Quote from: Perry on May 14, 2012, 12:08

I don't like this a bit.

Soon SS is taken over by a group of suits, people who sees stock only as a commodity. Then they are going to maximize their profits. This has "iStock disaster" written all over it.

Inevitable. 

How I see it...

Jon wants to grow his business.  The 800-lb gorilla (iStock) has stumbled and there's big potential to swoop in and gobble up market share.  And/or he could have big plans to grow SS in some other significant way, such as a new product or service.  In either event, Jon needs money to invest in the business, either for major marketing initiatives to grow his market share, or to build out some new element that will create a new revenue stream.  These are the reasons companies do IPOs.

He surely has met with the investment community and described SS as a young business with nothing but growth in front of it.  No investor is going to put money into a business already at the top of its game with no growth strategy.  If Jon simply planned to cut contributor commissions and hope to deliver more profits through cost-cutting, the investment community would laugh him out of the room.  Investors put their money in when they think a company can gain share and/or get big revenue in a market that is growing.  

Increasing the bottom line through cost-cutting is what a desperate company does toward the end of its game.  It's certainly not the strategy for a company that is about to do an IPO.

Of course, if SS gets a lot of capital through its IPO, and down the line it does not deliver on its promises of growth, then the investors will be out for blood, and Jon may have to resort to whatever he can do to make the profit picture look good, i.e. cutting commissions.  But I think that's way down the road, and only if SS fails.  Based on what we all know about Jon and SS, we have little reason to expect this.

But the post really has nothing to do with quality, it has to do with sales potential....

This would be my answer to the debate of quantity vs quality.  The winner is neither.  The winner is sales potential.  Second place is quantity.  Third place is quality.

Not that quality is unimportant.  But for the most part the images you find on MS must have technical quality to make it online.   Oh, you're talking about "artistic or aesthetic quality"?  Then I'd put quality down around fifth or sixth.

Fact is, you can have a high "quantity" of stuff people don't want... or you can have a high "quality" of stuff people don't want.... and you're dead in the water.  Quality vs quantity is moot.  First find out what topics sell well, are underserved, and you can offer a unique take on.  Then focus on doing LOTS of those.  Then worry about how to do them better and better.

But you say, "Of course I only focus on subjects with high demand, that's a given!"  Are you really?  Are your sales continually growing?  RPI continually rising?  If not, take a long hard look at whether you're really meeting a demand that hasn't already been served many times over and see if you can forge new ground in hot topics your competition hasn't already uncovered.  Try a bunch of new topics, and when you find some that tap into a real hunger among buyers, do LOTS on that subject or theme.  Don't repeat yourself, or you'll just cannibalize your own sales... find creative ways to tackle the general subject in a number of ways.  But get a lot up there while you're under the radar of other contributors.  Quality doesn't even factor in to this strategy.  Of course you'll do the best you can, but since you'll have little competition, it won't be a big factor in the buyer's decision.

123RF is performing great for me.  Every month is a new BME, including last month -- April -- when every other agency seemed to be down from March.  So far, it's giving me a lot of sales for May.

Having had a week of famine there are signs of things changing this morning. Hope so!

For me, this morning has made the disaster look even worse.

I woke up to see about $30 in sales at SS, $30 at FT, $30 at IS, and $0 at DT. 

Hoping it's just the lag in reporting that seems to be routine at DT these days.

I had a batch approved last night in under an hour... at the same time, they approved the prior night's batch as well.  I think it's just a matter of getting your stuff in when someone's plate is clear... and that's impossible to predict. 

Frankly, I don't worry about review times... it's such a waste of energy and ultimately doesn't matter.  But this batch was so lightning quick I figured I'd share this to prove things aren't going downhill at SS after all.

March was a surprising BME (had an EL plus someone bought a series of 22 images at $3-5 a piece), so I expected a drop this month.  And surprisingly again, it didn't drop nearly as much as anticipated.  Instead of returning to my monthly average, I'm having my 4th BME.  So for me at least, I haven't seen a decrease in sales.  

What type of sales volume do you normally have, if you don't mind me asking?  And do you have many level 4 or 5 images?  There's a theory going around that the veterans with lots of 4 and 5 pics are really suffering from the recent change, and others are benefiting from our pics being priced unattractively for many buyers.  Add in the fact that newer images may be getting preference in searches, and the veterans are really getting clobbered by the "new" DT.

I have a lot of level 4 and 5 pics on DT, and normally do very well there.

April was a good month for me on DT until the price structure change was rolled out last Friday.  There is a clear line in my DT sales where you see my sales fall off the face of the Earth.  If this keeps up, they will probably go from being my #4 seller to #8 or #9.  Very discouraging.

I think it's been mentioned in multiple threads that the May Day holiday weekend was this past weekend... now we see that isn't the case... sorry to have been one of the ones perpetuating that myth.

Anyway, hearing that it wasn't a holiday weekend is very depressing.  At least it could have explained some crappy days of sales, particularly with the DT change.

So next weekend will be even worse!  Yay!

Pretty hard to convince the rest of the world that stealing images is wrong when even microstock artists are admitting they do it themselves... http://www.microstockgroup.com/newby-discussion/i%27m-new-15852/msg251189

Very pleased with how 123RF has been performing lately.  Each month is a new BME, and April is no exception... it's defying the trend of sales being down on all the other sites.  April 2012 is up 10% vs March 2012 and it's up 300% vs April 2011.  I know people aren't happy with 123 these days, but as I watch ISP, FT and now DT posting week sales, 123 seems to be the big rising star for me right now.

Yesterday (the day the changes rolled out) my sales started out very strong, then I stopped seeing numbers in the early afternoon.  On Saturday morning, I still see no sales since my early afternoon sales yesterday.  Is this because reporting is down due to the changes being implemented, or has my impact from these changes meant I no longer get ANY sales?  

Have you seen any sales reported since yesterday (Fri) afternoon?

UPDATE:  I was hoping this was just a lag... that as today went on I would watch DT report a continuation of my sales from yesterday, with a bunch more being reported before today's numbers start showing up, but instead I have just seen a single sale reported for today.  This suggests that I have had no downloads from mid-day yesterday to early this morning.  That is a disastrous shift that I can only assume is due to the changes DT rolled out yesterday.  Anyone else see virtually no sales on DT for the second half of yesterday?

Is anyone very surprised by the April downturn?  This March to April drop looks exactly the same as all my other years in ms.  I braced myself for a drop of around 10%.  The reality is that I'm down more like 5%, so I've been pleasantly surprised.

My data from the past several years suggests May will be about flat to April, and June and July will sink a bit further.  August flattens out, then things start shooting up in September.