Another fairly big best match shift today. The "fish" search now features three non-V/A files in the first 50, instead of three in the first 1,000. A handful of ordinary files now appear on each page (but with a ridiculous concentration on jumping goldfish, so it's not really much better).

It seems they've realised that the V/A boost was grossly overdone.

Here's a nice example of the insanity of the CV. Say you have an image of half of something - lets say half an apple. You enter "half" as a keyword and what does it default to? "Half full". But half-full can only refer to a container/quantity, so entering "half" will get a keyword rejection. How do you get round this? Well, it turns out that "halved" defaults to "portion (food state), "cut in half" defaults to "bisected", "split" means "separation", "divided" changes into a verb "dividing (changing form)", "sliced" apparently means "chopped", but at least "cross-section" means "cross-section", "cut in two" gives "cut in two(!)".

So someone wanting a picture of half an apple should not be able to find it searching on "half" and "apple", since any correct returns are examples of keyword spamming. The buyer should know to search on the very obvious  "bisected apple" which is the closest approximation, although cut-in-half apple will get there, too.

The CV is absolutely awash with stuff like this which is why I can never understand why people say it is wonderful.

BTW, searching for half an apple produces over 1700 images, lots of them a really good match for someone searching for that because loads of people apparently have half-full apples; bisected apple produces 23 results (the second "best" of which has an apple that is chopped, not bisected ... *sigh*)..

My earnings per sale for the month were $1.20 at Fotolia a year ago and are now 50c per sale. I'm in the new 25c per credit band. Obviously, as well as the 20% pay cut introduced this year, I have seen a significant shift from credit sales to subscription sales (and I have also seen a 20% drop in the number of files sold).
Is a 60% fall in earnings per file on Fotolia when comparing February 2010 with February 2011 the norm?

where?

This used to be the season of high expectations, when agencies announced the commission rises (and price rises) that kept the earnings going up despite the rate of growth of collections.

This year, I've heard nothing (good). Am I missing something? Or are we just going to have to battle harder and harder to try to keep our heats above water?

This is a new one on me:

"The architecture in this image is likely subject to copyright in favour of the original designer. Because this building is so famous and because it's a predominant aspect of the image, the image will likely constitute an unauthorized derivative work and therefore represent infringement of the exclusive copyrights of the designer."

I think the entire building copyright paranoia is probably a misunderstanding of the the law, but the added idea that how famous a structure is is an important factor in making pictures of it a copyright violation seems like an entirely new legal principle.

Does anybody really know (I mean REALLY know, not received wisdom from the stock sites) if building copyright really applies to photos taken from public places, or if any architect has ever sued over a photograph of his building being used in an advert?

Once again, I have gone for a week or more without the sales stats data showing up - everything is just zeros. When I asked about this in the past I was just told it was an old bug and there was some suggestion it was to do with the way I was browsing.

Do others have this problem and does anybody know of a cure for it?

The "exclusive" inspector who was found to be selling on other sites has been reinstated. The files on Canstock have been "deactivated by the photographer" not removed from the site because they were stolen.

It seems iStock is very forgiving about people who sell exclusive Vetta files on Canstock ... or is it just some people who get forgiven?

I can believe it was just a mistake and the reinstatement is fair treatment. I find it harder to believe the Istock treats others equally fairly when even having a photo on flickr with the wrong licensing options set will block your exclusivity application

Some Brit has said they have shifted $30,000 of spend away from iStock.

Nobody has asked how much greed is needed to replace this. As iStock is only making maybe 3% extra overall from screwing us, it will take 33 x $30,000 of sales before they recover the money from the price hikes that this loss has cost them. That is  $990,000 of sales.

It also follows that if just 3% of buyers withdraw their business, the entire benefit to Getty of this crazy pay cut will be completely wiped out.

(Brainstorm: Initially I said "advertising" because that's what my images go to, of course, I meant "sales" and I've edited this accordingly)

I've seen an extraordinary drop in sales since the new site went live. Is it just me, is it non-exclusives generally or is it everyone? Have they pushed through some search reshuffle that is affecting me?

The recent developments at iStock and the irritations at Fotolia have really highlighted for me the fact that three of the "Big Four" are propping each other up and if any one of them should be bought by Getty the other two will suffer a very severe blow indeed.

This week, Getty cut off StockXpert as a source of funds for non-exclusives. That comes just weeks after handsomely boosting the returns for exclusives.

Even before StockXpert's death, it took the sum total of earnings from all the significant micros to balance out - just maybe - iStock's payments. Now it is even less likely that they do (and you can get onto Thinkstock directly from iS if you want to, so the fact you can get there as an independent doesn't matter).

The remaining big three probably each contribute 30% of the non-Istock earnings. It would only need Istock to buy one of those for the equilibrium to shift decisively. If IS boosted its sales by a further 16% or with customers from another major site, then we would end up with a situation where exclusivity would pay twice as much as independence.

Wouldn't that suck every single major contributor into iStock's fold, leaving the remaining sites trying to groom new talent that might simply desert as soon as it got good enough to hit the 500 download level at iS?

It would just take one more acquisition for iStock to restore the monopoly it foolishly let slip five years ago by being too modest with its initial exclusivity offer.

How much would Getty be willing to pay for complete global domination of the microstock market? Was it really so far from the mark when someone said in another thread that Fotolia was preparing to sell out to Getty?

Does my analysis make sense?