MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => iStockPhoto.com => Topic started by: luissantos84 on June 25, 2013, 20:02
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(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8294845/istockr.JPG)
this chart doesn't include PP sales but they are also down by 50%
yes, I know my sales are small (irrelevant), anyway just wanted to share it
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There is no chart but it looks like you have uploaded 3 files in the last 15 months, what do you expect?
have I said I expected anything? I am just telling what is going on my side, take a chill pill dude
bring the minus, not even going to sleep coz of that ;D
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That "chart" doesn't include PP sales or IS sales as far as I can see. In fact I can't see any chart at all.
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Interesting. But mine have been growing. This month, however, was really low. Yet I cannot help but wonder if you kept uploading it would be much different. 8)
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8294845/istockr.JPG)
this chart doesn't include PP sales but they are also down by 50%
yes, I know my sales are small (irrelevant), anyway just wanted to share it
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indeed, hard to know but I risk saying it would have gone up mainly due to my low figures not because of other factors, anyway that wasn't my decision
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Personally, I can't think of a good reason for non-exclusives to keep uploading. It sends a message that we're willing to put up with commissions under 20% and deals like the Google one. The other big sites will have a great excuse to bring their commissions in line with istock. I'd much rather see buyers moving to other sites because they can't find what they want on istock and that wont happen with every non-exclusive uploading all they can. Not uploading might lose me some money and it might make absolutely no difference but I'm willing to take that risk, as there's really not much to lose. With the new upload limits and loss of P+, our earnings are going to get diluted and many of us will also get another commission cut.
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There is no chart but it looks like you have uploaded 3 files in the last 15 months, what do you expect?
Most stuff uploaded since Sept has gone into the abyss and files uploaded say from June - Aug were hit by summer and had little chance also.
I've looked in several big hitters' ports and the same pattern of no/low sales for the past 6-9 months files is evident in most of them, with very low sales for uploads in that period, so definitely not just us small fry.
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Personally, I can't think of a good reason for non-exclusives to keep uploading.
For better or for worse, iStock still has sales, even for my (very) small portfolio
I can upload to all the other sites, and make no money for my effort, or I can upload to iStock and make some money.
50% of $0 = 0
20% of $1= .20
Until my Symbiostock sites generate the same or better return ( where I get 100% commission) I will put my images and effort into what pays.
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I haven't uploaded to IS since January, but even if I were inclined to start uploading again, Liz's observations about the fate of new images would have dissuaded me. No point putting in all that effort just to watch the images fade into obscurity.
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I pulled my small port after the Google deal, I just can't risk my best sellers on the off chance that they get included in that or something similar. I tried to keep informed about how that all worked out but I can't force myself to read all the pages on that forum, plus the (very unbusiness-like) way info is communicated there makes me hesitant to want to be part of that again. Besides that, I have neither the time or energy trying to keep track of the convoluted way their tiers, collections and programs work. I read some of the istock strings here and it just sounds like way too much work for too small a return for non-exclusives with smaller ports like me.
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Personally, I can't think of a good reason for non-exclusives to keep uploading.
For better or for worse, iStock still has sales, even for my (very) small portfolio
I can upload to all the other sites, and make no money for my effort, or I can upload to iStock and make some money.
50% of $0 = 0
20% of $1= .20
Until my Symbiostock sites generate the same or better return ( where I get 100% commission) I will put my images and effort into what pays.
In your case not even 20%. But I guess you are happy with your 15%. And honestly, your 6 sales in six months is the same as nothing. ???
Sharpshot is right, there is no good reason for non-exclusives to keep uploading.
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Its not a trend Louis, its a dip. Just get your Istock sales on the graph over the last 10 years and you will see its just a dip, not a trend. Nothing wrong, its just a long weekend.
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Its not a trend Louis, its a dip. Just get your Istock sales on the graph over the last 10 years and you will see its just a dip, not a trend. Nothing wrong, its just a long weekend.
semantics again? ;D
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soon it will be more profitable to upload on RedBubble/Cafepress/Zazzle rather than IS.
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My sales are going down quite a lot... June will be really bad. Probably my worst month ever as exclusive.
It's not fun to be a full time microstocker right now... I don't have any other income. I guess I will have to start dancing in the streets for money this fall.
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soon it will be more profitable to upload on RedBubble/Cafepress/Zazzle rather than IS.
It already is according to some of the people I talk to.
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I see sarcasm is wasted on some people here ;D
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I see sarcasm is wasted on some people here ;D
Sarcasm on the internet leaves a lot of room for misinterpretation.
