Reading from Lee's comments, that report is more targeted to agencies than contributors...

I think that's Sean's point - as I read it, Sean's suggesting others here could sell their experience with microstock to wannabe agencies who don't know the lay of the land.

I saw a documentary about the California Gold rush and apparently the folks who sold supplies to the arriving miners were the ones who really made money. I don't see a huge rush of incoming agencies, but perhaps there are enough to sell a few at $700?

I didn't boycott E+ exactly. I had a tiny number of Vetta rejects that got in automatically and I didn't see anything happening for them at all. I initially didn't do any more because the promised tools weren't yet ready and the boost in best match was "soon". After the tools went from soon to never and lots of people complained about the lack of a boost, I just put E+ on the back burner.

Some people have had good luck with that and others had very bad results. It's a guess, but given my portfolio - no huge sellers, just a lot of decent files that sell OK - I think I'd be more likely to have have seen poor results.

2010 was a fantastic year for me for sales, and until September 7th, my morale was right up there too. I didn't need E+ to have that great year and absent the many wretched changes recently, I think 2011 could have been just as good and I'd still be exclusive.

I'm well aware that other agencies have their problems, and it was in part because I was tired of endlessly watching out for various anti-contributor moves that I started looking at exclusivity. I won't be back at Fotolia because they've banned me - they weren't happy when I started encouraging contributors to suspend uploading when they first introduced low-ball subscriptions and I'm not shy about speaking up when I think things aren't right. I did approach them as I was considering terminating exclusivity and they said I wasn't welcome.

I have my old accounts at DT and SS, but all the images will have to be uploaded again - I asked DT if the disabled images could be re-enabled and they said no. In SS's case, I think it may work out for the best to re-upload anyway given it's been nearly 2.5 years since I left.

Steep trek is probably about right, but I'm willing to take the hit for a while to move back. iStock is becoming a place for a small group of Vetta/Agency contributors and that's just not me. For those for whom that works - buyers or contributors - that's great.

The only emotional part of it is that while I felt I was part of an organization and was valued in my small role, I was very happy to be involved exclusively with iStock. If I'm going to be ignored and not valued for my contributions - just another slob with a camera - then I'd rather deal with multiple agencies. Lower expectations in that case that I have for a sole partner. And I am still deeply angry about the 180 on the promises for cannister grandfathering.

...Unless you fill the majority of your portfolio as agency and vetta files, theres no longer any point in becoming exclusive imo....

See Sean's comment here, which is saying that for him, creating more Agency is the way to keep earnings up.

The problem is that on Getty, Agency/Vetta only gets you 20% and no RC for the following year - which over time will I think affect the take from iStock. IOW you'll end up selling for 20% whether at IS or Getty even though the prices will be high.

There's a certain irony in your choice of thread - the one about people canceling their contracts

However the canceling has been taking longer than the 30 days, so it's amusing that now they're backed up on the input side as well.

To answer your question, it seems that almost all of the iStock site is suffering from bugs and other problems and that you've encountered  yet another - assuming the "maintenance" is fixing bugs versus changing the rules for exclusives or exclusivity applications.

You really don't have much choice but to wait it out. No, it isn't normal the way things used to be at iStock, but unfortunately broken is the new normal.

Not sure if that was helpful, but I think it's the best I can do!

Lobo acknowledged that the my_uploads page wasn't updated with the amount paid. For some of these "fix" payments they update the csv (I think only in the monthly version) with a column that says "Admin adjustments" or something like that. Nothing itemized, just a lump sum for the month.

Someone else in that thread referenced my long ignored suggestion about detailed, downloadable sales (& refund) data. It's really important for contributors to have detailed records of money going in and out of our accounts.

Detailed records wouldn't stop outright fraud, but it does make mistakes easier to catch (in addition to giving us information with which to build a spreadsheet to track things).

Given that we can't get even one agency to do this, it's probably complete pie in the sky to think about an agency-wide CSV format in which they'd agree to report our data - common codes for sales, licenses, etc. so we could track all agencies without doing something specific for each one.

