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Agency Based Discussion => iStockPhoto.com => Topic started by: PZF on May 12, 2015, 04:08

Title: Major May disaster?
Post by: PZF on May 12, 2015, 04:08
Anybody else seen IS sales literally STOP since May 2nd?
IS usually ticks over for me and sometimes even does quite well but since May 2nd , zip, nulla, nada...... (except PP trundling through for April)....
 ???
Title: Re: Major May disaster?
Post by: Cesar on May 12, 2015, 04:17
hm , difficult to say,  in april i have about 10 sales per workday, in may is average around 8, you must know subs sales growing. we will see in june sum.
Title: Re: Major May disaster?
Post by: lionheart on May 12, 2015, 05:03
PZF, i am experiencing the same "disaster" with IS. It seems like IS is out of order. I haven't sold a file for a week although uploading
new content on a regular basis. All my newly uploaded stuff has 0 views - quite motivating  :( And the "subs-thing" does not evolve
in a way that makes hope - in contrary: subs are down by more than half compared to march. I am a contributor on IS since 2006,
but have NEVER experienced such a  break-down in royalties. And this trend continues ...
Title: Re: Major May disaster?
Post by: loop on May 12, 2015, 06:29
Not very bad here (just a little less than past month), but it seems that there are a non-small number of "ghost" downloads not resgistering properly, not adding to the balance. They say "they know" the problem and that they are investigating, but it has been more than a month without any new.
Title: Re: Major May disaster?
Post by: kelby on May 12, 2015, 08:32
it is almost useless and pointless upload right now on istock....views are not counted (with the new ADP) and new uploads are getting lost on the best match,
sales are crashed since mid april like never before and also the new search engine visualization is less user friendly than before...but they believe to be still the leader on the market !! ahhaha...

i'd like to know who is the wizard at the head of all this disaster !!!

Alexarank represent pretty well the trend of istock...
Title: Re: Major May disaster?
Post by: ShadySue on May 12, 2015, 09:07
it is almost useless and pointless upload right now on istock....
For me, since  'whatever happened' in September 2012.
I still upload sometimes, though: I think it's called masochism.  >:(
Title: Re: Major May disaster?
Post by: PZF on May 13, 2015, 01:22
Let's hope this latest ZERO DL FOR DAYS phase, which seem to only be affecting some of us, soon passes.... The other SSite just subs now.
Not looking good......
Title: Re: Major May disaster?
Post by: MichaelJayFoto on May 13, 2015, 02:30
Interesting. I currently don't look too often into my sales anymore but I just figured that I am just at 25% of the download volume I had in the months before. If that continues for the rest of the month, I'll be down by about 40% month to month. And I have to say the number of downloads for a portfolio with 3,000 images is absolutely abysmal.

In addition, the PP sales for April seems to be down by about 40% from the months before.

I have no explanation why and how this happened. Credit sales have been slowly declining for some years now but PP stayed more or less constant after taking a hit when iStock introduced the new subscriptions. But this sudden drop is a surprise. If that continues I might not even make a payout this month for the first time since 2007, my first year at iStock. That's really bad.
Title: Re: Major May disaster?
Post by: StanRohrer on May 13, 2015, 07:10
Based on my portfolio there was a significant Best Match shift last night. Maybe this will help.
Title: Re: Major May disaster?
Post by: Noedelhap on May 13, 2015, 08:37
I'm getting more sales than in April (which was truly dead). So for me the opposite is true.
Title: Re: Major May disaster?
Post by: kelby on May 13, 2015, 14:12
Based on my portfolio there was a significant Best Match shift last night. Maybe this will help.

in favor of what ? old files again ?
Title: Re: Major May disaster?
Post by: tickstock on May 13, 2015, 14:15
Based on my portfolio there was a significant Best Match shift last night. Maybe this will help.
Don't know about the best match but lots o' sales today.
Title: Re: Major May disaster?
Post by: EmberMike on May 13, 2015, 14:41
iStock who? They're done as far as I'm concerned. At this rate of decline Stockfresh will probably pass them on my earnings list by the end of the year, and not because anything has changed for the better at Stockfresh.
Title: Re: Major May disaster?
Post by: StanRohrer on May 13, 2015, 15:03
Based on my portfolio there was a significant Best Match shift last night. Maybe this will help.

