Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on June 10, 2019, 08:31

It is an absolute nightmare. They were so promising as an actually innovative new idea. Then they got into bed with Getty and sales are absolutely going through the floor. Really depressed about this one.

It really is sad.  Just a year ago, I made $450 there.  This month, looks to be around $40.  Such a good idea too.

Yep, looks like Canva has completely screwed us.

How are things going at Stocksy?  I've heard they are becoming very successful.  Anyone have any experience there?

I have a user code for the free Offer, but when I go to place my order there doesn't appear to be any box for inserting the code (or for any coupon) - just boxes for credit card details.

Hi there ,I own a panasonic g85 and couple panasonic lenses (12-35 and 35-100).I started to upload some photos and videos to istockphoto .As you may now my camera is 16mp , and I want to ask is megapixels so important in stock photography? Do I need to change my camera to a newer one with more megapixes? (forexample a7riii or a7iii).
Thanks ...

Years and years ago when iStock was easily the most successful stock agency they offered pictures in various sizes - from small to medium, to large, extra large etc.  The largest size was XXL and equated to about 21mp.  Sometimes they skewed the search to place an emphasis on those images available at the largest sizes.  This caused many photographers to want to upgrade equipment to at least 21mp (and why the Canon 5Dii was such a big seller).

However life has changed a lot since those days, with the largest share of the buyers market being for electronic delivery (web pages) where such large sizes are simply not necessary.  As web pages change daily what those buyers want is a huge supply of attractive and relevant images but they only need sizes for their web designs.  Yes there is still a market for printed media, billboards, company reports etc but those markets are dwindling.  The newest market is cellphones of course and an increasing need for images just to display on phones and tablets.

So I don't think size matters any more.  And to show how relevant this is, iStock took away their various size options and now offer only a one size download.

If you are an ad agency photographer shooting fashion, advertising etc for the big corporations, then it's still important to deliver maximum size and quality.  But for basic stock photography anything in the 24-36mp area is certainly large enough.  And frankly most high quality starter cameras now come at 24mp.

Attn Franky please.  I've just had two or three batches rejected with the rejection reason "this subject isn't suitable as editorial - please resubmit for the creative essentials collection".  Strange because I rarely do editorial and certainly wouldn't have submitted those batches as such.  When I checked DeepMeta I found that those batches had been created as editorial by default (something I didn't notice at the time).  I don't remember DeepMeta having such a default in the past - it always defaulted to Creative.

Anyway, with resubmit permission I used the 'move' function to move those files to new batches.  Interestingly in the 'move' function I am given the option to create a new batch.  Fine.  But once again the editorial checkbox is checked by default.

It seems to me that this 'editorial by default' situation is rather strange; I imagine the vast majority of submissions to iStock are creative or illustration, with only a minority as editorial.

On the other hand perhaps I've accidentally clicked something somewhere that has told my copy of DeepMeta to default to editorial.  Unlikely, but possible.

Franky, perhaps you could have a look at this situation - perhaps the editorial default has appeared in one of the recent updates.

I went non-exclusive just over three years ago.  It's been a struggle.  I took the decision to upload to the new agencies gradually over time, picking the seasons etc.  I did a lot of rekeywording, eliminating most of the special words phrases etc used by iStock.  I also reprocessed many older photos.

After three years I'll guess that my income is about the same as it would have been had I stayed exclusive.  Difficult to tell because I know sales and income for most people at iStock have fallen gently over that period.  I am not making the same as I used to make three/four years back as an exclusive, but the overall market has declined/become saturated.

I am happier as a non-exclusive because I used to worry a lot about what was happening at iStock and watching the gradual decline.  Now I don't have all my eggs in that basket.  However, becoming non-exclusive is a very difficult task if done properly.  And if you decide to spread uploads over the seasons, income in that first year will be low.  You need to have a money reserve.

Not easy.  In many ways I am happier but I am disappointed with my income.  I suspect the market will continue to decline over the coming years.

Almost nothing I've uploaded in the past month has made a sale.  Everything appears to have disappeared into a black hole.

Stock media has been dying from the day that stock media came into existence. Well, it has and it hasn't. The need for stock has been increasing gradually over the years. More channels, more shows, bigger audiences, more Youtube videos etc etc. So stock media is very much alive and well.

It's just the same old story of more and more competition when it comes to the people that sell stock media. There's no way to keep up with the increase in competition, so everyone gets a slightly smaller slice of the pie year over year. It's the same for everyone.... tv channels, slightly more viewers over the years, but more channels and more shows. Youtube channels... slightly more Youtube viewers over the years, but loads more channels and videos. There's not much that can be done about that.

Make more content than you did last year, make better content than you did last year, make sure you're on the sites you should be and not on the sites you shouldn't, revisit your descriptions, keywords, titles, think about branding, streamlining your working practices to make everything more efficient, consider cost-effective marketing, look for ways to maximise profits and minimise costs, add value, see what your competition are doing, review prices on sites where you can set your own, both from a time standpoint and a financial one, look for additional ways your work could be bringing in money, etc etc etc.

And if you've done all that and you still eventually get to the point where it's no longer worth while... then at least you'll know you did everything you could. You can then tip your hat to the world of stock media, say "Well, it was fun while it lasted kid. So long", and then turn your back before walking off into the mist. Or do what I'll do... say "See ya around suckers!" and fly off in my spaceship clutching a cheap bottle of wine in each paw.   

Entirely agree.

But the problem is that supply is accelerating and it's impossible to keep up.  I believe at the last market report Shutterstock said that the library had increased by about 40% but sales only by 2%.  This means that in order to just stand still one has to increase one's portfolio by 40% or so.

I accept that higher quality, more attractive concepts etc should eventually produce results better than the run-of-the-mill stuff being uploaded by many, but the problem of visibility arises - even the best work won't sell if it's drowned by millions of other images.

However, yours is a generally positive analysis and I agree - all we can do is try to produce good quality work and hope for the best.  Unfortunately even that approach is likely to end in disappointment in the long term.

What camera/lens etc are you using?

Same here.  Sales numbers have absolutely plummeted since June 1st.  Usually I see about 20-30 sales per day, but since June 1st that has changed to only 2-3 per day, a drop of 80% or so.

Unfortunately the sales  numbers are confirmed by the views shown by Deepmeta - for the last few months my Deepmeta views have been showing about 2200-2500 over the past 30 days but that is now dropping rapidly, down to 1860 or so and falling.

Looks like something significant happened on June 1st.

I'd really like to think that is some sort of glitch, but my gut fell given my experiences with iStock over a twelve year period is that we've been screwed big time.  Hope I'm wrong and it's just a temporary thing.

Fuji GFX.  But the lenses are very expensive.

Well this is potentially very disappointing news for those of us who have worked hard to build portfolios at Canva.  It's good that Canva have said that all existing Canva images will be prioritised, so perhaps the impact won't be too bad.  But it's a worry.  At best there will be some slight dilution, but at worst a complete decimation of current sales and incomes.  I suppose it all depends on how the arrangement is implemented - if it's through an additional link that takes the customer off to the iStock web site to import into Canva perhaps that won't be so bad.  But if the arrangement involves importing the entire iStock catalog into Canva then I can't see how that can result in anything but reduced sales for current Canva contributors.  Presumably more information will become available in due course.

I've had a similar report before. I'll do some investigation.
Thanks for reporting!

Still getting this problem - half the keywords appear in Spanish not English.  Appears to be random and doesn't affect all files.  Preference keyword language is English.