I'm hoping at some point some banking regulator gets hold of this mess and makes the agencies act like our money matters.

Here's an update on the results I'd posted in April of the number of "regular" (non-Agency/Vetta) photos in the first 200 with Best Match sort order. Sean's fixed his greasemonkey script to work with IS's latest changes (so I can easily count totals) - thanks Sean - so I updated it with today's results.

Bottom line is some things are slightly better, others are slightly worse. In any event, if you're not a flaming image, you aren't on the first page of "regular" results. Remember, once upon a time, new images would get a lookin on the first page of results for a short while?

Sorry about the formatting, but although the tabs get preserved when I copy and paste - and look fine in the editor on the forum - they don't look right once you exit the editor and post

200 per page, photos only, number of regular images on first page of search

Search term         Reg 4/12   Reg 4/14   Reg 5/11
      
fish*                      9      11      13
senior couple           20      30      25
woman shopping      31      36      32      
tropical beach         12      15      17
spa treatment         39      44      39
woman eating         21      31      26
woman laptop         30      41      37
man portrait           26      35      29
doctor                  37      45      44
swimming pool         13      19      16
summer outdoors      29      35      38
child outdoors         36      43      48
sexy woman          9      12      13   

* both food and animal meanings

Down 15%

I have only uploaded some editorial images this year so far though, so not much portfolio growth. I have a lot of stuff I haven't uploaded because of the many bugs (with aRGB images and new stuff getting buried).

Typically the last 3 months of the year are very strong for me, but as this best match change has been horrible, I'm not all that optimistic at the moment.

I still have some time to think about this - and see how others are doing - but it might be a good idea (a) to do what you did with the 'lypse images which can't be anywhere else and (b) soften the blow a little of the cut in both price and commission by putting some proven sellers that I don't think have obvious on-site competition.

I can rationalize it with respect to buyers by thinking that they can easily get the files elsewhere if they wish and the files aren't any more expensive than they are now (as exclusive files)

Edited to add that JJRD just locked a thread in the exclusive forum asking about the (long-ago promised) boost in best match placement for E+ images. In the way he said that it would be coming when they were good and ready and that contributors had to realize that this recent best match change was the biggest they'd ever made, he tacitly acknowledged that there hasn't been any E+ boost yet.

Given how long ago E+ was introduced (at which point this boost in search placement was promised) his comments that some contributors expected things to happen with the flick of a switch seems disingenuous to me - being impatient over one year later (E+ was introduced in April 2010) is hardly expecting things with the flick of a switch.

Bottom line: don't base any decision about putting files into P+ on an assumption of improved search results placement.

I haven't left yet but I haven't and don't expect to hear anything from iStock about terminating my exclusivity.

When they didn't contact me to ask about the fraud conference call even though I think there were many more "votes" for me than for some of the people who participated it was clear to me that I must have p*(#@d off a lot of people at HQ.

I think as long as they keep the visible exclusives - Lise, Sean, et al. - they'll not sweat loosing the rest of us.

This is what I see:

I still don't see the icon that the admin who announced this program said would identify images in the P+ program. I see "Stock photo +" on the detail page and some have the new pricing, but others have the words but not the new prices.

Does anyone see it?

Without an identifier that shows the price, aren't we just setting things up for another round of complaints from buyers who feel ambushed by the price hike? They had images in their lightbox, carefully selected because they were all non-exclusive and now suddenly the price has doubled...?

I read Lobo's argument as to why this was really a suggestion, but I don't buy it. The suggestion forum is a black hole - it's a way of sweeping unwanted discussions under the rug.

I didn't see any point in having a call unless there was something iStock wanted and couldn't get - the only reason they did anything for video and illustration. There wouldn't have been that announcement of Vetta expansion with no content. However it seemed to be a perfectly legitimate topic for the Discussion forum. Just embarassing to iStock.