Has the best match dust settled? I sure as hell hope not. Looks like everyone's sales are totally tanking.  I know mine have. The only thing that has propped up my sales this month is an EL for $100 earlier this month.  

What I don't understand is why iStock is continuing to alienate its customers that have made iStock what it is by pushing these high priced Vetta and Agency files. Don't get me wrong, I like getting a Vetta/Agency sale now and then, but the bulk of my income comes from non-Vetta and non-Agency files. Customers are clearly upset and are leaving. It almost seems like Getty purchased iStock and is now summarily killing off its former competitor at its own expense and has turned it into a mid-stock agency.  

iStock scared the pants off of Getty at one time by offering low cost, quality imagery. Don't they learn? Prices for photos are being driven down by the glut of content on the internet.  Most (not all), but most people aren't going to pony up tons of money for Vetta/Agency files after years of paying reasonable prices on iStock.  They're just going to take their business elsewhere.  

Getty has no idea who their customers are at iStock. And when they do figure it out, I'm afraid it'll be too late. The horse is already out of the barn.  Just my 2 cents.

ETA: Looks like it's being discussed here... Very grim.
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=323102&page=1

Quote from: jsmithzz on April 11, 2011, 19:37

Getty has no idea who their customers are at iStock. And when they do figure it out, I'm afraid it'll be too late. The horse is already out of the barn.  Just my 2 cents.

Talking about 'horse': the best match search for horse is back again to Vetty with agency sprinkled through.
However, a photos only search on 'young adult' is totally different, clearly favouring high-selling images (which is how 'horse' was at the weekend only).
I'm still not sure they would be doing all these best match things if the bottom line wasn't higher. They're bound to be able to judge that over a few hours of a normal workday.

Shady, my concern is that the bottom line will be higher at the expense of all of us contributors who don't have a lot of these files and at the expense of customers who will leave for other agencies. They're putting greed before people for sure.  In the short term their profits may be higher, but in the long run customers and contributors won't stand for it and will leave in droves and will kill any profits they've tried to gain.  

Today is not a good day for me, after they changed the best match again.

However, I have come to the realization that a bad day for me may just be a BDE for someone else. Since January, every month has been a BME, even though the increase has not been a huge jump.

Normally I would agree with what you said. But in this case buyers just think that iStock has jacked up prices and are leaving for other sites as some have mentioned in the forums. 

I need to start thinking about my exit plan.

If they're trying to boost profits, it would make sense to demote the files of exclusive diamonds. The top couple of hundred contributors probably account for more than 50% of sales and most likely get 40% commission. If they can divert half those sales to people on 30% commission it would boost iStock's overall cash share by about 4%.

If 40% of the money they take gets spent keeping things running, a 4% increase in income would become a 10% increase in actual profits. That's an awful lot of extra cash to make for a tiny little search engine tweak. It's also something that can be done to keep profits on track (and guarantee management bonuses) if buyers are drifting away.

if you perform a best match search on any major keyword like 'business', 'family', 'Christmas', 'summer' etc., the best match returns are a mix of images with the first images predominantly from diamonds. also on the first page, early on in the results are plenty of images from black diamonds. so far I have not performed any search that corroborates a theory in which lower canisters seem to be favoured in best match to increase profits.

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on April 12, 2011, 00:30

If they're trying to boost profits, it would make sense to demote the files of exclusive diamonds. The top couple of hundred contributors probably account for more than 50% of sales and most likely get 40% commission. If they can divert half those sales to people on 30% commission it would boost iStock's overall cash share by about 4%.

If 40% of the money they take gets spent keeping things running, a 4% increase in income would become a 10% increase in actual profits. That's an awful lot of extra cash to make for a tiny little search engine tweak. It's also something that can be done to keep profits on track (and guarantee management bonuses) if buyers are drifting away.