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I just did a best match search on monkey two baby. Shocking results. 4 of the top 9 are not monkeys, then the next 67, that's sixty-seven pics are one meerkat (close similars from two viewpoints) - not even close to 'monkey', not 'two' and all from an indie. After that, the page is a mixture of apes, monkeys and lemurs, almost all from indies.
Depressing.
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Nothing worst than getting a group of the same photoshoot with just variations of the same thing in one search...not just an iStock issue.
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Nothing worst than getting a group of the same photoshoot with just variations of the same thing in one search...not just an iStock issue.
... and wrongly keyworded, also not confined to iStock.
Again gives the lie to Lobo's claim that Exclusives will get priority. Always. Period.
The first 15 for animal river are also indie, 0 dls between them.
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It's been a long time since I could say this, but I'm actually seeing an uptick in earnings at istock. Nothing solid enough to call a trend just yet, and possibly just the result of the reinstated 20% rate for vector folks, but there are signs of life. I'm uploading some of my new stuff, not all, and will be watching the stats in the coming months to see if things continue upward.
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It's been a long time since I could say this, but I'm actually seeing an uptick in earnings at istock. Nothing solid enough to call a trend just yet, and possibly just the result of the reinstated 20% rate for vector folks, but there are signs of life. I'm uploading some of my new stuff, not all, and will be watching the stats in the coming months to see if things continue upward.
Back up to 20% could make a difference plus it could be they have a new merit based best match right now and they haven't changed it to suit their own purposes YET.
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I balanced out the minus on your post Mike. I think some trigger happy children got on to the boards recently.
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It's been a long time since I could say this, but I'm actually seeing an uptick in earnings at istock. Nothing solid enough to call a trend just yet, and possibly just the result of the reinstated 20% rate for vector folks, but there are signs of life. I'm uploading some of my new stuff, not all, and will be watching the stats in the coming months to see if things continue upward.
Back up to 20% could make a difference plus it could be they have a new merit based best match right now and they haven't changed it to suit their own purposes YET.
'merit based best match' ::)
Have you checked out the examples I listed above? It's a similar story for many two or more word searches.
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And a while ago when people started reporting how bad multiple-word searches work, I remember iStock saying something like "well, most buyers only do one word searches anyway"... not a very uplifting thing to hear. And it can't be true either.
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And a while ago when people started reporting how bad multiple-word searches work, I remember iStock saying something like "well, most buyers only do one word searches anyway"... not a very uplifting thing to hear. And it can't be true either.
I also found that very hard to believe. At the very least, surely a significant percentage modify their original search once they see the original one-word results.
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And a while ago when people started reporting how bad multiple-word searches work, I remember iStock saying something like "well, most buyers only do one word searches anyway"... not a very uplifting thing to hear. And it can't be true either.
I also found that very hard to believe. At the very least, surely a significant percentage modify their original search once they see the original one-word results.
At DT where they show the keywords used to find an image that is sold only about a third are searched for using just one word. I believe that only the original search is shown so a lot of those one word searches will have other words added to filter it down which we won't see.
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It hardly matters what keywords people use if contributers continue to spam and inspectors aren't correcting keywords.
I know it's considereed invidious to call out individuals, but look at the keywords and description of the 65 meerkats (one will do!) which turn up for 'monkey two baby'. And the entire port of the person who was anxious because he was uploading his entire 16,000 portfolio and wanted more than 999 uploads per week. His titles, keywords and descriptions seem to be plucked out of thin air, yet they're still flying in.
Meanwhile, Keywordzilla said that 'copy space' was not relevant to this image:
http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-25422734-male-chaffinch-fringilla-coelebs-on-branch.php (http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-25422734-male-chaffinch-fringilla-coelebs-on-branch.php)
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Ebeneezer and Florence, Ebeneezer and Florence ....
Oh dear, that's so 2004! Where's upsidedowndog when you need him?
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Another depressing post over there, from juniorbeep:
"funny thing happened to me today. I am a contributer and quite a large purchaser of images usually from istock (although this is changing as prices increase and budgets reduce). But I had a phone call from Istock here in the UK asking me as a purchaser how I was finding the site etc. I told them I felt the prices were spiralling and the lady said "you wouldn't believe how many people have said that to me today"... She said she'd take note and feedback but actually seemed far more interested in pushing me towards Thinkstock... I wonder why? Ah something to do with the subscription (so guaranteed monthly income and terrible royalty rates paid out to contributers I'd imagine). ..."
