I have a feeling they modified the search engine for people who turned subs off forcing them   opt-in again.

I believe you are right vphoto    As ALL of my activity on this site stopped the day I "opted-out." Also ... they heavy hitters would not have returned unless it hit their revenue stream significantly.

Mark

Yes I did see people in another forum saying their sales increased after they opted-out. My sales were rather flat while I was out.

Perhaps there is no direct link, but it's interesting to test the theories

Opted out in January -> thread "Are things going well in microstock?"

Since then, I experienced a sharp drop in credit sales (not a single DL last week, never had that since I joined StockXpert).

Yesterday, I opted in again to see if there is any correlation.

Same here.. I tried but I opted in again..

I am pretty sure that as soon as you opt-out, stockxpert gives you less exposure.. Much Less!!! An the reason for that is they wouldn't want to upset their customers.. After all, If I was a buyer and subscribed for a couple of hundred dollars I would really go mad having to pay extra for some images that are not included.. There would be no point for me subscribing if I was still gonna spend extra money..
So what the website does is clever.. Do NOT show the opted-out images to subscribers at all!! I would do that!

I am more than sure this is the case, because as soon as I opted back in sales started to flow again..

Iron, I was opted out for quite a while and my sales went down, but not instantly. I believe when subdls were missing my files got less popular. Each dl counts to the popularity of your file, it does no difference if sub or credit. Therefore because we are then missing sub dls, our files got less popular. That quite simple and legit in my opinion.
It is not automatically that opting out will not show your files up in the search engine. I checked that.
Thats my theory.

You could be right.. And it sounds very logical.. But also it is possible to hide opted-out images if there are alternatives and only show them in the search results when there are no alternatives..

I really can not explain my experience in any other way because it was my number 2 best selling site, then it became number 6, and since I opted in again it went back up there where it was.. That is no coincidence I think..

Popularity thing is very logical but there is no way it is going to effect me straight after I opted-out.. it would need some time for my files to lose popularity.. not the next day..

It seems to me that my sales went up after I opted back in in April. It is still just beginning of the month so it's too early for conclusions, but so far my SX sales are progressing better this month comparing with several flat months while I was opted out.

Remark: When I say "better sales" I mean $$ value, not just number of sales. So it seems to me that the idea that even low value of subscription sales still increase my portfolio exposure and therefore non-subscription sales, might have sense.

There's a thread in StockXpert's forums (or should I say, a buyer posted a question to which as yet there is no answer) asking if advanced search could have a check box to show only subscription images.

The buyer's comment is that with "...more and more people opting out of subscriptions..." he doesn't want to see images that he can't buy. From his point of view it seems very reasonable.

Not sure if it's actually true that more people are opting out as I don't track that and I'm sure StockXpert wouldn't say.

At any rate, with IS's subscription plan charging higher prices for larger sizes, perhaps there's some chance that StockXpert will reconsider their subscription plan too.

I opted in, then out, then in - whatever.  I don't care anymore.  I notice no real difference in sales either way.