:47

Quote from: hatman12 on November 13, 2012, 22:14
<snip>
Lots of criticism of the IT team, with daily crashes and server malfunctions, but it might be that they are simply struggling to hold the thing together and don't have any spare time to fix any of the database and structural problems.

I still think they're trying to band-aid it and keep it running until they can finish working on how to adsorb it into Getty Images. Priority #1 is keep it running until the absorption plan and technology are done. Everything else isn't a priority.

I think we'll see another big announcement in 2013. Either IS will have a different backend technology, possibly the Gettyimages.com system, or IS becomes collections with GI.

I would agree there might be some truth in it.

Quote from: jjneff on November 13, 2012, 20:25
I am exclusive, just someone saying it will pass is a help. If this trend continues I will have to drop my exclusivity! My port is linked below so you can see if my concern is legit or not.
www.istockphoto.com/jjneff

One concern I'd have is your port seems to be heavy on video. Has video really caught enough momentum to produce high and stable income?

Video is a very stable income

Quote from: jjneff on November 13, 2012, 23:02
Video is a very stable income

Not that stable according to your opening post. Mind you, I suppose zero sales for 4 days does represent 'stability' of a kind. At least you're unlikely to go any lower than that __ and that must be of some comfort anyway.