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=354492&messageid=6906356 (http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=354492&messageid=6906356)
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Good point. But it's hard for me not to upload there with payouts increasing. I really need the cash. :-[
Personally, I can't think of a good reason for non-exclusives to keep uploading. It sends a message that we're willing to put up with commissions under 20% and deals like the Google one. The other big sites will have a great excuse to bring their commissions in line with istock. I'd much rather see buyers moving to other sites because they can't find what they want on istock and that wont happen with every non-exclusive uploading all they can. Not uploading might lose me some money and it might make absolutely no difference but I'm willing to take that risk, as there's really not much to lose. With the new upload limits and loss of P+, our earnings are going to get diluted and many of us will also get another commission cut.
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we all do man, I am sure I would do more if I continued uploading and perhaps I will because I am quite sick of the majority of the contributors that seem to don't care so I might join the show as well
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if this trend continues, i dont see anymore reasons to sell with istockphoto.
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if this trend continues, i dont see anymore reasons to sell with istockphoto.
I have never stopped uploading in other agencies but checking SS stats I can see that if I haven't submitted on the last 12 months, I would be down 12% when I am down 72% at iStock
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It hardly matters what keywords people use if contributers continue to spam and inspectors aren't correcting keywords.
I know it's considereed invidious to call out individuals, but look at the keywords and description of the 65 meerkats (one will do!) which turn up for 'monkey two baby'. And the entire port of the person who was anxious because he was uploading his entire 16,000 portfolio and wanted more than 999 uploads per week. His titles, keywords and descriptions seem to be plucked out of thin air, yet they're still flying in.
Meanwhile, Keywordzilla said that 'copy space' was not relevant to this image:
[url]http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-25422734-male-chaffinch-fringilla-coelebs-on-branch.php[/url] ([url]http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-25422734-male-chaffinch-fringilla-coelebs-on-branch.php[/url])
Hmmm. Out of interest, I did the same "monkey two baby" search as you because my port contains quite a few simians. The first of any of my images appears on page 4 and it's a mother and baby orangutan. In other words two apes.
I checked my keywords and "monkey" is nowhere to be found. I went into Admin to check iStock's controlled vocabulary and under "ape", it disambiguates to "ape" or "monkey" but "monkey" wasn't ticked.
So iStock's search engine may be contributing to this as much as keyword spam or wrong keywords being applied by contribs. I didn't check any of the other images' keywords.
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Unfortunately the Italian language doesn't differentiate between monkey and ape, or at least that's the reason I was given officially for that bizarre DA choice.
Still, it's up to us to DA properly, and it doesn't excuse e.g. lemurs and even worse meerkats being labelled as monkeys.
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Unfortunately the Italian language doesn't differentiate between monkey and ape, or at least that's the reason I was given officially for that bizarre DA choice.
Still, it's up to us to DA properly, and it doesn't excuse e.g. lemurs and even worse meerkats being labelled as monkeys.
Not completely exact:
"proscimmia" or "scimmia antropomorfa" = ape
"scimmia" = monkey
But yes it is mainly used by specialists (zoologists)
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Another depressing post over there, from juniorbeep:
"funny thing happened to me today. I am a contributer and quite a large purchaser of images usually from istock (although this is changing as prices increase and budgets reduce). But I had a phone call from Istock here in the UK asking me as a purchaser how I was finding the site etc. I told them I felt the prices were spiralling and the lady said "you wouldn't believe how many people have said that to me today"... She said she'd take note and feedback but actually seemed far more interested in pushing me towards Thinkstock... I wonder why? Ah something to do with the subscription (so guaranteed monthly income and terrible royalty rates paid out to contributers I'd imagine). ..."
[url]http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=354492&messageid=6906356[/url] ([url]http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=354492&messageid=6906356[/url])
And followup posts:
I have heard a similar story from other people, Getty ringing people known to be buyers and pushing Thinkstock over iStock.
I've heard similar stories. No big surprise
But no problem, since we've been assured that they are 2 different types of buyers. ??? ::)
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They don't seem to of noticed that lots of their buyers have looked at Thinkstock but then decided that Shutterstock is better for them. As Shutterstock pay me more for subs and higher commissions for pay per download, I think that's a better option for buyers too.
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They don't seem to of noticed that lots of their buyers have looked at Thinkstock but then decided that Shutterstock is better for them. As Shutterstock pay me more for subs and higher commissions for pay per download, I think that's a better option for buyers too.
How do you know all this stuff. Which buyers? Is there a record of how many?
Come on ... put some attribution with these generalized assertions.