I'm exclusive and sales have fallen off a cliff for me too. If things don't turn around in the next month or two I'll have to consider going back independent.

^^^ can you please elaborate ?

Quote from: cclapper on January 15, 2012, 03:36

Quote from: ShadySue on January 14, 2012, 20:57
By all means give it a whirl; though I love Blackadder and don't 'get' Bean at all.

Me neither. I might give Blackadder a try, too. I watch House, but definitely formulaic. In fact, it's getting quite boring.

The first Blackadder series is the weakest. They themselves admit they were 'all over the place'.
I'm just wondering if you need to have at least a tiny smidgin of British history to 'get' it.
I can't recommend Goodbyeeee!, the last episode in Series 4 highly enough; but if you watched it first, it's not totally typical of the other programmes.

Blackadder series 2,3 and 4 are a must see.  Much better than wasting time discussing istock, Baaa!

Quote from: ShadySue on January 15, 2012, 11:49
I can't recommend Goodbyeeee!, the last episode in Series 4 enough; but if you watched it first, it's not totally typical of the other programmes.

Oh God no, don't anyone watch the last one first... you really must save it for last.  The impact, as the last episode is extraordinary.  I'll say no more on that.

All this talk had me turn to Amazon, so we'll be ordering the whole set to watch again.

Quote from: cclapper on January 15, 2012, 03:36

Quote from: ShadySue on January 14, 2012, 20:57
By all means give it a whirl; though I love Blackadder and don't 'get' Bean at all.

Me neither. I might give Blackadder a try, too. I watch House, but definitely formulaic. In fact, it's getting quite boring.

I was a huge House fan for a long time, but I think the show jumped the shark after about series 6.  It just started getting silly with series 7 (I saw some episode that had something about a chicken running around the place, and thought 'wow, they are really reaching to find something funny', and I didn't even bother to watch the rest of the episode or season).  It's interesting to see the links in here to those other shows.  I wasn't familiar with Hugh Laurie before House, and didn't even realize he was British for a long time.  He does the American accent quite well! 

Quote from: KarenH on January 15, 2012, 16:42
I wasn't familiar with Hugh Laurie before House, and didn't even realize he was British for a long time.  He does the American accent quite well! 

I think that's true of a lot of Americans.  I saw a funny interview with Hugh Laurie on Graham Norton, relating how American interviewers are always asking him "how did you drop the accent?".  To which he replies in his perfect American accent: (paraphrasing here) "What do you mean?  THIS is the accent."

Quote from: KarenH on January 15, 2012, 16:42
  I wasn't familiar with Hugh Laurie before House, and didn't even realize he was British for a long time.

If you search YouTube for 'Fry and Laurie', that was the show that first exposed us to him in the UK, back in the 80's, IIRC.

Ugh.  No wonder my sales are down so drastically.  When I search my own portfolio for certain images, they don't even show up.  I have several images of pizza, only three out of four show up.  I have to go through my portfolio alphabetically just to find the one I'm searching for.  Can't find my shots of clementines either (a type of tangerine) unless I search for orange. 

Quote from: Karimala on January 16, 2012, 04:43
Ugh.  No wonder my sales are down so drastically.  When I search my own portfolio for certain images, they don't even show up.  I have several images of pizza, only three out of four show up.  I have to go through my portfolio alphabetically just to find the one I'm searching for.  Can't find my shots of clementines either (a type of tangerine) unless I search for orange.  

I get 3 when searching your port and one more of the ingredients when I look through your portfolio but my guess is that you couldn't find it by looking for "pizza" because it's not one of your keywords.  
The keyword IS uses is "clements" for tangerine, none of yours have that keyword and none of yours have "tangerine" either.  This one's free, but I'm charging next time I have to fix your keywords.

Quote from: traveler1116 on January 16, 2012, 05:05

Quote from: Karimala on January 16, 2012, 04:43
Ugh.  No wonder my sales are down so drastically.  When I search my own portfolio for certain images, they don't even show up.  I have several images of pizza, only three out of four show up.  I have to go through my portfolio alphabetically just to find the one I'm searching for.  Can't find my shots of clementines either (a type of tangerine) unless I search for orange.  

I get 3 when searching your port and one more of the ingredients when I look through your portfolio but my guess is that you couldn't find it by looking for "pizza" because it's not one of your keywords.  
The keyword IS uses is "clements" for tangerine, none of yours have that keyword and none of yours have "tangerine" either.  This one's free, but I'm charging next time I have to fix your keywords.

