Let's all take a deep breath here. I'd say we're in a "the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated" situation.

Yes, there are monumental changes happening in the offices of iStock.  And yes, JJRD's leaving is big news.  But even today, after the news broke, buyers are still buying.  How much will all of this "inside baseball" news affect sales today, tomorrow, next week, next month?  I'm guessing not much.  

We're all assuming the current iStock leadership is incompetent and has no plan to take the business anywhere but down.  Recent missteps even validate this opinion.  But it still remains to be seen.

I am no iStock cheerleader.  I haven't uploaded there in quite some time.  But my sales for the past few weeks have been going up... not just a typical post-holiday rise, but they're back to where they were last Sept or Oct.  To me this means that most buyers are so disconnected to what's happening behind the scenes that the iStock management has a bit of time to coast and implement positive change before the business actually dies.  Will it happen?  Who knows... but it would be naive to write iStock's obituary today.

Quote from: stockmarketer on January 17, 2012, 14:49

For the record, my daily RPI started around 9 cents per day four years ago, and it's hovering around 11.5 cents per day today.  

Those are incredible figures that could probably only be matched by the top 10 or so microstockers in the world. At those rates a medium-sized portfolio of 5000 images would be generating nearly $210K per annum.

My port is not quite that large, but I'm hoping to scale up to that point.

Are you vectors, photos or what?

 Yes.  I try to dabble in everything... keeps my port varied.

Having great sales today - they can keep doing what they're doing. It works at least for me.

Haven't noticed a white screen all day...

+1

No white screens for me either.  And sales have been pretty fantastic for the past several days.  Almost back to my BDE levels of early fall 2011.

I can't be bothered with what each site earns me per download.  I simply can't control that.

I track how much each image earns me, or Return Per Image (RPI).  And I track it in aggregate, rather than per individual image, which would be impossible at a high volume of sales per day.  I simply take the day's total and divide by number of images I have created.  (No, not every image is accepted at every site, but the point is that I took time to create the pictures, and an unaccepted image should bring down the RPI as a sign that something needs fixing.)

RPI tells me whether what I'm uploading is connecting with buyers.  If RPI is rising, then I'm doing a better job of figuring out what buyers (and the agencies) want... uploading less crap and more valuable stuff.  If RPI is falling, well, there's a problem that needs addressing.

For the record, my daily RPI started around 9 cents per day four years ago, and it's hovering around 11.5 cents per day today.  I take a few nuggets of info from that: my sense of what will sell is gradually getting better, and my old stuff continues to do well.  If you figure your RPI and it falls over time, you need to step back and quickly figure out what buyers want, and you need to upload images with lasting appeal... not pictures that will sell OK right out of the gate and then sink into the abyss.

I just scratch my head when people debate RPD.  What does return per download tell you, except to give you something to get upset over and feel powerless to fix? 

January a bummer?  January is typically one of my best three months, along with March and September.  This January is no exception.  Yesterday was spectacular and this morning I woke up to 70+ downloads and 2 more ELs.

Thanks to an EL rush that continues, my SS January tally so far is up about 200% from the same period in 2011.

At IS, I'm down about 50% for the same period of comparison. But frankly, I just don't care about IS anymore.  It could go to zero and I wouldn't really miss them.

Dec 2011 vs. Nov 2011: -15%

Dec 2011 vs. Dec 2010: +94%

2011 vs. 2010: +100%

(now in my fourth year of ms)

Don't worry about timing of uploads at DP or anywhere else.  If the only way your pictures will sell is if you are at the top of the "Latest Uploads" at the most visited time, then there is something wrong with what you're uploading.  It means that your strategy is to upload "more of the same." 

Instead, focus those energies on planning and creating more unique stuff -- in-demand subject matters that aren't already done to death, a unique style that's all your own -- and buyers will find them.  That approach will lead to much larger sales than playing the guessing game of what's the best moment to upload stuff that would not otherwise stand out.

I upload when it works well for my schedule.  I don't give a second thought to whether it's good timing for reviews and ultimate placement on the sites.  My sales have done just fine.

From which I would infer either that loop has more than $424 in the same timescale, or is nearly at that level, so that all the work of uploading to various sites wouldn't be worthwhile.

If that is indeed what loop is saying, I think he's way off.  Though some exclusives have been chiming in to say things are just fine for them right now, I can't believe that exclusivity is a better option for anyone.  Loop's $424/day as exclusive vs. lagereek's $424/day as non-exclusive are apples and oranges.  If loop is indeed doing that much at IS exclusively, I would bet he'd make a fair amount more if he could have his port everywhere.  I'm also in that ballpark as a non-exclusive, and I know from my IS stats that I'd have to be doing about 10x as well as I am now by becoming an exclusive to make up the difference.  Even accounting for all the benefits of exclusivity, there's no way it would happen.

December is definitely on its usual slide.  I just looked at my chart of monthly variations, with 2011 data on top of 2010, 2009, etc., and it's striking how the patterns are the same every year.  December is always down a fair amount from November.  Then January is a huge bump, February and March continue the climb, and with Easter/Spring Break, stagnation sets in and there is little overall movement until September.  Then there's a huge increase from Sept thru November, and the cycle is back to a falloff in December.   The longer you do this and the more your portfolio and earnings increase, the more statistically valid your numbers will be for making predictions and seeing real trends.

My plan is to only submit images that will sell

I think you meant this tongue-in-cheek, but that is actually my plan.  

In 2011, I focused on increasing my output, but now I'm rethinking that strategy, focusing less on uploading everything I can and more on creating more of what sells, even if I end up uploading less.

I'm in the middle of doing an analysis of what subjects and styles are selling well and what are not.  I am making a list of subjects and styles that I am retiring from my upload routine and will concentrate more on what is actually performing well for me.   It has really opened my eyes to see that certain picture types that I had thought were underperformers are very high earners, and more recent ones that I have been proud of are doing poorly and should be discontinued, as much as it pains me to do so.

Plus, I will be testing some new subjects and styles and performing my analysis on a more frequent basis.   I'm shocked that it has taken me this long to view my results this way and make some tough choices, but I'm excited by the ROI that I expect to see by listening to what buyers want or don't want.  

I'll play, since monthly earnings per image is a number I track.  For Nov 2011, the average earnings per image was $4.08.   (I don't track number of downloads.)

Quote from: stockmarketer on December 16, 2011, 13:15

Or how about the millions on flickr?

Or the potentially billions that can be found through Google Image Search?

Anyone care to guess how many bloggers or small-time website builders / brochure designers simply do Google searches on what they need, find something large enough and without a watermark, and just "borrow it"?   And in many cases, they're lifting something that someone else has already lifted, so the trail back to the original piece of art that was stolen is too twisted to follow.

Given this perspective, free collections on places like Dreamstime are pretty smart.  They pull in people just looking for free stuff, with the hope of hooking them into paying a buck or two down the road.  

Stealing an image from someone is different than what dreamstime is offering:     
"The high resolution images downloaded from the free section may be used under the terms mentioned for the regular Royalty Free license".
In my example 1700 free dls and 5 sales, why would you pay for something you can get for free (stealing doesn't get you the license to use it).

Of course it's different.  My point is that from the perspective of a person looking for an image, he/she can go to a high price agency, low price agency, or find something for free.  These options all compete with one another.  The images you're trying to sell are in direct competition with many similar images that are easily obtained for free.   It looked like this conversation was turning into a complaint against low-cost selling or even free collections, and I was pointing out that there's a competitive need for approaches like this.  If microstock is going to survive, it has to wake up to this reality and do things like offer sets of images very cheap or even free as hooks to lure in people who would otherwise just steal.