I see the same trend with IStock tanking.
So many reasons, and all have been discussed before.

Inconsistent, confusing and high pricing.

To this point, a friend of mine and occasional istock buyer just emailed me asking why this image and this image cost so much more than this image. How the heck do you answer that?

Quote from: Microbius on October 04, 2012, 04:18

I see the same trend with IStock tanking.
So many reasons, and all have been discussed before.

Inconsistent, confusing and high pricing.

To this point, a friend of mine and occasional istock buyer just emailed me asking why this image and this image cost so much more than this image. How the heck do you answer that?

What is even more mysterious, to me anyway, is that the more expensive ones appear to have outsold the cheaper one by a considerable factor. 

It is possible, I suppose, that the images were moved to Vetta only after having already sold multiple times - either that, or perhaps iStock are right when they say many of their buyers simply aren't that price conscious.  I just don't know.

Quote from: RapidEye on October 24, 2012, 01:00

Quote from: jsnover on October 23, 2012, 19:15

One of my many musings about what on earth Getty/Carlyle are up to is that they're trying to drive traffic to Getty and Thinkstock.

Yes, what on earth indeed? One wild thought I've had is that perhaps a Thinkstock subscription is worth more to Getty than we think. Perhaps the average TS subscriber spends as much per year as the average buyer of iStock credits does, while the cost of payouts to suppliers is very much smaller, especially considering that most subscriptions must be far from fully utilised.

Another musing of mine is that perhaps it's just retrograde old-school thinking at Getty. Getty managers must have loathed iStock for the six years it was the upstart eating away at their high-value sales. So now, rather than rejoice at having bought the top brand in stock imagery, they prefer to use iStock's traffic as a means of driving sales back to Getty (sigh of relief) and also down to a bargain-basement subscription site that their MBAs have somehow convinced themselves is the future of microstock.

I can imagine some suit standing up in front of a whiteboard to explain that the Getty group needed to achieve more clear-cut market segmentation, what with Getty RF being all muddied together with iStockphoto.

Alternatively, and just as (im)plausibly, the long-term plan is to merge Getty RF and iStockphoto under the Getty brand. So we will see more Getty images moving to iStock and iStock images moving to Getty (technology failures aside). Getty RF then becomes the midstock marketplace while Getty RM continues at the top end and Thinkstock mops up the cheap-n-cheerful market.

In fact, the price convergence between Getty RF (falling) and iStockphoto's upper tiers (rising) could well have been designed to facilitate just such a repositioning.

Yes it sounds like getty is force feeding customers and contributors gettys secret sauce.  It reminds me what anheuser busch did when they bought rolling rock brewery.  They shut down the brewery with special glass stills and moved to production to a janky budwiser plant not even located in the same sate.  Yet they still sell the same branded product.

-----------------------------------

I think the other long term goal of getty is to cut the percentage they pay to contributors even more on Istock through the RC shell game. 

While my income from Istock in 2012 is on track to be similar to 2011, there has been a huge shift within that number to income from thinkstock rather than from IS.  If that trend continues, I doubt I will make enough RCs in 2013 to stay at the 17% level in 2014.  I imagine many other indies will be in the same boat. 

Jeez, I just checked my October 2012 stats, even with a good day today and tomorrow I'm looking at a 50% in $ drop compared to October 2011. As an agent they've effectively halved the value of my portfolio!

Is that looking at your stats on iStock or have you checked with the Greasemonkey script which adds on your cash sales? In my case, there's a big difference (>20%), and my September wasn't as bad as I reported based only on the iStock stats.

Quote from: Gannet77 on October 24, 2012, 09:55

What is even more mysterious, to me anyway, is that the more expensive ones appear to have outsold the cheaper one by a considerable factor....

Not sure what you mean. I see two Vettas and one regular. The regular and one of the Vettas say >10 for sales and one of the Vettas says 3 sales. The fact that one of the Vettas has many views is probably unrelated as they can get looked at a lot if they happen to sit in the new images top slots for a while.

Whoops, my mistake.  I'd done a search for similars and was looking at yet another, an E+ (this image) that has only 2 downloads rather than the regular with >10!

I guess I hadn't had my coffee when I posted...

