Quote from: asiseeit on November 17, 2011, 10:54

Same here, my growth this year has been good overall. Those traffic stats have absolutely no correlation to sales imo.

Those traffic stats have absolutely no correlation to YOUR sales, anyway. And maybe a few others. But apparently it's correlating to a huge majority.

Hmm, we actually don't know anything about general sales stats because all we have is a self-reporting sample, which is about as far from randomised as you can get. In two words: statistically worthless.

I, for one, have felt inhibited for months about reporting my sales because they're not nearly as bad as those of most of the people posting. On the contrary. But it seems tasteless to be smug while others are mourning, and I'm sure many others feel that way too. And then of course there's the worry that if you stick your head above the parapet the copycats will descend in droves on your portfolio.

But if we take sjlocke's self-reported sales as an example, we can possibly draw some conclusions. Sean's sales must be as close to a representative sample of general iStock performance as we can get -- he's been around a long time, he uploads consistently, the quality of his work is stable. He says his sales are flat year-on-year despite something like a 25% portfolio increase in the past 12 months.

Now, Yuri once made the very good point that your new uploads have to compensate for the best match decay of your old images and their dilution by the flood of new competition. At some point an equilibrium will be reached: you won't be able to enlarge a big portfolio at such an ever-increasing rate that you can do any more than replace the losses. And eventually you will start losing ground. This, I suppose, is why Yuri is on a mission to scale up his business.

In Sean's case, and mine for that matter, stagnation can be explained quite feasibly by Yuri's theory. The phenomenon doesn't necessarily imply any overall decline on iStock. Nobody is immune to it, and infrequent or haphazard uploaders will obviously suffer sooner and worse.

As an iStock exclusive 99% of whose income comes from Calgary, and who has a formidable number of dependants to support, I worry constantly about the possibility of a sudden collapse of iStockphoto. The dodgy developments of the past year have trebled my anxiety. However, as yet I see no signs of anything except an end to the fast-rising tide that used to float all ships.

What follows now will be interesting. The apparent boom at Shutterstock could mean a migration of buyers from iStock, but then again it could mean only that iStock is not attracting new buyers but Shutterstock is. iStock could continue bumping along at roughly its present level for years or, as sometimes happens to ailing Internet market leaders, it could suffer a catastrophic collapse within months as buyers and exclusive contributors desert it en masse.

My point, though, is that with the scanty information we have there is no way of making predictions. I wish there was.

I don't think all the people that report in the istock forum and here are statistically worthless.  I also think that there's lots of reasons to think that Getty and their owners are deliberately downsizing istock.  Why else would they keep pushing prices up and making lots of changes that buyers aren't liking?  Why would they be so blunt with them in the forums and tell them to use Thinkstock?

SS had stagnated for me but the past few months have been very good.  I do think they are getting buyers from istock.  It seems unlikely that earnings would flatten and then suddenly they find lots more new buyers that have never used other sites.  Is it just a coincidence that so many of us have seen earnings fall with istock and improve with SS?

This is all speculation and we don't know 100% what's going on but it seems highly unlikely that istock is doing just fine.  I think they know this and they aren't concerned.  I'm sure they have a plan but it doesn't make much sense to most of us, as were only interested in our earnings from istock.  It looks to me that their plan is to make istock much smaller and higher priced.  That might work but it's a big gamble, when so many buyers are used to lower prices.  Why would they take this risk?  They must think it will strengthen Getty.  I think that if they were only concerned with making the most money possible with istock, they wouldn't of made so many changes and they would of done much more to keep buyers and suppliers happy.

SS had stagnated for me but the past few months have been very good.  I do think they are getting buyers from istock.  It seems unlikely that earnings would flatten and then suddenly they find lots more new buyers that have never used other sites.  Is it just a coincidence that so many of us have seen earnings fall with istock and improve with SS?

Not necessarily, but quite possibly. Shutterstock may have doubled its ad spend. Or it may have quadrupled its sales force. We just don't know. It's quite possible that SS would spend more than IS on marketing at the present time because it doesn't have to deliver every last cent of profit to a demanding shareholder.

This is all speculation and we don't know 100% what's going on but it seems highly unlikely that istock is doing just fine.  I think they know this and they aren't concerned.  I'm sure they have a plan but it doesn't make much sense to most of us, as were only interested in our earnings from istock.  It looks to me that their plan is to make istock much smaller and higher priced.  That might work but it's a big gamble, when so many buyers are used to lower prices.  Why would they take this risk?  They must think it will strengthen Getty.  I think that if they were only concerned with making the most money possible with istock, they wouldn't of made so many changes and they would of done much more to keep buyers and suppliers happy.

I share your puzzlement about the behaviour of iStock's masters in the past year. But I doubt the plan is to diminish iStock itself. About six months ago, the last time I heard the numbers, iStock's revenue was about a third of Getty's, and rising, whereas Getty itself was flat. It would take an unusually deranged MBA to decide wilfully to shrink the growing business in the hope of reviving the stagnant one, particularly when there's plenty of competition.

