MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => iStockPhoto.com => Topic started by: Allsa on August 11, 2008, 17:40
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My portfolio appears to be dying a slow death at iStock. IS used to be my best earning site, but lately the downloads are down to trickle. Is it just me, or are others seeing a big drop in downloads? I'm not exclusive.
Linda B
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It's OK here. Look at your downloads/month. If your files are not downloaded often they will step back in the search. Then upload some more that you think will be better sellers or more usable.
But keep quality high. From what I experienced in the last year it's the IS buyers seem to find every small imperfection in the images. While elsewhere I have sold once around 50% to 80%(Shutterstock) of my portfolio, Istock is more like 30%, but still earn more than others.
This is only my thought
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Quite a few people seem to be having problems with iStockphoto. Some of the buyers are complaining about the pricing, there's the summer slowdown to deal with, and iStockphoto seems to still be having technical difficulties. The technical difficulties have ranged from a slow site, to search problems, lightbox issues; etc.
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Feeling exactly the same pain
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No, you are not alone. This is my graph (about 1000 images non-exclusive portfolio), and it makes me very sad:
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3280/2755568167_f7561d481b_o.gif)
At this rate, it's going to be a struggle to get even on the june level. And yes, I have been uploading at a steady pace.
BTW yesterday was propably my worst monday ever in three years.
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Here's mine...
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What's the saying, Misery Loves Company. You have mine.
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and mine
(http://www.pbase.com/perrush/image/99222441.jpg)
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I haven't experienced a constant declining trend but august has certainly been by far the worst month of the year so far.
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there is much talk of a summer slowdown - but looking at peoples charts it seems more like a consistent slowdown since January ...
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Mine isn't as horrible as I thought it was going to be in July, but overall, it's still down since January.
(http://jrtmedia.com/graph.jpg)
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My projected sales for Aug are down 10% from July. But I am surprised that it isn't a lot worse for 2 reasons:
-stockers have been reporting massive declines in sales at IS
-there are signs that traffic at IS has fallen badly in the last couple months
-Is has drastically changed its Best Match search algorithm, which is its default search of course. IS has apparenlt eliminated or almost eliminated vectors from best match search results. And almost all my images at IS are vectors.
I did a best match search at IS on 'business concept'. The first 10 pages of results had NO vectors! Not one. (I quit looking after 10 pages.)
To give you an idea of how far off this is, a Most Popular search on 'business concept' at SS returns over 90% vectors.
IS main forum had a thread about this, but they locked it and now I can't find it at all.
What's going on there? Does anybody know?
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Mine isn't as horrible as I thought it was going to be in July, but overall, it's still down since January.
([url]http://jrtmedia.com/graph.jpg[/url])
I'd like to submit my graph but highlighting and copying does not work. How it is done ?
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Perhaps they want to steer vectors into the illustration category??
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Mine isn't as horrible as I thought it was going to be in July, but overall, it's still down since January.
([url]http://jrtmedia.com/graph.jpg[/url])
I'd like to submit my graph but highlighting and copying does not work. How it is done ?
I use the print key to take a picture of the iStockphoto page where the graph is, and then I use Photoshop to crop the graph. Then I upload it to my website. After this, you use the "insert image button" and insert a link.
Like this: {img}http://yourpage.com{/img}
Replace {} with [].
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August 2007, my first full month on iStock, I had 125 sales with a port of 60 photos. July 2008, I had 62 sales with a port of over 250 photos. I'm nearly up to 300 photos online, and sales are even slower this month than they started off at last month.
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August 2007, my first full month on iStock, I had 125 sales with a port of 60 photos. July 2008, I had 62 sales with a port of over 250 photos. I'm nearly up to 300 photos online, and sales are even slower this month than they started off at last month.
Keep at 'er. Should be able to half your income again if you can double the portfolio again.
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August 2007, my first full month on iStock, I had 125 sales with a port of 60 photos. July 2008, I had 62 sales with a port of over 250 photos. I'm nearly up to 300 photos online, and sales are even slower this month than they started off at last month.
