This graph indicate my trends of SS, IS, DT, SX and FT in the last 39 months. As we can see IS is presently taking a nose dive while others are about to overtake it. For clarity I did not put in Bigstock, 123rf and others, but they are picking up steam as well. Denis

Love your graph no matter what it's showing, it's good looking. What do you use to make it?

IS - overall more or less like in October, i.e., somewhat better than in the end of October.
SS - fewer downloads than in Oct, but I have a higher rate now
BigStock - great (for BigStock level)
everything else (DT, FT, StockXpert, 123RF) pretty low

Quote from: cybernesco on November 10, 2008, 19:28

This graph indicate my trends of SS, IS, DT, SX and FT in the last 39 months. As we can see IS is presently taking a nose dive while others are about to overtake it. For clarity I did not put in Bigstock, 123rf and others, but they are picking up steam as well. Denis

Love your graph no matter what it's showing, it's good looking. What do you use to make it?

Thank you. This is easily done with Excel.  Denis

Hi helix7!

Sorry but dont agree at all about increasing standards at IS. Most searches Ive tested even using generic keywords and heavy, weighted keywords gives first 3 or 4 pages of Exclusives, yes, but theres still tons of irrelevant material and a few down and out bad.
Saying "increasing standards"  sounds very good, if you get my drift. Besides, its too late to start now, after years of letting spammers infiltrate the site and then make others suffer for it. This should have been dealt with 2 years back before the disembaguation.
Truth of the matter is: Today the IS collection is no better or worse then any other micro collection among the leading ones, exclusive or not.
The word exclusive is used as marketing strategy, making buyers "think" theyre getting something out of the ordinary.
Since anybody can become exclusive renders in: an exclusive image doesnt at all have to be a great image.

I surely hope that they do change it, as my sales have tanked notably since April of this year. I am now down over 50%.  IS used to be my #1 money maker and now they are down to #4 and steadily headed downward.  When you factor in all the heartaches that you have to go thru to upload there and the way they treat us like second hand citizens.......There is becoming no motivation to upload there any more.  I have been diamond with them for several months now, but my sale still continue to plummet.....I used to always have my 35 images in the Queue....put anymore I upload to them last.....this can't be good for them ...... or can it.   Almost everybody that has posted here is saying the same thing.......Sales are way down.........for nonexclusive�s anyway.  I don't think this can last....there are a lot of quality photos out there by NonExclusives that are getting buried by junk from exclusives....the buyers are going to get tired of this at some point....I hope.   I never thought I see the day when I started contemplating about not uploading to IS......but it is coming very fast.

For me in november at day 13:

IS - very slow but last days is better
SS - slow
FT - very close to BME
StockXpert - already BME
DT - a little slow
BigStock - 0

For the moment, I do not beleive that an algorithm can be created to figure the quality of a photo. How can an algorithm know about composition, focus where it is best, suitability for stock, overexposure, oversaturated, over-filtered ect..?? Only the human mind can do that for now.  The only criteria that a search algorithm can work with are variables such as number of downloads,  number of days that an image has been online,  number of views, ratings given by viewers, contributor status such as exclusive or non-exlusives and the canister level...

Number of views might lend some insight into quality. Often times the preview thumbnail is enough to tell if an image is good enough for a buyer's needs or not, and if lots of buyers are clicking on a particular image, it could stand to reason that the high quality and composition of the thumbnail alone leads to more views. If a thumbnail draws lots of buyers to look at an image, the algorithm could weigh views heavily towards best match ranking. If an image is oversaturated, over filtered, etc., it probably would have been rejected anyway, so those things aren't an issue for the algorithm to deal with. Human response to the thumbnails could, however, be used to give a very general assessment of image quality.

Just an idea. I could be totally wrong, but it seems plausible.

One thing is for sure after this month for me: Exclusivity is off the table. Honestly, I was giving it serious thought. My istock earnings had been creeping towards 50% of my monthly total all year long, and if they went over that 50% threshold I might have done it. The benefits would have made it worth it to take the leap at that point, and having steady earnings over 50% of all my microstock earnings would make it financially possible. All that has changed now, and I've had the unfortunate experience of seeing a best match change decimate my earnings. At this month's pace, I'll be earning around 25% of what I earned in May. If I were exclusive, I'd be totally screwed right now. Thankfully I'm having my best month ever at StockXpert, and DT and Fotolia are looking pretty good. My StockXpert earnings should top istock earnings this month. Exclusivity with istock is not at all an option anymore, not for me.

