I am seeing lots of comments from some of the old hands at IS that they are experiencing a disappointing trend in sales.

At the same time the approvals list has dropped significantly from a peak of 30,000 to a current level of 17,000 (the lowest I have seen in months).

All of this is happening at a time when SS and DT seem to be accellerating (DT approvals list still 40,000).

Is this just a temporary thing or a sign of something else?  Anyone have a view?

Maybe because their entire system sucks. The only thing keeping them alive is the fact that they started it all. Uploading is a pain in the ass and their prices are a lot more expensive than other sites, while their commissions are lower. Not to mention their support is utterly useless. (In my experiences at least). Their uploading limit is BS, and it takes them ages to review anything, and then they reject 90% of your best sellers.
Go Shutterstock! 

My sales peeked in Nov. and have been falling ever since, while my uploads have gone up. Not a good sign. My approval rate for new uploads has remained high.

Yes, YY, that is what others seem to be saying.

Quote from: hatman12 on April 05, 2007, 18:39
I am seeing lots of comments from some of the old hands at IS that they are experiencing a disappointing trend in sales.

At the same time the approvals list has dropped significantly from a peak of 30,000 to a current level of 17,000 (the lowest I have seen in months).

All of this is happening at a time when SS and DT seem to be accellerating (DT approvals list still 40,000).

Is this just a temporary thing or a sign of something else?  Anyone have a view?

That the queue has decreased is as much a reflection of the increased inspectors and decreased upload levels as anything else. 2 years ago it was  around 5000 iirc.

As an old hand, yes my dls have decreased and have posted graphs to that effect, but I know exactly which files that sold over 200 each per month were killed by the big best match change in September and also know that many new folks benefitted pro-rata.

Despite that I continue to make more money per month.

And dear people I suggest we are soon approaching the point that the increase in supply is outstripping the increase in demand.

Surprisngly, the past three months have been my best months ever on IS. 

Shutterstock on the other hand, has been steadily declining.

for the past month my sales went up and my acceptance rate was high too. but I agree with you  uploading is a pain and I am not a big fun of upload limits either. it takes so much time to build a porfolio and pending times are quite long too.

IS has been my best-selling site for the past 3 months and its well ahead also in April.  $/dld also increased a lot this year.  I haven't noticed any positive trend in my approvals, but then I don't upload that many images.

Regards,
Adelaide

I don't understand why istock keep these low upload limits.  For those just starting, 15 photos a week is often not enough.  Someone with 1,000 great photos could take years to get them all online.  istock are missing out on a lot of income.  I am making more money some days with smaller sites because I have been able to upload more photos to them.

As Alamy has over 8 million photos, I don't believe in over supply being a problem.  Designers seem to want as many photos as possible to choose from.  istock may well lose their market leading position if they limit their growth like this.

Well, I can't produce so many images in a week, I normally upload ony 3-4 on a good week...

Anyway, I think that someone who has such a huge portfolio ready to go online, if they are really good images, would easily get a permission to upload more than this limit.  At least, that is the smart thing to do from a business point-of-view, as it's a win-win situation.

Regards,
Adelaide

IS is performing really well for me.

I hate the slow uploading process but my sales are consistantly increasing, I am averaging about 10 uploads a week and my sales have been doubling ever month since I joined in Dec 06. Their rate of sales growth is greater than SS for me. Perhaps because I am only submitting my best shots due to the upload limit?

So I say 'way to go IS' , working well for me 

My IS sales have completely gone through the roof in the last months. I did spend a lot of time DAing my images as well so that might be it.  I now make roughly 30% more money on IS than on SS with 600 images less! I have had no increase in sales on SS in the past 3 months even though I'm uploading regularly.

Yes IS is a pain to upload but I'm reaping the rewards now.    I'm a very happy IS uploader.

My experience somewhat mimics kosmikkreeper's: IS sales have increased significantly (> $2.00/image/month), while SS has been flat or in modest decline. IS isn't overtaking SS - yet - , but I'm pretty happy with its performance of late.

Quote from: sharpshot on April 05, 2007, 23:48
I don't understand why istock keep these low upload limits.  For those just starting, 15 photos a week is often not enough. 