Quote from: TheDman on October 24, 2012, 09:08

Quote from: Microbius on October 04, 2012, 04:18

I see the same trend with IStock tanking.
So many reasons, and all have been discussed before.

Inconsistent, confusing and high pricing.

To this point, a friend of mine and occasional istock buyer just emailed me asking why this image and this image cost so much more than this image. How the heck do you answer that?

Easy.  Various images are selected by editors or contributors for whatever reasons to be in certain, differently priced collections.  If an image is too expensive for you, check the lower priced collections.

"whatever reasons" huh?  right up there with "that's why" as an explanation but I'm sure it's 100% accurate all the same.

I'm still doing better at IS than SS. Same port size. Hope it's gonna stay like this in the future.
Sorry for not posting negative feedback.This thread is like competition who can be more negative to IS.
Best

Quote from: alexmk on October 30, 2012, 10:45

I'm still doing better at IS than SS. Same port size. Hope it's gonna stay like this in the future.
Sorry for not posting negative feedback.This thread is like competition who can be more negative to IS.
Best

The clue is in the title of the thread. Why not start your own "I Love Istock Because ..." thread?

I don't. Just trying to be objective. By the way good idea just for a change.
And why don't you start your own "I Hate iStock Because ..." thread? if you really hate them.
It's the same right?

I don't. Just trying to be objective. By the way good idea just for a change.
And why don't you start your own "I Hate iStock Because ..." thread? if you really hate them.
It's the same right?

We're all being objective. We're expressing our considered reasons for Istock's steady demise. Like I said, the clue is in the title of the thread, which appears to have gone over your head.

Quote from: TheDman on October 30, 2012, 12:31

Quote from: sjlocke on October 30, 2012, 10:40

They don't need a justification.  They just need to know that they are in differently priced collections.  I've told this to buyers who have mailed me in the past, and they accept it and/or look for a similar lower priced image.

Doesn't this kill the idea then of the top-priced collections being somehow superior? I thought Vetta represented the best of the best. Using this pricing strategy, it simply represents "randomly different". Gives the impression that istock isn't trying to stratify collections based on value, they're simply trying to gouge people.

I'm not saying there isn't a point behind the editing.  Just that you don't need to get into it with a buyer.

I think the buyers do in fact need justification. They're not stupid, and they want to understand why images are priced differently than other images. If buyers think it is because of quality/usefulness/value, they're going to be ok with the pricing variation. If they think istock is merely trying to gouge people who can't find the similar versions, they're going to see istock as dishonest and be dissuaded to shop there.

I'm using the iStock stats. Where can I find the Grease monkey script to add the cash sales?

Sorry, I've been out since I wrote that.
From iStock's forum (gipi23):

"Desktop users may use fantastic tool of David [user 'dcdp']

Here are the instructions:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/52928923/iStock%20DL%20Stats%20Tool%20Manual.pdf

Here is the GreaseMonkey script that extracts the data:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/52928923/is_fdh.user.js

And here is the spreadsheet:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/52928923/iStock%20DL%20Stats%20-%20Blank%20-%20v1.161%20%282007%29.xlsm

And yes, start with the manual, please!

PS. works with Excel 2007/2010"

I just heard, here, sighs of delight when Istock started Photo+. It is also a different (Higher) price but it looked that everybody loved it (as I've just re-read in old threadS) . Guess what's the difference is...

This is the real funny thing about indies.  They actively root for the company that pays them less for the work.  It makes no sense.  But then again there is that cheap hooker vs high priced call girl thing.  I know which one I would choose.   

I just heard, here, sighs of delight when Istock started Photo+. It is also a different (Higher) price but it looked that everybody loved it (as I've just re-read in old threadS) . Guess what's the difference is...

The difference, as I think you well know, is that Photo+ allowed indies to sell at the same price (for that portion of their portfolio) as exclusive "regular" files. The difference between indie regular and indie P+ is tiny. The difference between indie regular and Agency is huge. We'd cheer (and did) for small price increases and royalty increases as the agencies upped their standards - agencies want higher quality images and are willing to increase the prices. Seemed very reasonable.

You also well know that a lot of the Agency files imported to IS from Getty could not get approved if a regular iStock contributor submitted them. They're substandard and over priced.

You're convinced there's some double standard here, but I don't think that's even close to accurate.