Clements?  Never heard of that one...thanks!  Everywhere I see them for sale, they are always called clementines.  Weird about "pizza," because it's embedded in the metadata and shows on all my other sites.  I've noticed with other images at IS that keywords mysteriously disappear. 

"Clements?  Never heard of that one...thanks!  Everywhere I see them for sale, they are always called clementines.  Weird about "pizza," because it's embedded in the metadata and shows on all my other sites.  I've noticed with other images at IS that keywords mysteriously disappear.  "

Never heard of it. Called mandarin in Australia and naartjie in South Africa .

Mandarin (mandarine), clementine, tangerine and satsuma are all varieties or sub-varieties of oranges.  It's the sort of distinction that an advertiser might want to be specified but which the CV is specially designed to conceal/misrepresent. (A clementine has no pips whereas a tangerine does, so if your picture of a tangerine showing pips is shoe-horned by the CV into "clementine" it immediately becomes spam. But the CV likes spam.

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on January 16, 2012, 08:35
Mandarin (mandarine), clementine, tangerine and satsuma are all varieties or sub-varieties of oranges.  It's the sort of distinction that an advertiser might want to be specified but which the CV is specially designed to conceal/misrepresent. (A clementine has no pips whereas a tangerine does, so if your picture of a tangerine showing pips is shoe-horned by the CV into "clementine" it immediately becomes spam. But the CV likes spam.

Reading the label on the bag helps with identification, too.    

Clementine ended up showing in the CV, whereas Clement took me on vacation to the Rocky Mountains.  IS must have added it to the CV after I disambiguated the photos.  Wonder if they ever added "yellow corn?"  Corn used to only bring up "white corn." 

Just another reason, I guess, why images aren't selling like they used to. 

ugh - what is with sales (or the lack of)....?! awful start to the new year

Quote from: SNP on January 16, 2012, 18:03
ugh - what is with sales (or the lack of)....?! awful start to the new year

I hear you! With the exception of the last two weeks of 2011, the 14 weeks before that were strongest of the year. So far this year, I'm down 20-30% of that weekly average.

Quote from: SNP on January 16, 2012, 18:03
ugh - what is with sales (or the lack of)....?! awful start to the new year

Tell me about it. My downloads are 45% down on the first 15 days of January compared to last year. Istock appears to be dying on it's arse, for me anyway. Heigh-ho.

Quote from: gostwyck on January 16, 2012, 18:43
Istock appears to be dying on it's arse

Burn Mother Fucker

Quote from: gostwyck on December 21, 2011, 16:14
Istock must be getting desperate to hang on to their exclusives and/or make more money.

Perhaps that's why E+ prices just went up?

When are they going to learn that gouging customers (i.e., driving business away) won't keep exclusives loyal. It only makes the problem worse (higher prices, lower sales, less money in exclusive AND non-exclusive pockets, as buyers go to cheaper pastures with work of equal quality).

I like the new prices. E+ is doing very well for me, so there seem to be enough customers who are not that price sensitive.

I hope we see price rises at other agencies as well. It'll still be more than affordable (even a steal if you look at sub packages) for the vast majority of the buyers and we'd get a bit more. IS is at least doing something good (for the whole industry)

Quote from: Risamay on January 16, 2012, 20:19
Perhaps that's why E+ prices just went up?

When are they going to learn that gouging customers (i.e., driving business away) won't keep exclusives loyal. It only makes the problem worse (higher prices, lower sales, less money in exclusive AND non-exclusive pockets, as buyers go to cheaper pastures with work of equal quality).

Audio went up today too. Istock appear to be addicted to price hikes. They just can't stop themselves. I see that they quickly locked the thread discussing it too. They must be getting sensitive;

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=339693&page=1

Quote from: cobalt on January 16, 2012, 20:24
I like the new prices. E+ is doing very well for me, so there seem to be enough customers who are not that price sensitive.

Trouble is, you only know when you've gone too far ... when you've gone too far. Then it's too late and another flock of customers has taken flight to greener pastures.

What's the justification for these price rises anyway (other than total greed obviously)? Have Istock's costs suddenly risen or are they desperately trying to make up the shortfall caused by falling sales? This is surely going to make that problem worse.

the coolest thing is that they feel they don´t need to give any response or announcement to exclusives..

As a business, we are constantly looking to optimize our pricing. This is an ongoing process so you will see prices change from time to time; sometimes up and sometimes down.

Yeah, color me disappointed.