Quote from: cybernesco on November 14, 2008, 08:49

For the moment, I do not beleive that an algorithm can be created to figure the quality of a photo. How can an algorithm know about composition, focus where it is best, suitability for stock, overexposure, oversaturated, over-filtered ect..?? Only the human mind can do that for now.  The only criteria that a search algorithm can work with are variables such as number of downloads,  number of days that an image has been online,  number of views, ratings given by viewers, contributor status such as exclusive or non-exlusives and the canister level...

Number of views might lend some insight into quality. Often times the preview thumbnail is enough to tell if an image is good enough for a buyer's needs or not, and if lots of buyers are clicking on a particular image, it could stand to reason that the high quality and composition of the thumbnail alone leads to more views. If a thumbnail draws lots of buyers to look at an image, the algorithm could weigh views heavily towards best match ranking. If an image is oversaturated, over filtered, etc., it probably would have been rejected anyway, so those things aren't an issue for the algorithm to deal with. Human response to the thumbnails could, however, be used to give a very general assessment of image quality.

Just an idea. I could be totally wrong, but it seems plausible.

Yeah but some images get a lot of views that don't lead to any downloads (naked women for exapmle). It doesn't mean they are that good. Also it would have to be tweaked for vectors since you don't really know the price of the vector till you click on it. Not sure how important is the price, but still, vectors have a lot worse views/download ratio. I think that might be the problem with the current best match.

Quote from: cybernesco on November 14, 2008, 08:49

For the moment, I do not beleive that an algorithm can be created to figure the quality of a photo. How can an algorithm know about composition, focus where it is best, suitability for stock, overexposure, oversaturated, over-filtered ect..?? Only the human mind can do that for now.  The only criteria that....................................................... Denis

Mostly agree with you but let me offer another idea for the algorithm, that has been mentioned a few times and I think would solve at least two problems at the same time: it (should) return good results and it would help against keyword abuse. Here it goes: sites would have to track the keywords that lead to the download of a particular image. For each keyword you would have a factor of relevance. This way you would get good (because they sold many times) relevant (because their relevance factor is high) images at the front. Ofc you would have to put in other factors like age to give newer images a chance at the start. Also sometimes people go to your portfolio and don't download image on a keyword but just by browsing. You could maybe add a small factor like 0.1 to all keywords if an images get's downloaded like that.

However it looks like this would be too hard to implement (also you would need to track a lot of data, have a seperate field in the database for all keywords on a image). So I don't see it coming anytime soon.

I agree with you about keywords having a factor of relevance when an image is downloaded within such an algorithm. Alamy has something similar, the difference is that they attach the same factor of relevance to keywords when an image is "zoomed in" and downloaded instead of when it is only downloaded. Hence, the logic goes, the more you get zooms, the better is the chance to get downloads. This is good because it forces you to put in better keywords. IStock....Are you listening!!! Denis

istock is still in a big slump during the busiest time of the year.  I am having a great month on most of the other sites.  Perhaps it isn't a bad thing if the buyers leave istock, as I only make 20% commission there.

Quote from: sharpshot on November 20, 2008, 03:34

istock is still in a big slump during the busiest time of the year.  I am having a great month on most of the other sites.  Perhaps it isn't a bad thing if the buyers leave istock, as I only make 20% commission there.

Yes, probably is better to got 30-35 c. for an XXL suscription elsewhere than 4 dollars at istock...

(BTW, going for MBE there)

I agree   There hasn't been one month since I started this that istock has come anywhere near the money I make just from those subs sales.  This year, istock has shown no signs of earnings growth and is falling back further from the sites that have subs sales.  If I want higher priced sales, sometimes much higher that $4, I can still use alamy, zymmetrical, mostphotos, rodeo, panthermedia, mostphotos and feturepics.  Just the earnings from those are beating istock at the moment.

 Is there any horse left to beat. I am seeing my worst week in months and my worst month in the last three while at the same time I started to upload my full alotment every week for the first time over the past month.
 Micro everywhere else is looking stable with growth for me except Istock. I will continue to upload every week and approach it like a longer term investment and see how that pans out. Checking your sales every day can be harmful to your health

Best,
AVAVA

Istock has always been my favorite site, but sales lately have been slow. The search engine does not like me lately. I just hope the adjust it and I can see sales pick up. I will not go exclusive because my stuff is ok but not pro level so more sites equals more money.