Keep at 'er. Should be able to half your income again if you can double the portfolio again.
ROFL! That about sums it up...
Thanks for the good laugh! :D
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My best month this year was February and in July I had about 30% less dlds in comparison. I observe a steady decline, though milder than some cases reported here.
I have a bit more than 200 images there and uploaded very little this year.
Regards,
Adelaide
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August 2007, my first full month on iStock, I had 125 sales with a port of 60 photos. July 2008, I had 62 sales with a port of over 250 photos. I'm nearly up to 300 photos online, and sales are even slower this month than they started off at last month.
You need to find another category that sells. Three images, about one hundredth of your portfolio, account for 50% of your sales, someone else doing well with similar shots would seriously damage your sales.
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I agree, but nothing else I upload to IS ever sells. It sells everywhere else, just not at IS. My sales are diversified at Shutterstock and Dreamstime, and I am at the point where that's about all I care about.
I've been banging my head against a wall for 9 months trying to sell something at IS besides pictures of football. The problem is every image I upload is so far down in best match I usually have to go through a minimum of 10 pages before finding anything. Not much I can do about that.
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Looks like I'm * the trend again. Every time folks start complaining about decreasing sales, mine go up...and visa versa.
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As an example, so far today I have 43 downloads at Shutterstock, and 1 at iStock. Now, where would you focus your future efforts? :)
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Wounder if my kind of portfolio would do better on other places (Shutterstock) ??
IS stands still.. for me.. well not big portfolio yet.. but..
Any one with SS sales feeling can comment my port ?
www.istock.com/MHjerpe (http://www.istock.com/MHjerpe)
Or Do I just have to make better images :) not just walkaround the garden stuff..
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Velkommen til MSGroup :)
Unless you plan on becoming exclusive at IS, I'd say you should try uploading to the Big 6 and a couple of smaller sites as well.
I too experienced a significant slow-down at IS - 23 DL in May, 6 in June, 2 in July, so far 5 in August. At the same time I had 29 sales in three weeks of July at SS (being new there helps, but still...) and so far 10 in August.
I think your current images would do well at other sites. You can upload straight away to 123RF, DT and Fotolia, but SS can be a challange - it took me 4 attempts to get in, others had even more trouble, but it's worth it in the end.
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Tjena kompis..
I can't decide if I want to stay at IS and go Exclusive there or
go to the others to.. If my port fits the others better i might do it..
But on the other hand nice to be on one place only. (have decent accept ratio, and they are good ppl around there). And uploading to a bunch of others takes so much time and energy.. (actualy have some test images on Yay (heja norge) to but only editorials)
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TAnd uploading to a bunch of others takes so much time and energy..
Yeah, but you can upload to all the other sites in the same amount of time as uploading to Istock; Yuri Arcurs did an study:
http://www.arcurs.com/uploading-time-average (http://www.arcurs.com/uploading-time-average)
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TAnd uploading to a bunch of others takes so much time and energy..
Yeah, but you can upload to all the other sites in the same amount of time as uploading to Istock; Yuri Arcurs did an study:
[url]http://www.arcurs.com/uploading-time-average[/url] ([url]http://www.arcurs.com/uploading-time-average[/url])
Great link and very true. And if you think the submission process at IS is slow for photos, try uploading a vector. You have to submit 2 files per submission and enter all metadata by hand.
IS requires the most time to submit, is the slowest to review, and is by far the most likely to reject stockworthy images for arbitrary or non-existent 'reasons'.
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TAnd uploading to a bunch of others takes so much time and energy..
Yeah, but you can upload to all the other sites in the same amount of time as uploading to Istock; Yuri Arcurs did an study:
[url]http://www.arcurs.com/uploading-time-average[/url] ([url]http://www.arcurs.com/uploading-time-average[/url])
Great link and very true. And if you think the submission process at IS is slow for photos, try uploading a vector. You have to submit 2 files per submission and enter all metadata by hand.
