Now that we have had 93 votes on this poll, we have 20 independents saying their income hasn't gone down at all since 2012 and yet only 3 exclusives who say there income hasn't gone down over the same period of time.

For me, this is one of the most important aspects of the poll results so far. Yes, as many people have pointed out, there might be some discrepancies, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies on how the various contributors who voted have calculated their percentage of drops. But I think the issue of whether or not you have had a drop since 2012 in income or not is a pretty cut and dry matter.

Another thing I noticed over the last 18 months is how the best match on iStock hasn't really changed much at all. And what the best match mainly has been driving for the last 1.5 years is the newer content uploaded by exclusives and independents, plus some of the older stuff put up by exclusives which hasn't sold much in the past.

Seemingly, exclusives are no longer investing as much as they did in the past to create their new content, knowing that iStock has turned mainly into a low-cost subscription priced site. This means that the older exclusive content is probably much better quality than the newer exclusive content, if in fact many of the exclusives have even continued to upload at all. The current best match algorithm is also not showing the older and best selling exclusive content at the top of the search results, which results in minimal sales to exclusives of their high quality best sellers from the past that they spent more money to create.

So what does this all really mean for contributors?

In my opinion it means that iStock is discouraging buyers from easily finding the more expensive, high quality exclusive content and instead putting a mix of new, lower quality and lower cost indy content, with some older, poorer selling exclusive content which isn't going to interest buyers much anyway. And when the buyers see mainly a mix of lower quality pictures from the indies and exclusives together, they probably buy more of the indy stuff because quality of the two groups will be about equal and yet the indy stuff sells for only 1/3 the price.

I am not saying iStock is necessarily doing this consciously to make more money because of the fact they have a lower payout on the indy stuff. But maybe they are truly trying to promote the older content that hasn't sold much yet and to give the new stuff a bigger chance too.

But if buyers are mainly buying the cheaper priced indy pictures, rather than the higher cost exclusive pictures, it means the indys might not be seeing a drop income and the exclusives could be seeing huge drops of over 50% in income as the poll also has also shown us with 24 exclusives saying their income has fallen by 50% or more and only 14 independents saying their income has dropped as much too.

Quote from: wds on June 05, 2016, 20:52
another factor that can make things complicated is that different people have different "career" trajectories...some may have started in 2007, some may have started in 2011 etc... and grown their portfolios at different rates with varying "quality" levels. Still a worthwhile poll I think.

Good point. If they started in 2012 for example, and have grown their portfolio ever since, then their income might actually be higher now than it was in 2012. That is a tricky one tough to set a parameter for in a poll like this.

Quote from: etienjones on June 05, 2016, 19:01
You really should construct a new poll asking only members with a monthly income of, let's say $400, to see how the more serious members are doing . . .  that would eliminate small time players like myself and be more enlightening.

Great idea, I would also like to add another parameter or two and set some standards for calculating your drop. But I am not sure if everyone could be troubled to vote again.

Quote from: pixmicro on June 05, 2016, 18:31
20% people for the item 'My income hasn't dropped at all and I am an indepdendent' ??...

Pretty hard to believe... I seriously wonder where these iStock independent are coming from...
Can one voter with one IP vote multiple times ? Could they be trolls ?...

People can only vote once per Microstock Group forum user account. Also, I think etienjones' account offers one good possible explanation. There may be a number of independents who never had a big portfolio or made very much on iStock to begin with, even during the boom times. Perhaps they just get a few occasional sales, and just maybe those few sales move around within a handful of different images they have which regularly sell. And when combined, those sales end up netting them about the same amount of money every month. Perhaps, and that is only one of many possible scenarios though.

On the other hand, it could be an indication that more buyers are buying the cheaper (1 credit) indy files than the more expensive (3 credit) exclusive files. This is what I suspected and why I had put up this poll in the first place.

Combine that with an indy who continues to upload and perhaps they don't see any drops. If that is the case, then the take away is drop your crown if you are an exclusive and perhaps you will sell more files on iStock. But if you do that then your royalty rate will likely drop to about half. Plus all your files on Getty (if you have any) will get pulled. So your sales on iStock would need to double, or triple maybe, to maintain what you are earning the same as you are now if you are an exclusive. But perhaps you can make up for the shortfall on iStock and/or make even more after dropping the crown by uploading to 3-4 other new sites as well. That is always the question exclusives are contemplating.