I've certainly given consideration to the idea that they're deliberately trying to favor select groups of content - Vetta/Agency because the price is high and the royalty lower and lower-royalty bearing exclusive content. Some of the Vetta contributors have been seeing huge drops in sales (although I did note one admin who has a lot of Vetta was happy about March being a BME) so I don't know if that fits t

I was wondering if that would mean a boost for independents, but although royalty rates are lower, so are prices, which means IS might still favor bronze exclusives to make the most. Take an XS file (1 credit independent, 2 exclusive). Assume a $1 credit price. For a 40% exclusive, IS makes $1.20, for a 25% exclusive $1.50 and an independent, 80 cents. If I weren't worried about driving away buyers and bigger contributors, I might make the search engine favor the 25% (bronze) exclusive content.

Traditional photo-agencies always wanted to work with pro-photographers, no jobs on the side, no side income or whatever. One of their reasonings were, only a pro would take it seriously, stay with the firm and invest heavily in the right equipment, etc,  beginners , amateurs, etc would just treat it as a "getting-rich over-night" and when they didnt, they just tossed it in and thats ofcourse what happend in most cases.

Now if IS, think theyre gonna get rich and all fron thousands of wanna be bronze exclusives??  blimey!  its never happend and will never happen.

Have your sales at other sites made up for that ?

Personally my sales are lower than expected but not hugely, just in the slow evaporation of volume that I've been experiencing for a couple of years now. Over that period Istock's contribution to my overall microstock earnings has slipped from around 40% to about 28% recently.

Yes, same with me. Yesterday wasn't good but was pretty much in line with what I am used to. It seems to be the diamond exclusives who are getting crucified. It's hard to believe that any of them could go two days without a sale, as one has reported. In the seven years since I joined iStock I've never had two successive days without a sale... yet.

if you perform a best match search on any major keyword like 'business', 'family', 'Christmas', 'summer' etc., the best match returns are a mix of images with the first images predominantly from diamonds. also on the first page, early on in the results are plenty of images from black diamonds. so far I have not performed any search that corroborates a theory in which lower canisters seem to be favoured in best match to increase profits.

I haven't done a ton of searches, but I didn't see anything radically upended in the best match results on the few I did, so I'll grant you it weakens any argument that they're trying to push bronze/silver with Vetta/Agency. Another possible explanation is that buyers have taken to heart the suggestion (that I've seen over and over again in the forums from kelvinjay and pink_cotton_candy) to set your results to 200 per page and skip over the first page or two to get past Vetta and Agency. That would also skip over a lot of good sellers that do get mixed in with the premium collections.

When you look at the number of high performers who are seeing really large drops it's hard to see this as ebb and flow.

Perhaps tomorrow we'll all get e-mail saying that they were unfortunately not reporting sales correctly and we've all actually had successive best weeks ever

Actually  its picking up!  yesterday and today, so far,  its brillant!  hope it stays this way.

anybody else?

After months of downward trend - starting mid-2010 - sales for me are now slightly better since a few weeks, but still way below what they used to be

I am not sure if it's the best match or just a general economic trend in conjunction with traditionally good months of the year (March-April)

Quote from: lagereek on April 12, 2011, 09:58

Actually  its picking up!  yesterday and today, so far,  its brillant!  hope it stays this way.

anybody else?

After months of downward trend - starting mid-2010 - sales for me are now slightly better since a few weeks, but still way below what they used to be

I am not sure if it's the best match or just a general economic trend in conjunction with traditionally good months of the year (March-April)

Out of curiousity, are you exclusive and if so, are the files that are selling for you vetta or agency files? 

I had some good number of DLs this morning. But as soon as the side bar which contains Upload, Uploaded, Sitemail, etc., disappeared, my DLs stopped.

Does it happen to you? I wonder if we are on a rotation to get the image exposure.

No Im not exclusive, no vettas or agency files. BTW;  Are you new here on the forum??

best.
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I just joined back in January but have been on iStock for about 5 years.