Sharpshot, obviously I don't work for Getty, so I can't provide a definite answer, but I can provide a guess.

Oversupply is part of the problem. In theory iStock can continue to increase revenue with many more images while all individual photogrpahers see a decrease in revenue. While that is good for iStock in the short term, it is not so good for you guys, and therefore not good for them in the long run.

I'm sure they know how many images they need from contributors to keep a balance between supply and demand, to maximize revenue for each contributor, and to not overwhelm their inspectors.

Just imagine if all 30,000+ of their contributors started to upload 50+ images a day!

I think there is a critical mass threshold that all companies approach.

As you know, we were recently at Photoshop World exhibiting. We talked with many people. Some weren't familiar at all with microstock model, and some of those who were had only heard of iStock until they ran into StockXpert.

Supply is not the mid to long term problem for them. It's going to be demand, now that they have growing competition.

Just my two slightly biased cents.

Istock has been up or me the last three months. I small part-timer with micro but they are consistently the best seller for me.

I'm not happy with iStock at the moment but I'm hoping things will change in the near future.

Quote from: mattb on April 05, 2007, 20:34
Surprisngly, the past three months have been my best months ever on IS. 

Shutterstock on the other hand, has been steadily declining.

same with me.

Same here, sales have been shoddy lately.  I'm not worried yet, as ebb and flow are are the process and I've experienced that many times before.  Besides, if iStock is down, the other micros will come through.  Those 0 or 1 DL days remind me why I'm not exclusive!  But I have had an aggravating time dealing with them that I've never had with any of the other micros. 

My sales there have been really horrible, especially this month. They are at about the level they were in September when I had about 200 less photos and 50 fewer vectors. You can check out Marcopolo9442 and see all the new vector files and some others I uploaded since then, and then realize that my income this month is the same as before I uploaded all that. I disambiguated about 100 more files last month in the hope that I would see a sales increase in those files but I have not yet, so I am not sure it is even worth the effort to disambiguate the files I have not done yet, which is probably still around 30-35% of my portfolio there. If I saw an immediate improvement as a result of disambiguation I would have done the rest by now.  I wonder if it is possible that your overall postition in the search engine declines proportionately to the files you have disambiguated, and that is why my overall sales are so terrible?

My sales are still around 40% down from a peak in mid march.  My sales have increased on other sites. 

I can see that they might be concerned about over supply of photos but wont people looking for new images go to the sites that allow more uploads?  I think they will lose customers by restricting uploads and that will reduce demand for their images.

Proportionally to the number of days so far, my earnings are a tad higher in April than in March and even February (BME).  I suppose they will be more or less the same in the end.

Regards,
Adelaide

Sales completely tanked this month, haven't even sold half as many at this point as I did last month, have IS played with the search engine again?

iStock want to keep their upload levels low. Steve-oh is spot on. It's balance of supply and demand. Their strategy reflects it. They have the most severe upload limits in the market, and their referral program only rewards for referring buyers, not contributors.

While it's frustrating to us contributors, iStock know where their money comes from. There will always be more brilliant photographers, and they have most of the current ones on their books already. There's a much higher impact losing a customer than losing a supplier, and they know it.

Sales are still increasing on the sites that have no resrictions or better limits.  Only being able to upload 15 photos a week must be a hindrance to someone with thousands of photos ready to go.  Has Iofoto (Ron Chapple) submitted to istock?  He has over 4,000 photos on the other big sites.

FWIW, istock has hinted several times that established pro photographers can potentially get around the initial upload limits by contacting them.

Also, marcopolo... your work is nice, but icon sets like the ones you seem to be focusing on have the potential to be good sellers, but more likely potential to be lost in the thousands of similar images being uploaded daily (media and business icons are getting as bad as the "floral grunge backgrounds"). Landscapes are not big sellers at istock either, so you have a challenge there as well. It's great to stick to a style that you enjoy and like I said, your work is very nice, but if you are looking for higher sales, you might want to branch out a bit. The more specialized icons, such as the "signs and signals" and the science and  medical ones should do well for you. I've lightboxed both of them for future projects myself.