Missed that thread, Thanks.

This reminds me of the Doors song "This is the end..."
Even for iStock this is a bonehead move. They are really good at auto-destructing.
Although I`m sure someone will get a promotion and a raise out of this  

Best match at iStock no longer finds the most relevant image, rather it locates most relevant image from a very small subsection of the collection. This is not in any customer`s best interest so there is now yet another incentive for customers to move on to other sites. They are the authors of their own demise.

I never seen nothing like this, today is monday and sales are completely dead, I have not sold a single image in hours, like I said last year and the year before at this day of the year I used to sell $250.00 - $300, today I am still at $28.30, this is like a 85% plummeting in sales, and I am exclusive.

I would like to know if other IS exclusives are experiencing something like this during last 4 days. They did something massive last friday, something never seen before. If this stay like this, I will be out of business by january. And I have the 8th collection in IS in size, 57th in sales.

And is nothing we can do, even questions about this matter are immediately censored in IS forums

Sorry to hear about your troubles. I don`t think you are alone among exclusives. Can you remember how JJRD declared that Thinkstock is a different customer base and that making images available there would have no impact on iStock sales?  Remember how we were promised to be grandfathered into existing commission levels? Remember how we were told by KK that commissions wouldn`t be changed except for the better? Can you recall that money isn`t what makes us happy? Not sure about you but from my perspective, they have lost any and all credibility and entrusting them with 100% of my stock revenue was making me naucious so I became independent, a change which I have not regretted.

isn't it better that most buyers don't use the slider? it's there to appease buyers that are price conscious and want the ability to sort by price. good that most buyers don't use it.

as for exclusive only content - this is a smart and proven differentiator in commercial business models. iStock should probably go all-exclusive as part of the Getty-family brand, it's a smart move. I definitely feel for independents, especially those I call friends who are affected by this. But independents have the option to go exclusive. (gostwyck, I can hear your guffaw from Canada). where Getty gets a FAIL on their annual report card is contributor relations. undervaluing suppliers is bad business. no work = no success for Getty. all it will take is one pi55-off too many before contributors start divorcing themselves from the Getty family. the RC adjustment was a good move in the right direction.

I for one would be very happy to see iStock go all exclusive. That means that Thinkstock would close its doors overnight due to a lack of content and buyers would leave in droves (even faster than they are doing today) to other sites which pay a fair commission. Unfortunately, its not in the cards.

My 2 cents:

- iStock will have increased competition from other sites (Shutterstock single image sales comes to mind).
- Thinkstock will seriously erode traffic to iStock and have a hugely negative effect on profitability and contributor moral. This time tweaking best match to favor exclusives even more wont help because the customers just wont be there.
- Hubris level wont change, every disaster will be characterized as magnificent.
- Lobo will get a big bonus for his people skills

Quote from: imageegami on November 30, 2011, 22:12

Don`t under estimate the amount of time required to become non-exclusive. The biggest hurddle by far is re-keywording your entire portfolio. If you just copy paste your iStock controlled vocabulary you will sell yourself short.

one of the many reasons I'm still exclusive. the work isn't what scares me though. I've just talked to enough independents and done enough homework to know, that although it may be satisfying for some contributors to have dumped their crowns, the grass isn't greener as an indie. I prefer to be exclusive overall, but at times it makes things difficult (it's not exactly exciting contributing to iStock's wannabe editorial collection).

For me its been 2 steps back and then 3 steps forward. so overall I`m happy with my decision to be independent. Once I became non-exclusive, I realized that although it was a lot of work and initially and I took a temporary hit, the greatest benefit is not having all my eggs in one basket. The only constant in life is change and I get a greater sense of security in diversifying my portfolio.

Quote from: cclapper on November 30, 2011, 22:15

Quote from: Mliss on November 30, 2011, 22:02

Quote from: ProArtwork on November 30, 2011, 21:48

I'm getting a feeling they got hacked!

No, they haven't. They would be screaming in all corners if they have. This is just absolute incompetence of their IT department, massive failure, inability to restore the back-up and maybe (I wouldn't be surprised at that point) absence of back-up altogether.

They probably haven't gotten hacked, but gosh, there's a good excuse for them to use!

It could also be an inside job. Anything is possible! But if true, they would never admit to it especially if it's an inside job.

Someone sent Lobo a fish-head pie as payment

Don`t under estimate the amount of time required to become non-exclusive. The biggest hurddle by far is re-keywording your entire portfolio. If you just copy paste your iStock controlled vocabulary you will sell yourself short.

Quote from: aethelflaed on November 30, 2011, 17:46

G... almighty... what an embarrassingly unprofessional Error Page.

What's going on now?

They seem to have lost the CSS link.

Lobo probably fell into the spinning gears and gummed up the crankwobble.

When I posted the original post, I was thinking more from a Shutterstock perspective, not a contributor perspective. SS is now going to be face to face with TS with the exact same content. The only differentiator will be price and TS is lower. They will need to do something to protect their market share. If not offering exclusivity then what ? (By offering exclusitivty, they would be puliing content away from iStock, Thinkstock and Getty all at the same time).

If Shutterstock offered exclusivity (along with new single image plan currently in Pilot phase), it is my opinion that they could take a serious chunk of iStock/Thinkstock market share because now, Thinkstock would no longer automatically have the same content as Shutterstock (Since independent iSTock contributors are now all automatically cloned on TS).

Why? do they keep investing so much time, effort and money on advertising this TS?  hell, nobody is making anything over there, I havent heard of anybody happy with their earnings. Is it meant to be some Messiah micro site, which will open everybodys eyes, to see the light perhaps? beats me completely.
[/quote]

It`s because they are trying to compete with Shutterstock. By opting in all independents, they automatically have the same content on Thinkstock as Shutterstock with the flick of a switch. Step 2 is to make this content cheaper than SS thereby capturing a large market share. This is the plan as best I can tell. Unfortunately its like medication, they all have side-effects. The unintended consequence of all this is that they are sacrificing a profitable revenue stream by migrating their customer base over to Thinkstock. The other problem with this is that SS is smart and they wont just stand idly by while this school yard bully swings his stick around. They have already announced single image pilot project and it wouldn`t surprise me a bit if they offered exclusivity at some point. Then you would see a massive shift to Shutterstock with iStock and Thinkstock sinking for good. This is how I see it.