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

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

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.

Feeling exactly the same pain

No, you are not alone. This is my graph (about 1000 images non-exclusive portfolio), and it makes me very sad:



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.

Here's mine...

What's the saying, Misery Loves Company. You have mine.

and mine

I haven't experienced a constant declining trend but august has certainly  been by far  the worst month of the year so far.

there is much talk of a summer slowdown - but looking at peoples charts it seems more like a consistent slowdown since January ...

Mine isn't as horrible as I thought it was going to be in July, but overall, it's still down since January.

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?

Quote from: Whiz on August 12, 2008, 17:52
Mine isn't as horrible as I thought it was going to be in July, but overall, it's still down since January.

I'd like to submit my graph but highlighting and  copying does not work. How it is done ?

Perhaps they want to steer vectors into the illustration category??

Quote from: vphoto on August 13, 2008, 00:51

Quote from: Whiz on August 12, 2008, 17:52
Mine isn't as horrible as I thought it was going to be in July, but overall, it's still down since January.

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 [].

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.

Quote from: DanP68 on August 13, 2008, 06:09
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.

Quote from: Zeus on August 13, 2008, 16:04

Quote from: DanP68 on August 13, 2008, 06:09
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! 

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

Quote from: DanP68 on August 13, 2008, 06:09
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.

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.

Looks like I'm * the trend again.  Every time folks start complaining about decreasing sales, mine go up...and visa versa. 

As an example, so far today I have 43 downloads at Shutterstock, and 1 at iStock.  Now, where would you focus your future efforts?   

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
Or Do I just have to make better images      not just walkaround the garden stuff..

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.