Wow. Thanks for posting that. It pretty much says it all. I am a little disappointed, though, that DT isn't showing at least a little bit of an increase.

Thanks for posting.
I tried Canstock - impressive increase.

Looking at Alexa, the stats are much more even other than the holiday period, for all agencies.
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/istockphoto.com#
However, the siteanalytics stats would explain a lot.
But you'd think if sales were falling off to that extent, they'd be really pushing to attract and keep new customers, not running around like headless chickens thinking up new schemes that don't work and raising prices.

In the 2009 Photoshelter survey, a significant portion of designers said they would be moving away from microstock in 2010.  Perhaps they left for more traditional rf/rm sources?  

Hopefully they are finding contributors' personal websites and buying direct.

edit: It might be that designers at LARGE companies who are in Getty's pocket are moving to traditional RF/RM sources, but I can't imagine that most of the companies in the US can afford to pay double or triple or more for images. If they are, the people who got laid off or took huge cuts in pay should be starting a revolt.

Well if these percentage figures are true??  however sceptical, Im  not noticing any decrease in IS sales, contrary some days they are up.
I have however noticed a big increase in FT and the trad-RM,RF.

I'm not seeing any 50% drop.  Sorry.

I'm not seeing any 50% drop.  Sorry.

And I wouldn't expect someone of your caliber TO see a drop. I can't see lagereeks port, but since he is reporting an increase in trad RF/RM, I'm guessing he's up there, too. It's pretty tough for me to compare ANY of my stats to that of yours. Not being snarky, because you deserve to be there...you churn em out... just stating the facts.

The stats, I assume, reflect the greatest percentage of people's salestraffic, not the ones who are at the top of the heap.

edit: and I also agree...who knows which stats are even the truth.

Well, it's just traffic, so it could be contributors are spending less time there as well. January has been pretty slow at IS, but January has always been a strange month for me in the micros. Sometimes it's great and sometimes it stinks.

right it is just traffic.  and since we have also seen less downloads, but earnings compensated by higher prices, I would say you'd have to look at the downloads to see if that sort of shows the traffic.  and yes, the traffic would include contributors not just buyers to that would be a factor as well.  It is interesting, but in order to make much sense of it one has to look at the overall picture, and, frankly, we don't have all the data available to us.

Quote from: cthoman on January 19, 2011, 18:50

Well, it's just traffic, so it could be contributors are spending less time there as well. January has been pretty slow at IS, but January has always been a strange month for me in the micros. Sometimes it's great and sometimes it stinks.

right it is just traffic.  and since we have also seen less downloads, but earnings compensated by higher prices, I would say you'd have to look at the downloads to see if that sort of shows the traffic.  and yes, the traffic would include contributors not just buyers to that would be a factor as well.  It is interesting, but in order to make much sense of it one has to look at the overall picture, and, frankly, we don't have all the data available to us.

sorry, i said sales, but meant traffic. 

I think the big difference between Alexa and Compete is that Compete only looks at US traffic and Alexa does is work wide.

I don't want to be perceived as bragging when others are down...but for reference...my sales aren't down either. far from down. I'm pleasantly surprised given the issues lately. some days are still slower of course--usual ebb and flow stuff--but overall, a nice increase in dl numbers and dollars....

Oh come on __ put your numbers into context. You went berserk over the last 12 months, uploaded over 2000 images and increased your portfolio size by more than 50%. If your sales hadn't increased under those circumstances it would have been extraordinary. So, being as you seem willing to share information and now we also understand the context, what percentage increase of downloads are you projecting for January?

No 50% drop here, in fact more than that the other way. And I submitted less in 2010 than in 2009. iStock sales are great for high volume exclusives these days... imho
And since iStock's sales are up year over year, those traffic stats apparently have zero correlation to sales

How do you know iStock's sales are up year over year, and by sales do you mean revenues or unit sales? Even when traffic was rising, sales per file were at least in part because the number of files online was growing fast, so there has always been a disconnect between traffic and individual contributors' sales/earnings. It may be that the great majority of traffic is accounted for by contributors rather than buyers, so p-ssing off contributors is the main thing that shows up in such figures.
Perhaps what this shows is that the relative importance of iSTock in the market is falling and awareness of competitors is increasing. Istock got where it is through very effective marketing that created high industry awareness (Sean is a brand in his own right and has his own personal industry awareness that will probably help to insulate him from negative trends). But in general, however much exclusives like to believe that their files make istock far better than anywhere else, the truth is there are two or three other sites that are equally capable of satisfactorily filling the gaps in any designer's draft.

What holds those sites down is the carefully crafted myth that iStock is amazingly superior to any competitor. But since Bitter left, the management seems to have lost interest in keeping the myth alive. After all, the happy-clappy "wooyay, we're the best, there's none as great as us" posts don't have dollar signs that the accountants can add up, do they? They's just wasting staff resources.

I just noticed something very interesting. The ever popular and cloying "wooyay" thread in off-topic has garnered just 91 posts since the latest one was put up to celebrate the autumnal equinox. The last fall/winter thread managed 199 posts up to Jan 20, 2010. I would say that is a very good indicator of how the old spirit is holding up.