I don't know how long this feature has been there, but I just noticed that iStock no longer has the zoom in and scroll around previews. They've gone to enlarged watermarked previews similar to DT, SS and 123rf.

iStock's are 1235 on the long edge and don't have any visible iD info (such as image number and the site). They also don't seem to have learned from SS's mistakes about including something other than white in the watermark. Strangely, iStock vectors have a different watermark from photos.

Here are links to the previews for iStock, SS and DT for the same photo as a comparison

http://i.istockimg.com/image-zoom/22795801/3/380/253/stock-photo-22795801-senior-couple-with-camera-on-beach.jpg
http://image.shutterstock.com/z/stock-photo-senior-couple-with-camera-on-beach-121062712.jpg
http://www.dreamstime.com/comp.php?imageid=27959586&type=1

Here's an iStock vector watermark

http://i.istockimg.com/image-zoom/64184947/3/380/380/stock-illustration-64184947-elderly-couple-at-the-beach.jpg

In terms of size, SS is still the largest at 1500 px on the long edge, then DT and 123rf at 1300 and IS at 1235. AdobeStock brings up the rear at 1,000 px

Perhaps people want to look at their images to see how well the watermark protects them. Not clear if there'd be any response if improvements were asked for, but it's worth a shot for those who have a large portfolio there.

After someone told me the previews had been around a while, I realized that in Classic View (which I almost always use) you have the zoom-and-scroll, but in the new view, it's the large watermarked preview. Didn't someone say classic is going away?

The geniuses at Istock will be flattered to see that SS has followed their example:
1.  Make detrimental-to-suppliers announcement on a Friday afternoon. 
2.  Supply NO notice period.  As I recall, SS always gave at least 30 days notice and this comes into effect Monday.

Thanks, Thomas, for getting us back on the subject. Let's hope we can stay here.

My SS sales have picked up in the last week but they're lagging way behind FT. I sure do miss the good old days of many SODs and even the occasional EL.

Hard not to notice the drop in SS's rating in the column to the right and the related rise of IS, FT, and P5.

I am a beginner also and I don't have an advice per se but I have, since started on stock, lost most of my pleasure taking photos. I used to love photography and now I am obsessed with focus, noise, commercial value and sensor spots. I also have lost some of the enjoyment I had looking at pictures, mine included, since all I see are their technical problems.

So I don't know. I have also gained a new appreciation for my real job.

 

I think Getty has scored one of the most amazing own goals, and that they are right now left with very few options.

I've had a couple of conversations with analysts over the last couple of years where they've been trying to sanity check Getty's "it's all fixed now" claims. I think Getty has all the credibility of Melissa Meyer saying that Yahoo's on the road back to market dominance. Getty doesn't understand why they've had troubles so they keep "fixing" things that don't address the reasons customers have gone elsewhere. IMO.

There are a couple of notes on your history section. iStock has had two cracks at subscriptions, the second of which was in 2014. The first was in 2008:

http://www.stockphototalk.com/phototalk/2008/04/istockphoto.html

It had many good points but it was too complicated for buyers and never really went anywhere.

Another big issue was Getty not understanding that many iStock buyers were also contributors. They largely destroyed the relationship with small design firms and anyone left probably departed when they effectively jacked up the price of small size images by having one price for everything.

The web site has been in such a bad state of repair for so long - often as various "improvements" were deployed in broken states - that it was much easier to do business almost anywhere else

Another big issue about pricing is that it is impossible to comprehend why some images are three times the price of others. Bog standard stock images (and some of the Getty leftovers pushed to iStock would never have been approved prior to this) are overpriced. I think that leaves buyers feeling it's a hard place to shop for images - and Shutterstock has certainly harped on about a single price for everything (even though their corporate buyers pay different prices).

When Vetta was introduced, the tightly curated collection at a higher price was something almost anyone could grasp. Whether you agreed with the curation decisions or not, it was clear that there was some reasoning behind. After that, things really unraveled, starting with the Agency Collection.

For a while, Getty's message about iStock was effectively "don't shop there". On the iStock site, buyers were referred to Getty for more images. On Getty, they were referred to Thinkstock and vice versa. None of the Getty properties referred buyers back to iStock. There was a story from a contributor who worked at a design firm of a visit from Getty sales reps to his company where they told the company not to buy from iStock because it wasn't legally safe to use their images! Jonathan Klein was frequently snide about user-generated content on iStock.

It's possibly a small thing, but iStock used to be a place where the customers and the contributors could interact in the forums (there was a Request forum; designers could showcase designs which linked to the illustrations or photos used; there were Steel Cage matches and so on). Getty killed that all way before they closed the iStock forums. It's not possible to put a number on how much business that might have cost them, but I think this was part of the process of rendering iStock just one more stock site versus the buyer's first choice place to look.

If you add up the many little things done to drive buyers away over time, I think you see that once buyers moved to somewhere else as their first place to look and they were getting what they needed, you can't get them back by saying "Look! I'm not as bad as I used to be". Why would they switch if they're happy where they are?

Getty's best hope is for Shutterstock to really p*ss off its buyers somehow so they start looking for an alternative. I don't think the odds are good.

So how was it for you? I finished the year just $15 down on last year, despite lots of upoading, but much more erratic in terms of good and bad months.

Quote from: ShadySue on December 09, 2015, 08:31

Quote from: cgartist on December 09, 2015, 08:28

Quote from: Karen on December 09, 2015, 07:49

Quote from: Benozaur on December 09, 2015, 06:59

I wouldn't worry about it too much, remember our friend here:

http://www.shutterstock.com/portfolio/search.mhtml?gallery_id=1256674&gallery_landing=1&page=1&safesearch=1&sort_method=newest

I try to keep my portfolio fresh and diversify as much as I can.

This guy is working hard, adding fresh stuff every single day 

The real hard worker, I have seen in lifetime.. Now I expect number to grow from 700k to 1.4M per week.

I wish I knew how much he's making.
I'd need to be stuffed full of the weed to keep motivated for what I assume are modest returns. BWDIK? Maybe that's what I should have been doing all along. 

I'm seriously starting to wonder this too.

I think that their next step will be to accept any crap, like did iStock about one year ago