It's probably too soon to tell, but I am alarmed at the drop in sales I am experiencing at IS the past several days. 

Downloads have dropped more than 20% this week from the first week of May (pre P+), and the first week of May was already PITIFUL - down 30% or more from average. 

The few images that ARE selling are about half from my P+ collection, so royalties are propped up.  This is nothing like the first week or so of P+, where DLs stayed the same and income rose.

Is this a foretelling of things to come?   Has P+ scared off some of my buyers, or is this just some random best match shift I got the short end of? 

Would like to compare notes with others...

I would think just a little short-term bad luck on your part Lisa. My sales are if anything marginally better since P+ was introduced and May should certainly be better than April in downloads.

It looks almost like my Dls for the photos I opted in picked up. I'm just mad at myself for not opting in an image with the best sales/month ratio (20+), which mostly sells as XS, since I'd almost double my earnings with that image. I wanted to get the flame first before opting in. First thing I'll do when I get another free slot is opt that file in, but that won't happen soon, since I just uploaded a batch of files and it usually takes 10+ days for the inspectors to review them.

Photos that got accepted a couple of weeks ago are already selling. Slow but steady, after all we're not talking about SS, where my best seller from the last batch already sold dozens of times.

Quote from: gostwyck on May 19, 2011, 23:02
I would think just a little short-term bad luck on your part Lisa. My sales are if anything marginally better since P+ was introduced and May should certainly be better than April in downloads.

Thanks for responding.  I hope you are right.  It's bizarre - they have completely fallen off a cliff.  Last two days look like a Sunday 

It's terrible for me... It's too depressing to look at the stat and I don't have the motivation to upload to them anymore.

Ummmm.... What is a P+
Sorry for a dumb question. I tried to find it, but I'm too tired.

Quote from: Dreamframer on May 20, 2011, 00:09
Ummmm.... What is a P+
Sorry for a dumb question. I tried to find it, but I'm too tired.

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=328522&page=1

so far so good I am enjoying p+ a lot but I am a very small fish but it does look good

Quote from: Dreamframer on May 20, 2011, 00:09
Ummmm.... What is a P+
Sorry for a dumb question. I tried to find it, but I'm too tired.

Luis was faster than me.  Basically it's a new Istock collection where Non-exclusives can put up the prices of about 10% of their portfolio to what the normal exclusive prices are (so roughly doubling the price).

Thanks!
And? Do buyers still buy those images with the same frequency as before?

Quote from: Dreamframer on May 20, 2011, 00:24
Thanks!
And? Do buyers still buy those images with the same frequency as before?

That's what I am trying to find out.  Until the last couple of days I would have said yes, but sales tanked so bad recently that I am not sure.

From what others are posting and sitemailing me, it looks like they ARE selling as well

Well, I was quick to jump in the train. I already added my photos, lol. I don't know about the sales, but at least the company on the train is nice

mid march best match shift took me from slow month to BME. The next shift a week or two later has seen my sales being less than half of average months. My redeemed credits for 2010 was 41572, my 'trending' for this year is now 17926. Throw in a rate cut at Fotolia, super cheap prices at alamy and the $US and I am now earning less than half of what I was last year

I put in about a third of my port into P+ in the hope that it would come with best match perks (it hasn't). It's still early to tell and hard to say with best match shift as well, but my gut feeling so far is that my sales have gone down a bit further but income is very slightly up.

So far, P+ works seems to work well for me. I opted in about half of my allotted spaces, using them for most of my best sellers, and the dl/day for those images have increased. On the grand total, this week has been roughly 20% better than the first two weeks of May, but iStock's stats are lagging again. Initial signs are positive, but it's too early to tell, I guess.

Sales have been pretty bad for me lately too.  P+ has not made a bit of difference.

Me and a couple of other exclusives I know pulled all of our files from E+.  Unless they're REALLY REALLY unique images, they won't sell at the higher price point. May be different for P+ since the price is a little lower.  

