Quote from: KB on July 02, 2013, 11:34

Quote from: cthoman on July 02, 2013, 10:53

Haven't credits been around $1.5 for a while? I don't really see much of a bait and switch.

Seriously?

The bait and switch is the assumption that someone can buy that photo for something resembling 1-5 dollars. Even if credits are priced at $1.50 per, that's reasonably close. What isn't close is the cash pricing:
XS - $6 / credit
S -  $4 / credit
M - $4.66 / credit
L - $4.75 / credit
XL - $4.20 / credit

THAT is bait and switch.

Oddly, the cash pricing per credit for Signature files is much more reasonable (though still inexplicably higher at some sizes than others):
XS - $1.80 / credit
S - $1.85 / credit
M - $1.75 / credit
L - $1.70 / credit
XL - $1.80 / credit

But, it's always been that way with the credits. Shouldn't this have been written like 5 years ago? I'm not a fan of credits, but I'm just not seeing the big revelation here.

When were credits EVER priced at anything close to the range of $4-$6 per credit?

Haven't credits been around $1.5 for a while? I don't really see much of a bait and switch.

Seriously?

The bait and switch is the assumption that someone can buy that photo for something resembling 1-5 dollars. Even if credits are priced at $1.50 per, that's reasonably close. What isn't close is the cash pricing:
XS - $6 / credit
S -  $4 / credit
M - $4.66 / credit
L - $4.75 / credit
XL - $4.20 / credit

THAT is bait and switch.

Oddly, the cash pricing per credit for Signature files is much more reasonable (though still inexplicably higher at some sizes than others):
XS - $1.80 / credit
S - $1.85 / credit
M - $1.75 / credit
L - $1.70 / credit
XL - $1.80 / credit

Which file is worth 10x the other file?
http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-2493233-united-states-flag.php?st=c805381
or
http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-2388290-beautiflul-huge-us-flag.php?st=f2a69da

The idea of self-curating the collection to a degree (self-promoting to P+ / E+) was one of the few things that IS had done right the last several years. So naturally they remove that and replace it with an idiotic algorithm that can't tell an ordinary but lucky high-selling file from a higher quality and/or more unique file.

What they should have done instead was to continue to allow contributors to promote files to a higher level, but also allow them to demote* files to a lower level. Contributors know better than any algorithm ever could what is best for their files. If the concern was that files were changing price suddenly (laughable considering what's been going on the last few weeks), then limit the ability to change. But don't take away the one thing that was actually working and smart about IS.

* I guess that applies to exclusives only, allowing them to demote down to the Main collection.

Another depressing post over there, from juniorbeep:
"funny thing happened to me today. I am a contributer and quite a large purchaser of images usually from istock (although this is changing as prices increase and budgets reduce). But I had a phone call from Istock here in the UK asking me as a purchaser how I was finding the site etc. I told them I felt the prices were spiralling and the lady said "you wouldn't believe how many people have said that to me today"... She said she'd take note and feedback but actually seemed far more interested in pushing me towards Thinkstock... I wonder why? Ah something to do with the subscription (so guaranteed monthly income and terrible royalty rates paid out to contributers I'd imagine). ..."
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=354492&messageid=6906356

And followup posts:
I have heard a similar story from  other people, Getty ringing people known to be buyers and pushing Thinkstock over iStock.

I've heard similar stories. No big surprise

But no problem, since we've been assured that they are 2 different types of buyers.   

I have also read this page:
http://www.alamy.com/contributor/help/annotation-options.asp where we are advised to put quotations around keyword phrases and square brackets around related words. Do either of these actually work?

Ha, ha! You know that they don't. 

But I sure would like to hear from Alamy why they don't remove this page entirely, since it's clear that they never intend to add these features. In the meantime I continue to keyword this way, hoping (stupidly) that they might. 

I wasn't sure how to answer the poll - against the month or compared to previous months and typical sales. 

I should have made that clear. I had meant it to be compared against a recent average (if there is such a thing) of the last few months. I know there are ups and downs, but for me at least I had an average number of sales per day that I expected, plus or minus a bit.

I think that it is a little soon to say it.
In my opinion we should wait a minimum of 6 months to have a valid statistic�

Perhaps. But I was just wondering how many other contributors are seeing an unmistakably HUGE shift in sales (in the same or opposite direction), compared to others for whom the sales pattern might be relatively normal.

