I'll never forget the day when I saw people in the Istock forums cheering that StockXpert was killed.
I wonder who's cheering now.

As credit prices and image costs steadily increased at istock over the years, buyer volume has dropped. You used to be able to get just about any Large photo for around $10. Now those same images can cost $50. I think there is a pretty clear correlation between rising prices and buyer dissatisfaction.

I used to be a buyer at istock. I'd pick up small images on a whim for comp purposes because they were cheap and it was nice to put an unwatermarked image into a design comp. Now an XS E+ image can cost $9. No way I'm spending $9 on a comp image. Even at the large size, if I bought a Large photo for $10 and didn't use it, no big deal. If I spend $50 I'm sure as heck going to be bummed about not using it, and certainly more inclined to get a refund.

For $50 you can go to SS and get 5 images, any size. For buyers this seems like a no-brainer, and I think that istock's pricing has had a profound effect on the decline in earnings many people see and the overall decline in site traffic and buyer activity. Returning prices to a true microstock level is the only way to bring buyers back around.

You should care should one major agency collapse. It would have a huge impact in the industry, and it leaves contributors at the mercy of fewer major agencies. The best outcome would be a return to cultivating strong community relations with contributors.

Quote from: rirfstock on January 18, 2012, 07:38

..., or do I really have to give a reason in the box for every file?? This is certainly frustrating...

You really do have to give a reason - you can paste something into each one to save time.

It is frustrating, but several other sites are similarly painful if you want to deactivate images vs. close an account completely. I guess no site wants to optimize the experience for users removing content en masse

I hear what you're saying about wanting to get levels up.  But I think it goes back to the RPI question, and creating images that don't compete with each other.  If you have ten images of, say, an elephant on a balloon, and they're each selling OK and are at level 1 or 2, wouldn't you be better off with just a few images like that, so you're not dividing your sales and the few you have on that subject are level 4 or 5 instead?  I think trying to keep RPI high, or at least steady, is being proactive in meeting that goal... while doing something like deleting images after the fact is reactive.  You would have been much better off devoting time to ten different subjects rather than 10 elephants on balls to begin with.   Watching RPD just seems like a reactive, rather than proactive, strategy to me.

Dig into the code, particularly the functions.php and htaccess files. Eventually you need to change those underscores to dashes. Google can't read the underscores, so that "big_cat_leopard" will be interpreted as "bigcatleopard" which you don't want to rank for obviously. The dashes tell Google that each is a separate word to be parsed and evaluated.

It's a real PITA and honestly I never got it to work 100%. KTools is outdated, and not very search engine friendly. Their admins should be on their forum teaching customers how to fix this stuff, but instead they just make it a point to tell you that they don't do custom programming. I understand they don't have the time to customize people's websites, but there are serious flaws inherent in their software which should be addressed.

Maybe they want most of the exclusives to go independent. That way they get to pay them less. It might explain them seemingly doing nothing to rebuild confidence or address legitimate concerns.

I never really understand how it was possible so many illustrations were sold, what were they used for, I rarely see any illustrations in advertising, newspapers etc.