Well done leaf - $125 for a sale is good money.

Oh, I should have added that any form of analysis of those trend charts has a good 50/50 chance of being a load of bollocks of course........

I spent a lot of time looking at the Alexa charts after Michael mentioned them a few days ago.  Fascinating charts.

It is useful to compare the progress of individual agencies against each other; the biggest trend I noticed was that StockXpert appears to be making good progress and now appears to be ahead of FT (in terms of page view trends).  Perhaps those here who contribute to both StockXpert and FT could make some observations.

Saturation is a good word.  If these were financial markets or economic cycles charts I would interpret them as follows:

Each cycle within larger cycles tends to have five distinct phases (up, down, up, down, up) and it is very likely that the big burst of activity at the end of the last year was the final UP in that five phase sequence.  If so, we have entered the DOWN phase of a larger cycle.  The first down phase in a five phase sequence often lasts a Fibonacci ratio 38.2% of the previous cycle; if that cycle was 4.7 years then the down phase should be about 1.7 years.

Very likely that the market has reached a first saturation point; perhaps the flow of images has exceeded the flow of buyers, or agency competition is changing the market, or perhaps the buyers in the first cycle now have enough images to keep them going for a while.

If this analysis is correct, we should expect sales to remain at present lower levels for another year or so (broadly speaking) before the down phase ends and we enter the next five phase upwards cycle.

Do you work for FT Ian? (serious question)

Well, based on the numbers in this thread, FT certainly aren't selling 10,000 images per day; in fact it might be only one tenth of that.

The problem is that once a business or businessman is prepared to mislead (3 million online images for instance) they get used to doing it and will mislead on other things as well.  One lie leads to another etc.

I recently looked at FT's forums and was astonished to see that any mention of sales and/or volume is banned, and this is listed in the 'rules' of the forums.  The controllers will immediately edit or delete any post that mentions sales, and also any post that mentions a competitor agency.

In my experience in life, if something is going well (lots of sales for instance) people want to shout about it, but if something is not going well they try to hide it, or start to tell lies.

Let's hope that all of these things are just early stage teething problems and that FT will start to become more honest and accurate.

And if the stastistics at Alexa are correct, page views at iStock have been falling off a cliff over the last week.

Fascinating.

Well I believe that in business one should play fair and at least not be misleading; 3 mill images 'online' implies 'for sale' and therefore appears to be deliberately misleading.

I think it would be appropriate for FT to actually state the number of images accepted and available for sale.  That would be the more professional approach.

I am concerned about FT quoting that number.  It may of course be correct, but I think there are sufficient doubts to suggest that it isn't.

As a recent new contributor to FT I am actually quite pleased with sales progress.  But I feel uncomfortable all the same; its something to do with this massive headline number and the fact that their forums seem to be controlled and edited like something from Nazi Germany (I do not contribute to their forums).

It has a taste of 'dishonesty' about it and I am concerned about that.

Having said these things, I am pleased to be able to see the customers who buy, and with clients like BDO Stoy Hayward, FT are clearly making some progress into the professional market.

But of all the agencies, this is the only one where I feel I cannot trust them; I have been in business a long time, and at my age one gets a feel for honesty or untrustworthiness.

Let's hope that FT will make a leap forward and start to address these things.  They certainly won't attract a large number of volume photographers unless they do.

Yes this makes sense - all the agencies have to do something to reward and retain the best and most prolific photographers; this is just a further example of trying to cut down on the huge numbers of occasional submitters and place an increased focus on those who actually generate the sales.

As with most businesses, 80% of the sales are probably generated by 20% of the contributors.  In microstock it might even be 90/10.

Yes, I have also been pleased with FT.

However, just to put things into perspective, I notice that Yuri Acurs now has the same images on IS as he has on FT.  His best selling image on FT has had sales of a total of about 170.  On IS that same image has sold 1300 times in the last three months!

Nonetheless I am pleased with FT, and DT also seems to be making some progress.  Both FT and DT need to bump up their marketing and promotional activities to take them into the next league.  FT has the best chance because it seems to be generating lots of customers from Europe and could try to become market leader there.

Yes Sharply, I have noticed an increased level of strictness at IS over the past two or three weeks.

They appear to be increasing the priorities and flexibility for exclusives and becoming more strict for non exclusives.  I am not surprised at this.

BTW there is an interesting thread there which tables the differences in upload limits between exclusives and non; exclusives get 60 per week compared to 20 at bronze level.  A new exclusive comments on how his images are now accepted very quickly and how his downloads have increased massively since getting the exclusive tag.

Once again these things are not a surprise.

Over the next year or two I expect to see much more competition for exclusives at all agencies; after all, it isn't the number of images that will make them a success, it's having highest quality UNIQUE images that will be the key as competition hots up.

Prices and commissions should increase at a faster rate for exclusives.  It makes sense.

It might be early days for an observation like this (for me anyway); I started uploading to IS early in February and make what I thought was good progress.  I didn't bother with any other agencies except a few uploads to DT.  Sales at IS improved very micely and by the middle of March I was pleased with overall progress.  Then I decided to join SS.  Sales at SS took off sharply and I was mesmerised by the immediate positive result.

However my sales at IS peaked in exactly the same week that I joined SS.  Over the past four weeks the trend at IS has been down, but still very positive sales at SS.

Of course Easter is in the middle, perhaps wiping two weeks of proper statistics, but I jave a sneaking suspicion that somehow my sales at SS have damaged my progress at IS.

Perhaps I'm wrong and its all just coincidence.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this from their own experiences?