Quote from: lisafx on June 23, 2013, 19:00

My sales are about on a par with the prior two weeks, but the $ are significantly down.  P+ was a significant income booster when they introduced it and continued to be, right up until a week ago. 

Since I chose my P+ files by DL/month, which seems pretty logical, I am surprised that they didn't keep them in the S+ collection.  As much money as I'm losing on those sales, Istock is moving 81% more. 

I'm not sure any significant number of independent files made it into S+.

Perhaps that was a typo on Lisa's part, as it seems to me that the natural progression for those P+ files would have been to the S collection, not S+.

Incidentally, as an example, about 1% of the S+ files under 'business' are from independents. But only about 2% of S files are, so not much better. If you believe what they say, though, many of the P+ files will get promoted sometime in the future.

Obviously I can't speak for the buyer in the OP, or for buyers in general.

But I can speak from my own perspective. My portfolio was performing reasonably well before the changes last week Thursday. Then iStock stupidly moved almost all of my best-selling files (I'm talking about around 200 of my most frequent sellers) to the Signature+ collection.

Previous to that move, some buyers were ok paying "a little" more for my files than similars in the Main collection. But now, for example, an L file is 4 times as expensive as a similar Main collection file, rather than "just" 70% more. There are also similars in the Signature collection to chose from, priced at 1/2 or less than mine. So why would a buyer chose mine? The answer: They wouldn't. During the last week, I've sold exactly ONE file from the S+ collection. And only a relative handful more from the rest of my port (since the remainder of my port obviously wasn't selling as well as the top 15%).

I'm all for higher prices, that's one of the big reasons I became an exclusive at IS. I liked the fact that even the smallest sales there brought me $2. Now I'm getting sales as low as $0.20 commission, without larger sales to make up for it.

From my perspective, this is a complete and total disaster.

Since the thread may not last long, I thought I'd copy the OP anyway:
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=354492&page=1

Today as I was searching for a picture that would work perfectly in my production, I noticed that all my choices were running anywhere from $70 to $155 for a picture in the resolutions that can work for me.

As other's have said, this is a far cry from many years ago when the same picture was around $10. Case in point, I have many pictures in my archive that I purchased for less than $10 and now sell for $70 and higher.

Now, I get photographers should get paid. As a designer myself, I love to get paid. But my clients are now vetoing using iStock for microstock purchases anymore. They don't want the extra budget in their productions.

it is a real shame. I personally believe that prices should be a bit lower to encourage a higher volume of sales, AND the cut iStockPhoto takes shouldn't be anything much more than 10%. The corporate goals of Getty to their sharholders is forcing me out as a customer, but again not as me, but dealing with client budgets.

My only comment is that perhaps the designer should use the price slider to try to find less expensive images. Sounds like they are looking at only S+ and Vetta files at the prices cited.

What is the point?

I don't like the turn this thread has taken.  Picking on some contributor who, as far as we know, isn't even on these forums to defend themselves, for what, a laugh?

I'm not sure what the point is, and you're right it isn't fair to the contributor (though they did open themselves up for scrutiny by posting on IS's forum how they have 16,000 files to UL -- but that was IS, not here at MSG).

However, I am very dismayed by what I see in their port. Many near duplicates, and many, many that are poorly composed, poorly exposed, and poorly keyworded. These are files that wouldn't have been accepted on IS back in 2005; they have no place in a commercial collection, IMO. Not the entire portfolio, mind you, but far too many for my comfort.

Personally for me, I predict this is a disaster. All my best sellers were promoted to S+, but for most of them there's nothing special to them. They were lucky to have caught on and be given a good place in the best match, but at S+ pricing buyers aren't stupid. They'll look for something in the S or Main collections and skip mine.

Way to go! Kill off all my best selling files in one fell swoop. 

I had searches on "Elizabeth May", whoever she may be, yesterday, because my first name is Elizabeth and I have several photos taken in May.

Alamy just posted this in their blog:
The other tweak we've made concerns the pseudonym/photographer name. This is no longer searchable via the main search box. The reason for this is that for those of you who's name contained a search word, eg 'David Bridge', your images would also be returned for a search of "bridge", thus harming your Alamyrank and giving the customer many irrelevant results.