It would be interesting to know though how many, of the indies that voted that they had no drop in income, have actually continued to upload steadily to iStock since 2012?

The reason I said though from your BME in 2012 (or 2013) against last month is because I think we will see the most dramatic falls using that kind of comparison. At one time, although May wasn't my BME, May always used to be a very strong month for me. And this past May was my WM (Worst May and Worst Month) in many years, as it was also for another long term iStock contributor I know personally.

Quote from: Gannet77 on June 05, 2016, 09:44

Quote from: X9D7CE84A2B5Y on June 04, 2016, 19:58

Quote from: ShadySue on June 04, 2016, 19:19

Quote from: X9D7CE84A2B5YU6G1 on June 04, 2016, 17:53
By the way, I should have added the basis for calculating your drop. In my case I took my BME, which was actually March 2012 and compared it to what my checkout payment amount will be later this month for May.

Oh, if I compared my BME to any month this year, my drop would be much more than I voted. I compared 2015's total to 2012's total.

Very sorry for not clarifying that earlier. I should have laid down the parameters at the onset. Anyway, thank you for voting. Your vote will still help.

I did it ShadySue's way too - and actually, I think that makes more sense.  I find any individual month on iStock can vary by as much as 100%, so just choosing a particular month doesn't really tell us very much.

Also, by way of comparison, it would be interesting to know how independents have fared overall, not just on iStock - judging from other posts, the whole market for individual contributors has declined over the years, presumably because of the huge increase in numbers of images, so just looking at one agency doesn't give us the full picture.

Yes, you can use Sue's way to compare. I think whatever method we use we will still get a fairly good picture of things since the poll just covers broad ranges and not exact percentages of drops. But it is giving us a good picture of things so far and showing some useful patterns.

I agree, a poll on independents covering their drops on all agencies might be good too. You can start a similar one in the Big 4 message board. I would think the drops though on Shutterstock, Fotolia, and Dreamstime would be most relevant, but it seems Dreamstime has fallen so much recently according to the site polls that is barely even middle tier any longer. Shutterstock would of course be the most relevant and all contributors on there are indy anyway.

Quote from: NewStocker on June 05, 2016, 07:49

Quote from: asiseeit on June 05, 2016, 03:01
hmmm. my peak was 2013 so I guess I'm up since 2012. Anyhoo...

Take your BME in 2013 and compare it to your current iStock account balance for May to calculate your percentage of fall.

Correct.

Quote from: Mantis on June 04, 2016, 21:27

Quote from: X9D7CE84A2B5Y on June 04, 2016, 21:00

Quote from: Mantis on June 04, 2016, 20:35

Quote from: X9D7CE84A2B5Y on June 04, 2016, 20:05

Quote from: PixelBytes on June 04, 2016, 19:52
So far looks like the extreme drops have hit both indies and exclusives pretty hard.

True, but what is very interesting so far (as of this moment) is that 6 indies have voted to say that they have seen no drop in income at all (which is amazing in itself) whereas not one exclusive has voted to say they have had no drop in income.

So far, every exclusive who has voted has had some sort of drop in income and I think we can assume that exclusives are also more inclined to add new content to the site on a regular basis versus independents who may not upload to iStock as regularly since they are presumably contributing to multiple sites and less focused on iStock itself than exclusives are.

The one thing I can say is that if things were the way they should be for exclusives, then shouldn't those 2 figures actually be in complete reverse?

Some may have started doing video to offset image income declines.  So while they may have serious declines in images, they make it up with video.  Just a theory.

Good theory thanks. But if Indies are adding video wouldn't exclusives be adding video too to offset their drop in image sales?

Certainly feasible, but it's also possible that while exclusives are locked into a specific revenue pipeline, indy's are not.  So expanding video to, say, 5-6 new outlets could answer that hypothesis.

Sorry, I am not sure I follow your train of thought here. Please let me kindly remind you that we are talking purely about iStock income here for both independents and exclusives from 2012 until now. Not sales of video on other outlets.

Quote from: Mantis on June 04, 2016, 20:35

Quote from: X9D7CE84A2B5Y on June 04, 2016, 20:05

Quote from: PixelBytes on June 04, 2016, 19:52
So far looks like the extreme drops have hit both indies and exclusives pretty hard.