in favor of what ? old files again ?
I don't have enough data to decide what the shift was, but I have been making some sales of my old 2003-2006 stuff of late. It's time for me to go very dry I fear.
Title: Re: Major May disaster?
Post by: kelby on May 13, 2015, 15:23
Based on my portfolio there was a significant Best Match shift last night. Maybe this will help.

in favor of what ? old files again ?
I don't have enough data to decide what the shift was, but I have been making some sales of my old 2003-2006 stuff of late. It's time for me to go very dry I fear.

probably not recording the views for new files with the new ADP is the reason of why you have sold a lot of old stuff...new contents are lost somewhere...
Title: Re: Major May disaster?
Post by: ShadySue on May 13, 2015, 17:24
Based on my portfolio there was a significant Best Match shift last night. Maybe this will help.
Hmm, best match within my own port looks the same as it's done for a long time.
Oddly, I had a sale on Friday of a file which did well (relative to my port) at first, but I made a bad choice in plussing it, and it hadn't sold for about a year, and then a year before that. I looked and it was at #10 for its main keyword, photos only. (While it was doing well, it was always in the top four).
Surprisingly, it sold on Sat and again yesterday. Honestly, that's just freaky, as they were all different dollar values. Today I did the same search and it's at #11. So not a big best match shift on that keyword, and not in the direction one might have expected!
Actually, I've come to the conclusion that best match shifts haven't been made across all searches for a couple of years now. [1] Some of my regular best match checks have been virtually identical for that length of time. What they'd say is that I'm getting a search unique to me, but I tend to get the same logged in with cache intact, and logged out with all history and cookies deleted. And comparing results with a friend almost right across the planet, the top 20 files are normally very similar with just a few in slightly different positions, so the 'geographic search bias' isn't the answer either.

[1] And at various times, the best match parameters have been different on different searches.
Title: Re: Major May disaster?
Post by: mojaric on May 14, 2015, 04:01
terrible last week this week seems up to normal....
April which for me was good for credit downloads ... but now that pp are finished i have a 8 days super low sales...it's all so strange and unpredictable
Title: Re: Major May disaster?
Post by: ShadySue on May 14, 2015, 04:19
terrible last week this week seems up to normal....
April which for me was good for credit downloads ... but now that pp are finished i have a 8 days super low sales...it's all so strange and unpredictable
Although Lobo said yesterday, "We will probably get through the PP royalty transfers later today.", there's been no confirmation that it's finished.
I'm wondering (with no evidence) whether they're migrating their TS customers to iS subs. I'm not sure what the benefit would be to them to keep TS now.
Title: Re: Major May disaster?
Post by: Mantis on May 14, 2015, 07:06
terrible last week this week seems up to normal....
April which for me was good for credit downloads ... but now that pp are finished i have a 8 days super low sales...it's all so strange and unpredictable
Although Lobo said yesterday, "We will probably get through the PP royalty transfers later today.", there's been no confirmation that it's finished.
I'm wondering (with no evidence) whether they're migrating their TS customers to iS subs. I'm not sure what the benefit would be to them to keep TS now.

I agree. To me their not normal system is not normal. I really hope there is more or I will cap out at $100 for April.  Last three months in the $240 range plus Istock credits. I am a firm believer that your comments bolded above is true, or will become true not too far down the road. I could never understand why a business would keep two competing systems other than removing the Istock brand from their advertising due to all the bad juju buyers had with all the changes over the years.
Title: Re: Major May disaster?
Post by: StanRohrer on May 14, 2015, 09:00
But doesn't Thinkstock have images from sources other than iStock? Would those images also come to IS?
Title: Re: Major May disaster?
Post by: PenelopeB on May 14, 2015, 10:29
Last download - April 28th for me. I thought it might be down too??? Ouch. :o
Title: Re: Major May disaster?
Post by: ArenaCreative on May 14, 2015, 12:12
istock who?  oh, I think I remember that place.  Yeah, not a fan.