IS requires the most time to submit, is the slowest to review, and is by far the most likely to reject stockworthy images for arbitrary or non-existent 'reasons'.
Not true. IS is the most consistent in reviewing.
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Not true. IS is the most consistent in reviewing.
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Yes they are certainly the most consistently inconsistent.
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Not true. IS is the most consistent in reviewing.
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Yes they are certainly the most consistently inconsistent.
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your are right. this obvious truth has escaped me. I would like to improve on
you excellent phrasing. they are the most consistently inconsistent responding to falsehood.
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Not true. IS is the most consistent in reviewing.
Yes they are certainly the most consistently inconsistent.
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your are right. this obvious truth has escaped me. I would like to improve on
you excellent phrasing. they are the most consistently inconsistent responding to falsehood.
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That does it, I'm lost!!
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IS for me is WAY down from even two years ago. After the disambiguation crap my downloads hit the skids and never recovered. I keep uploading there with good acceptance rates but still very slow compared with when I started there. SS is now topping them nearly every month, With DT nipping at IS's heels.
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IS for me is WAY down from even two years ago. After the disambiguation crap my downloads hit the skids and never recovered. I keep uploading there with good acceptance rates but still very slow compared with when I started there. SS is now topping them nearly every month, With DT nipping at IS's heels.
That pretty well describes my experience to the Tee as well ...
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I've gone from average last year of over 1000 dls a month to average this year about 600 dls a month even though I am producing much better images now than I was last year. Luckily the pricing has gone up so that my earnings haven't dropped at the same rate. It's pretty dishearteining, I used to always upload first to IS but now I upload last to them when I get round to it. It seems you need to be an exclusive photographer to really do well there now.
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I have just looked at my last 100 uploads to IS and DT. Every single image has had dls on Dt but on Is only 23 of my images have had a dl. Same images uploaded at about the same time.
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One thing this thread has proved is that iStock is different for everybody, for me personally if iStock introduced an image exclusivity arrangement they would be the only microstock site I'd upload too.
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One thing this thread has proved is that iStock is different for everybody, for me personally if iStock introduced an image exclusivity arrangement they would be the only microstock site I'd upload too.
Wouldn't that be the same as being exclusive anyway? Or am I missing your point?
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One thing this thread has proved is that iStock is different for everybody, for me personally if iStock introduced an image exclusivity arrangement they would be the only microstock site I'd upload too.
Wouldn't that be the same as being exclusive anyway? Or am I missing your point?
No, image exclusivity means just that, you could upload an individual image to iStock and nobody else, but it means I could still sell other RF images at macro sites, their deal at the moment prohibits that.
Other sites like DT and FT offer image exclusivity but personally their sales figures don't warrant me doing so, however I think iStock are in a different league and I'd certainly upload images on an exclusive basis for some sort of extra reward.
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Is the photographer exclusive on IS or the photos ??
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One thing this thread has proved is that iStock is different for everybody, for me personally if iStock introduced an image exclusivity arrangement they would be the only microstock site I'd upload too.
Wouldn't that be the same as being exclusive anyway? Or am I missing your point?
No, image exclusivity means just that, you could upload an individual image to iStock and nobody else, but it means I could still sell other RF images at macro sites, their deal at the moment prohibits that.
Other sites like DT and FT offer image exclusivity but personally their sales figures don't warrant me doing so, however I think iStock are in a different league and I'd certainly upload images on an exclusive basis for some sort of extra reward.
Ok I get you. I read this bit wrong," they would be the only MICROSTOCK site I'd upload too." sorry RT
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The photographer
Is the photographer exclusive on IS or the photos ??
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I'd certainly upload images on an exclusive basis for some sort of extra reward.
Not to mention the fact that if they refuse a photo you would still be able to shop it around to other agencies. For someone like me with a bad approval rate that is a big deal. Virtually every photo IS has refused has been approved every where else (and some of them actually sell! LOL).