Quote from: jsmithzz on May 20, 2011, 03:34
Me and a couple of other exclusives I know pulled all of our files from E+.  Unless they're REALLY REALLY unique images, they won't sell at the higher price point. May be different for P+ since the price is a little lower.  

P+ pricing is the same as the regular exclusive collection, so it's not that different, but still, price-conscious buyers may shy away - or just get fed up trying to find the cheaper images at istock and go somewhere else. 

Hi Lisa!

First week with P+, was OK,  but now its back to square one and it will remain that way, the P+ was probably only introduced for a quick boost and nothing else and when the novelty is over, well, thats it.
As I said in another thread, without a best match tweak, it means nothing. Exept that we have signed away our shots in Gettys favour for 6 months.

I can tell you this much. We are six, Diamond-level contributors, here in Sweden and England, the six of us have been chatting, comparing, etc, for many years now and all of us are way, way down in dls and revenues, so?  we cant all be wrong, can we.

Now, why would a buyer tap into IS and buy an independant image for three times the price?  when he can find the same image three times cheaper on another site?  beats me.

I can see no other way then possibly abandon this sinking ship before we somehow and in a strange way lose our nominated files to shall we say, higher forces.

Lisa, I don't think P+ is the problem.  My downloads for May are down 50% too compared to May'10, but P+ is well represented in the downloads.

Quote from: Anyka on May 20, 2011, 05:50
Lisa, I don't think P+ is the problem.  My downloads for May are down 50% too compared to May'10, but P+ is well represented in the downloads.

The bottom line is:   IS, simply dont have the amount of traffic anymore, with or without its collections.

Downloads are decreasing, but income is slightly up from last month through P+. For a while now I am looking at my files in best match placement.
What I am seeing is that slowely these files are moving further back in best match placement. Since Vetta and agency and exclusive files are have increased exposure my files are doing less and less well.
Because they are doing less well, they cannot hold their positions - and move further back ... doing less well.

Circle of a slow death.
I guess the fact that they are in their category the most downloaded files helps to keep them a bit going, because hopefully more and more buyers will search files based on downloads.

I monitored several of my best sellers for their position in the best match and all of them are doing slightly better in their positioning since they were made P+. However sales for them are down which leads me to various possible conclusions
1. They have been given a best match boost but sales are generally are bad so they have sold less
2. They have been given a best match boost but customers don't want them at that price (which I doubt is the case from my experience with DT).
3. Sales are so bad at IS at the moment that even the sales I'm getting is still good in comparison with other images sales therefore pushing them up in the search.
I suspect that 3 is the correct answer.

I don't know if P+ has anything to do with the sale free-fall.

I've only joined P+ recently to see how things were going from others experience, but mostly to see if my catastrophic month would take a turn. It's not...

Basically in April I had the worst month in about two years, and this months is planing out even worse. In fact IS has fallen from the first place, to third, behind FL!!!!!!!

Since I live from stock, this is getting very, very worrying to me.

SS is not much better either. And Alamy has seen a drop of 60% in my average commission since 2008.

Hooray!  Not...

This week will be very good, considering Vetta and Agency royalties from Getty, but general sales have decreased a little bit, and the photos I'm selling are quite old and inusual. I suspect a best match change.

i dont know what the P+ thing going on till i find this discuss... no wonder my dls going down down down>"<

Quote from: lagereek on May 20, 2011, 05:55
The bottom line is:   IS, simply dont have the amount of traffic anymore, with or without its collections.

Agreed, I think they underestimated how big a role the good will of contributors had in their brand image.

Getty's used to the customer and contributor base being clearly delineated.

On Istock a lot of the contributor's are also in the design community, and a lot more of the customers are lower down the design foodchain then traditional RM buyers. Once word got out that IStock isn't "one of us" anymore it's bye bye sales, even if we can't afford to pull our portfolios or stop contributing.