Quote from: shank_ali on July 13, 2011, 12:49

I think Best Match is just that for the designers who spend there money at Istockphoto.

LOL!!  Yeah, that's why the "Buyers Bail" thread is at 55 pages now.  Filled with quotes from happy buyers who are finding all the great stock they want at awesome low prices!  WooYAY!!!!!!

you "seem" to know a lot LOL best match is used for what % of buyers/designers??

'Can we please drop the fiction that best match has ANYTHING to do with what buyers want?'

Actually, I think the relevancy factor does a pretty good job of showing what other buyers were happy with.  Within that, the mix of collections is what it is.

Quote from: shank_ali on July 13, 2011, 12:23

Best Match is very relevent for the buyers and Istock as a business.We(contributors) have no say or control over any change.Off course we notice and comment on that change,especially if the sales wane, but i have never noticed any ill effect on my beautiful crafted imagery.
Think posative and some content might surface that you forgot about...Cream always rises.

Master baiter.

I dunno, I don't think there's anything wrong with displaying a mix of all collections.  Anyhow, the pricing filter makes it a non-issue.

Yesterday was my worst Thursday for a long time. I was wondering why, and made a Best Match search on penguins. Normally the best match search will show one of my penguins on the 3third or so place. But now they moved to the second page.
What happend? What I discovered, that all the images which are ranked before my images are images from exclusive Photographers. Is it a coincidence or did they really changed the best match search in favor of the exclusiv Photographers?

Well whenever you raise the price you lose customers. That is a completely predictable, normal market behaviour.

By creating a best match that in the first 200 images (or first three pages) had a dominance of files that were 20-50 times more expensive than the regular collection it was clear that customers will go elsewhere to fill their needs. On top of that the artistic vetta images, although fascinating and inspiring are not generic (that�s what gives them their edgy appeal) and so will not be sold in large volume.

Shutterstock has overtaken istock, dreamstime is probably next. Traffic on istock has dropped in equal proportion.

But is istock as a company making less money?

Because of the very high prices they can probably afford to lose very large number of buyers. And they also pay the contributors less than on the normal collection.

Maybe some of you remember my comparison with the coffee and wine producers. It is possible that although we as contributors, especially the "coffe producers" (generic, high volume images) are losing out, istock is making so much more money with their "wine producers" (artistic, edgy and expensive) that it worth shifting istock towards this more specialized market.

best match gives you a crystalclear direction of the buyer groups they are targeting.  If expensive files dominate, they have decided to focus on a much smaller market. Losing customers then isn�t a problem for the agency, just for us (coffee). Wine producers will rejoice and istock will probably become the center for the more edgy, artistic type of artists.

I still hope they find a better balance, but maybe it is financially not worth it to focus on both buyer groups. Getty has other, cheaper agencies (photos.com, thinkstock) that can target the buyers of generic, high volume images. My sales at the partner collections are going up, which is the result of aggressive marketing and a dedicated sales team.

Since I have images on getty, istock and the partner agencies it can still work out for me as a "coffee producer". I just have to look at the bigger picture, not just istock. However guidance from HQ how to best target image production and which customer groups are being catered to by the different agencies and collections would be very, very helpful. If they want us to work with the "big picture", then please let us know.

Photographers/Creative artists are a dime a dozen. We create digital products that can be sold worldwide at lightspeed.

They can source artists from all over the world and with istock�s excellent feedback system/forums/Lypses they will always have enough creative talent to find the few gems they need who will become contributors for the high end collections and getty. istock is an excellent talent scout. I know, I�ve received fantastic feedback and I will always be grateful.

I think what I am trying to say, that hopefully things are not as bleak for exclusives or "coffee artists" like me. But my income will become  spread over several sites, not just istock.

I sincerly hope what is happening is part of a careful strategy.

My worst nightmare is that there is some internal power struggle with different people pulling directions to different buyer groups. Or best match changes that come from panic and bad predictions. Somebody has to be clearly in charge of the "big picture". You can�t have different parts of a company work independently from each other or even fight each other. You need clear leadership to keep everyone focussed, every employee, contributor, even the cleaning staff need to know their place and what their role is. Ideally they should absoluetly love what they do and be so passionate about it that you have to force them to take a break or a holiday.

A company is not a democracy, it needs benovelent dictatorship and good communication. Think of Apple Computer. Or a well oiled machine.

At the moment many contributors are confused and frustrated and probably quite a few buyers as well. So this machine isn�t working at optimal performance. And it needs more than just an oil change.

By the way, one major disadvantage of focussing on a small buyer group, is that it becomes a lot easier for your competition to take the market away from you....