True, but what is very interesting so far (as of this moment) is that 6 indies have voted to say that they have seen no drop in income at all (which is amazing in itself) whereas not one exclusive has voted to say they have had no drop in income.

So far, every exclusive who has voted has had some sort of drop in income and I think we can assume that exclusives are also more inclined to add new content to the site on a regular basis versus independents who may not upload to iStock as regularly since they are presumably contributing to multiple sites and less focused on iStock itself than exclusives are.

The one thing I can say is that if things were the way they should be for exclusives, then shouldn't those 2 figures actually be in complete reverse?

Some may have started doing video to offset image income declines.  So while they may have serious declines in images, they make it up with video.  Just a theory.

Good theory thanks. But if Indies are adding video wouldn't exclusives be adding video too to offset their drop in image sales?

Quote from: PixelBytes on June 04, 2016, 19:52
So far looks like the extreme drops have hit both indies and exclusives pretty hard.

True, but what is very interesting so far (as of this moment) is that 6 indies have voted to say that they have seen no drop in income at all (which is amazing in itself) whereas not one exclusive has voted to say they have had no drop in income.

So far, every exclusive who has voted has had some sort of drop in income and I think we can assume that exclusives are also more inclined to add new content to the site on a regular basis versus independents who may not upload to iStock as regularly since they are presumably contributing to multiple sites and less focused on iStock itself than exclusives are.

The one thing I can say is that if things were the way they should be for exclusives, then shouldn't those 2 figures actually be in complete reverse?

Quote from: ShadySue on June 04, 2016, 19:19

Quote from: X9D7CE84A2B5YU6G1 on June 04, 2016, 17:53
By the way, I should have added the basis for calculating your drop. In my case I took my BME, which was actually March 2012 and compared it to what my checkout payment amount will be later this month for May.

Oh, if I compared my BME to any month this year, my drop would be much more than I voted. I compared 2015's total to 2012's total.

Very sorry for not clarifying that earlier. I should have laid down the parameters at the onset. Anyway, thank you for voting. Your vote will still help.

By the way, I should have added the basis for calculating your drop. In my case I took my BME, which was actually March 2012 and compared it to what my checkout payment amount will be later this month for May.

Thank you all for voting so far. Please vote if you are presently an iStock contributor. The more votes we have the better we may be able to see a pattern and understand which people have been effected/hurt the most.

Vote in the above Poll. Where do you fall in?

Quote from: qwerty on June 04, 2016, 08:00
Sorry to see such a big loss in income. I can assure you if they're selling buckets of independents files they're not mine.

I'm down about 20% on revenue at Istock over 4 years whilst doubling my files.

You are down by about 20% and the OP is down to only a remaining 20% of his original income. Huge difference. He also has doubled the size of his portfolio in the last 3 years like you have.

So based on this simple "back of a napkin" comparison it would seem independents have done much better than exclusives. This of course is a very isolated comparison of only 2 contributors.

If you step back for a minute and just take a philosophical view on the whole iStock crash and burn dichotomy, you wonder how a company can have willingly joined the race to the bottom with the rest of the sub sites by having reduced their prices to roughly 10% of what they were at the peak in 2012 and thus, further driving down their own income to about 20% of what it was 3-4 years prior. Especially after 5 years of doing nothing but raising prices from around 2007-2012 and which resulted in tremendous growth and positive returns for everyone. There is just no intelligent logic to explain what they did when they pressed the self destruct button, unless or course this was part of a larger cash bleeding strategy to turn the company into a losing venture for tax purposes.

Either that or they are very smart and are secretly making more than ever before by having changed the prices on exclusive content to 3 times the price of the independent content, then paying the exclusives 40%, the independents 15%, selling a ton independent content, very little exclusive content, making 5 times more than they were before, and all the while pretending to be a bunch of bumbling idiots who just cant figure out what they are doing wrong.

Given how poorly the site is run though, the fact that it is half broken and ridden with bugs most of the time, providing terrible contributor communication and support, a best match that is horrific, etc, it is just not the behavior though of a largely successful company making millions of dollars. So I guess what has happened must be some version of the former even though there is no intelligent explanation for it.

Quote from: Photostocker on June 03, 2016, 12:57
Getty Image updated iStock credit pricing in 2013 and also introduced their great and amazing new subscription plans.

So, What is your annual income lose between 2013 - 2015 (2016).

I had 3000 images 2013 and now 5500 images.