Quote

About six months ago, the last time I heard the numbers, iStock's revenue was about a third of Getty's, and rising, whereas Getty itself was flat.

Link?

No link, sorry. "Private communication", as they say in the academic journals. You'll have to take my word for it I'm afraid.

Ah, so you have a private and privileged entree into the inner workings of IS eh?

Not so. I have no more idea than you of the inner workings, nor do I have any kind of communication with anybody in a position of authority or influence at IS. You may freely discount those figures I mentioned because I'm not going to breach any confidences by explaining how I heard them.

Added: In any case, it doesn't matter whether my source was right or wrong as far as my line of argument is concerned. None of us will doubt that iStock was a strongly growing concern a year ago, and the management's present policies were hatched before then.

That in itself says more than just the words. A couple of years back, when most people were regularly reporting improving sales, people who weren't dointg so well felt inhibited about posting their less than stellar stats.
How things change.

Yup, Sue, you certainly have a point there. But there may be yet another confounding factor, and that is the shabby treatment of contributors starting last year. I might have mentioned that I also feel inhibited under the circumstances about posting anything that might be mistaken for a woo-yay. In fact, I don't post there any more at all.

I too feed my family via iStock, now I shoot video and am exclusive. I see some good trends on my end. First is quality of collection, iStock still has a great exclusive collection. Next is iStock offers different collections, now some of you don't like this but it works in retail and business. My sales have been good this year and better than 2010. I don't think iStock is going to lose a lot of ground to SS.

I too feed my family via iStock, now I shoot video and am exclusive. I see some good trends on my end. First is quality of collection, iStock still has a great exclusive collection. Next is iStock offers different collections, now some of you don't like this but it works in retail and business. My sales have been good this year and better than 2010. I don't think iStock is going to lose a lot of ground to SS.

The video market is in its infancy, all agencies will see growth in that area for many years to come. And I agree that istock has fantastic collections. However on the photo side, if you look at the other agencies you quickly realize they have the same high quality content. They just don�t present it to the customer with edited collections. But how long will it take until they do? It si very easy for an editor to select images copying the "style" preferred in Vetta, Agency, or the different collections on Getty.

The biggest supplier of images are the stock factories, they produce extremely high quality content in exceptional quality. They supply all agencies. istock still has many talented exclusive artists, but more and more professional photographers are moving into microstock, many even from getty, so the exclusive advantage is unfortunately shrinking. Also because istock shows visible download numbers it is easy to copy successful photographers. That is why I opened a thread here asking if visible download numbers are still necessary at this stage of the industry development.

Getty is more clever - they don�t show download numbers to protect the value of their edited collections. Getty has many collections - but you will never know which one of them is selling well, which style is the "goldmine".

istock unfortunately makes it easy for the competition...

I am an istock photo exclusive, but I have always looked at other agencies to compare where we stand and I must admit that quality has risen dramatically in the last 18 months.

& say they pay out an average of 2 million a week

that makes for a turnover of approximately 400 million so you are saying gettys turnover is 1.2 billion?

That'd be about right, yes, give or take a couple of hundred million. The total value of the global image market is said to be several billion: I forget the exact figure, but $4 billion seems to ring a bell. That includes news. Not sure if it includes footage.

I'm among those seeing enormous losses, with my earnings down to just 1/10th of what they used to be a couple of years ago. Meanwhile folks at SS are on a generally upward climb, again myself included.

Count me in!

Quote from: michealo on November 18, 2011, 09:35

& say they pay out an average of 2 million a week

that makes for a turnover of approximately 400 million so you are saying gettys turnover is 1.2 billion?

That'd be about right, yes, give or take a couple of hundred million. The total value of the global image market is said to be several billion: I forget the exact figure, but $4 billion seems to ring a bell. That includes news. Not sure if it includes footage.

That figure (I think $4bn is probably right) didn't include microstock, it was meant to cover all the macro agencies.

Quote from: RapidEye on November 18, 2011, 03:00

I, for one, have felt inhibited for months about reporting my sales because they're not nearly as bad as those of most of the people posting. On the contrary. But it seems tasteless to be smug while others are mourning, and I'm sure many others feel that way too.

Speaking as someone whose Istock sales have dropped by about 2/3 over the past few months, I would urge anyone sitting on the sidelines and not reporting good sales to jump in.  My feelings won't be hurt, and I am sure most others won't either.  I believe most of us participating in the monthly stats threads are doing it to create as accurate a picture as possible of the sales trends on the various sites. Any information you can add is helpful in rounding out that picture.  Personally, I would be relieved to learn things aren't as dire at IS as I have feared. 

As for copycats - well, nothing we can really do to avoid them. Pseudonyms are always an option if you are super concerned about it. 

Well, my sales are somewhat down compared to last year, but my royalties are up.  Way up, over last year.

But I've posted the same in the iStock sales thread.