I have done some messages like this before. Heck if I can find any of them.



Also we came up with number in Feb. that showed about 75% of the image numbering, doesn't exist. Or take that for what you want, 75% have been rejected, removed, removed by the owners, or in some way a number was used and is not part of the images on site now. I'd guess that they didn't start with number 00000001 either.

What I wanted to watch was exclusives and number of artists. It seems like now would be as good a time as any to document the numbers, with the new commission rates coming in?

Number of photographers end of each year:

2002 - 956
2003 - 2269 - 1313 new
2004 - 4340 - 2071
2005 - 9004 - 4664
2006 - 16,401 - 7397
2007 - 23,607 - 7206
2008 - 31,071 - 7464
2009 - 34,927 - 3856
2010 - 36,782 - 1855

Contributors roughly doubled each year from 2002 to 2006, in 2009 the number of new contributors started to drop off. It would be interesting to see how many members are active? 7710 people uploaded a new file in the last 30 days. That's 20% active, or 80% who haven't bothered, depending on how you want to look at it.

Since it's an image and won't search, iStock exclusive numbers Jan. 2011 = 15.97% 5874 members.

If you have 100 sales on IS you are in the top 50%, which is kind of scary? It also means that about 50% of the 36782 total contributors have never cashed out for anything. The about is probably a lower number, meaning 46-47% have not been paid anything, but who knows if they had lower or higher sales, or if people just abandoned the site? 50% is a rough estimate, easy number.

Have at it!

I imagine a lot of photographer who don't check the forums/messages often or at all have no clue about all the changes ...Neither would newbies!

Where did you get those figures?  Can't all be from multimedia.de, it only started in 2008.

I've been logging figures from there myself since then, and according to that, the number of contributors at the end of each year were:

2008 - 20736
2009 - 29301 (8565 new)
2010 - 36764 (7463 new)

Based on those, the drop off is not so great as your figures would suggest.

Be aware too that the multimedia site does not include all contributors.  According to IS, there are more than 90,000.

The payout calendar schedule still shows 2010 dates as well and no payout dates yet for 2011. Redeemed credits still also show 2010 and nothing for 2011. Nothing seems current and up to date on the site yet really for 2011. The site really needs someone to hit F5 -

All joking aside though, it's hard to really imagine a company so big, doing so much business, with such a large capitalized value, which holds their contributors to such high standards, and yet it is just looking sloppy with not getting all the info up to date on the site as it should be in a timely manner. You would think public image would be more important to them and they would take being correct with their information a bit more seriously. It kind of feels surreal in a way like sitting on the airplane during some bad turbulence and wondering if there is anyone on the flight deck who is flying the plane or if it is just on auto pilot and the pilots have abandoned ship. It's that same kind of scary feeling a bit at the moment that things are really falling apart at the seems. It's just puzzling quite honestly to see the site being left to dangle in limbo like this at the moment.

All joking aside though, it's hard to really imagine a company so big, doing so much business, with such a large capitalized value, which holds their contributors to such high standards, and yet it is just looking sloppy with not getting all the info up to date on the site as it should be in a timely manner. You would think public image would be more important to them and they would take being correct with their information a bit more seriously. It kind of feels surreal in a way like sitting on the airplane during some bad turbulence and wondering if there is anyone on the flight deck who is flying the plane or if it is just on auto pilot and the pilots have abandoned ship. It's that same kind of scary feeling a bit at the moment that things are really falling apart at the seems. It's just puzzling quite honestly to see the site being left to dangle in limbo like this at the moment.

Great analogy.  That's exactly what it feels like.  Really unbelievable.  

ETA:  This thread was a good idea, Pete.  With the pitiful levels of communication from TPTB at Istock, it's no wonder contributors are left to improvise systems to monitor the site.  

I suppose it's better than silence.

But just barely.

I see 2 benefits of the thread. It acknowleges what some of the problems are. At least confirms they are aware and working on them. Some rough time frames are given for results. I think that is big progress actually. Far better than us wondering if the lights are even on at HQ.

It's 2011 now and the royalty changes that were introduced back in September will be implemented this month. There will be news about this implementation and the 2010 redeemed credit targets before it is rolled out. I realize that is pretty vague but will have more concrete news this week.

Am I to understand that the highest levels of management and ownership put their heads together sometime last summer and decided to do a major overhaul of the commissions in the interest of the long-term health of the company ... made an announcement to the affected parties at least 4 full months before it was to take effect ... but they're only now after all that time elapsed, getting around to thinking about exactly when and how they are going to implement it?  Yeah it sounds kind of vague.

It is a start to see some of the problems that have been posted in various threads summarized in one help thread. There are a number of items that have been brought up that aren't in RogerMexico's list. I don't know if that means they haven't really finished summing up the issues or they're choosing to do nothing about the problems or...?

And as far as them being back at work, that includes deleting posts and locking threads. One of my posts this morning was just removed (along, I think, with some others from that thread) as the thread was locked. I guess posting that they should make search work and fix the bugs before spending time on any hoopla over the 8 millionth image is an inflammatory subject

I suppose it's better than silence.

But just barely.

Yeah, nothing new. They know about all the problems, they're working on them. They've been saying that for 2 months or more. Just because they are saying it in the New Year, doesn't mean it really means anything different than it did before.

I suppose it's better than silence.

But just barely.

All you had to do was ask! http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=286942&messageid=5525802
Seriously, I'm just glad for everyone, that the sticky is there now.

I didn't see a link to a thread to ask questions.  Usually/sometimes they link back to a thread so people can ask questions then they (sort of) respond to them in the one sticky thread.  does anyone see that?

How about here: http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=288862&page=1

Based on those, the drop off is not so great as your figures would suggest.

Be aware too that the multimedia site does not include all contributors.  According to IS, there are more than 90,000.

The only thing I did was count people registered in a year, the first year isn't the actual first year as far as I know. If there's something wrong with my math, feel free to explain what I should have figured.

True the site doesn't have all contributors and is missing some, but it's a measuring tool, just like a survey or poll would be, which represents the population of IS members. Last I looked the numbers on IS and the numbers on de were within 10% of each other. Or another way of looking at it, there are 10% of the members missing from the data, but that's probably the people who have no photos or images and no sales, not the ones on the top.

I need to do some cut and paste or screen captures to show how I got the new member numbers, which might explain it better than me mumbling and funbling along trying to explain subtracting one number from another when sorting my year joined, which seemed pretty simple to me?  

I find this neither good nor bad. Maybe good because the competition has slowed down and the flood of new images and photographers has slowed. Bad? I can't find anything right now that says less new suppliers is bad for any of us?

2008 - 20736
2009 - 29301 (8565 new)
2010 - 36764 (7463 new)

End of year = total users

2010 = 36838 (maybe more to be added, but that's what it is right now)
2009 = 34972 That's 1866 new users in 2010
2008 = 31073 That's 3899 new users in 2009



Names removed but each is the last new user for that year, with the number on the left being the total number of users and it was sorted by Member Since column.

Where did you get your numbers?

Great. That is a step in the right direction. And 2011 RC are showing now too. Portfolios are updated as well. The biggest and more pressing issues, the search engine problems, and the changes to royalty levels, are still probably a week away.