My Income 2013 = 115 000 $
My Income 2014 = 110 000 $
My Income 2015 =   50 000 $
My Income 2016 =   14 000 $ (about)

I think this is NOOOT a good way

I was going to say "WOW", but someone said that already. And then I thought about it; my own iStock income has dropped heavy and steady just as yours has and right now mine is less than 20% of what it was in 2012. So my fall from the peak is close to yours in percentage terms. I know how you feel. There are hardly words to describe how a company can self destruct itself to this level and not give a toss either about how many of their own crew they destroy with it. I think I just threw up a little bit in my mouth.

They always try and keep up their game face even when the walls around them are crashing down. Not surprising at all coming from iStock. Arrogance will get them nowhere.

The downside for iStock contributors is that we now get paid on a monthly basis instead of the option to cash out weekly. This means when Getty files for bankruptcy protection, and perhaps can't pay out to its contributors anymore, that we stand to lose a month's income rather than only a week's income. But most likely the one thing they would do in a Chapter 11 filing would be to continue to pay their contributors at least. If they can't at least do that then all contributors would pull their images and the doors would be closed completely. So most likely that won't happen. Or if they get bought out and taken over by another investment group then that group would most likely pick up paying off the contributors. The most dangerous thing that could happen would be for them to lose their only tangible assets, which are our photos. So perhaps we are not at such risk of not being paid. Time will tell I guess. If one month your PayPal account stops going Ka-Ching, then you know it's time to fasten your seat belts cause Kansas is going bye-bye.

Quote from: Semmick Photo on February 23, 2015, 09:45

Quote from: kelvinjay
When you upload the file, the keywords will initially appear in the order that you chose and all keywords will effectively have zero weight and all are equally relevant or irrelevant. As time passes though, buyers may find your file in a search and take a look at the ADP, this would count as a view and that view would add weighting to whichever keywords they had been searching for.

Why do you have to put them in order of importance when they all end up with zero weight anyway?

Seems like a whole lot of wasted time. Just add the keywords and the system will add weight through search analyses.

If it works like they say it will, it seems like a good system. But maybe I am missing something.

Unfortunately whatever system they are employing is not working well, and is not a good system because when I search for the subject image using the most relevant keywords for that image, the image does not come up.

Quote from: ShadySue on February 23, 2015, 08:43
This is the cookie cutter response given to questions like this:
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=365351

However, I too have seen (but not always, inconsistency being a rule there, apparently) bizarre changes within a day or two and with no recorded views, which are 'claimed' only to be recorded by registered buyers. Viz I keyword from specific to very general and sometimes withint a couple of days, the 'top' keywords are the very general ones. With no recorded views.

It would be of more use, in theory, to post your screenshots over there. But you may just get the same reply.

It matters, because your keyword order is theoretically reflected in the Best Match positioning of files, as well as determining what thums will show under an image when the new system is rolled out.

Thanks, that article makes sense and would explain as to why a few other keywords might show up first. But it doesn't explain why the first and most important keyword I listed in terms of relevance shows up last. This image is one I uploaded very recently, has only had a few views so far, so the weighting order based on buyer searches should not be playing a big role with this image yet. And in fact the problem was already occurring even before the image had any views. So I don't think in this case that the buyer keyword search history on this file even plays a role at all unfortunately. Still seems to me more like a system flaw and for all we know this flaw could be rampant throughout the system. Disheartening.

First is a screen shot of the relevant keyword order of a picture I uploaded recently showing from my DeepMeta.

Next is a screen shot of the keyword order of the image itself from the iStock closeup page.

As you may notice, the keywords are all misplaced and don't follow the priority order based upon relevance that I have given them. As the most blatant example, the keyword "Thailand" should be first and yet it is the next to the last keyword.

This is only the first image I checked. I can imagine there could be thousands of others which might be coming up in the same way. I only noticed this when I did a keyword search based upon the top keywords for this image and the image didn't even come up at all.

Talk about images going into the abyss, if they wont even come up with the keywords they are supposed to come up on, how can we ever prevent them from completely falling into the abyss forever?

As it is now, a buyer will probably never find this image unless they search by the quirky keyword order priority the iStock system has assigned to this image. Nor does the image come up within the search results under the keywords that it should. I have tried many times to changes the keyword order slightly in DeepMeta for this image and submit the keyword order changes, but nothing changes on the iStock closeup page.