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I just wish you will as soon as possible drop the contract with iStock and start selling your work on other sites.

Of course the only fly in the ointment with this wish is that it's a lot harder to do for established exclusives, unless they are prepared for a year or two of financial hardship. I have 2nd hand experience of three people dropping exclusivity, 2 of them returned to IS exclusivity after 6 and 9 months respectively.
Their experience was an immediate drop of income at IS, dropping by approximately 75%. These were people on 35 and 40% at IS. They found the extra income at SS and other sites wasnegligible, compared with lost income from IS. Now it's obvious that someone starting on the bottom rung at SS is going to have a long hard climb to get a decent revenue stream, perhaps 2 years or more, and even then it's possible their income might not reach IS levels. The people in question had families and mortgages/rent to pay, had become used to a four figure weekly (dollar) income, that was decimated by giving up exclusivity. It ain't that easy! Everyone's experience is different, if you're only making, say, $200 a month at IS, it's a nice bit of pocket money but your family won't suffer if you give up on IS, that's great, if I was in that position, i'd be off like a shot, as would many others, but I know my income would take an almighty hit that would be unaffordable for me. The people who returned to IS exclusivity also lost out as their income didn't return to previous levels either, having received some sort of best match hit.

Well, they better come up with a back up plan regardless, what if due to natural courses in the market microstock stops to deliver the returns? Or if IS might go bust in 2013?

Well, they better come up with a back up plan regardless, what if due to natural courses in the market microstock stops to deliver the returns?

Most people do have back up plans, either returning to freelancing  or design jobs, or setting a point in their IS earnings, below which they will give up IS exclusivity, and put as much effort into uploading at SS and any other agency as possible. The skilled people will usually do OK, it's the part-time hobbyists who may be hit hardest, but they are more easily able to give up completely.

Many industries have changed beyond recognition in the last decade or two, it's the way things are in a fast changing world, very few people can any longer feel truly secure in any industry, so microstock is no better or worse in that respect than any other job.

So why would people return to IS exclusive then?

If only the world was as simple as you seem to think it is. They returned because it was their best option at the time. Giving up exclusivity was one potential backup plan that failed to deliver, they have returned to lick their wounds and to reconsider. The world isn't as black and white as you seem to believe.

I know you don't have a lot of experience in the industry and your earnings are low, you have already stated this previously.

Transferring a legacy microstock portfolio to another site is never going to be any sort of "backup" plan. Moving forward is always going to be about the what-next, your new work.

IS exclusives have missed the Shutterstock express and the smaller microstock sites are not worth bothering with (the time involved vs shooting new, more commercial, work). Unless you are a factory or starting again from the beginning.

For IS exclusives the first half of this year is going to be about how well E+ does at Getty. Meanwhile the MSG love affair with Shutterstock can only go in one direction from this point onwards anyhow. What goes up always comes down.

Transferring a legacy microstock portfolio to another site is never going to be any sort of "backup" plan. Moving forward is always going to be about the what-next, your new work.

IS exclusives have missed the Shutterstock express and the smaller microstock sites are not worth bothering with (the time involved vs shooting new, more commercial, work). Unless you are a factory or starting again from the beginning.

For IS exclusives the first half of this year is going to be about how well E+ does at Getty. Meanwhile the MSG love affair with Shutterstock can only go in one direction from this point onwards anyhow. What goes up always comes down.

I like the old trading saying, the trend is your friend.  SS is on an uptrend and that might last longer than people expect.  I'm hoping the love affair with SS will last a few years but I'm aware that things can change very quickly.  So I'll be working on ways to reduce the effect on my earnings if it all goes wrong with SS.  Hopefully one day someone will come up with a good way for us all to sell direct.

Quote from: aspp on January 02, 2013, 06:32

IS exclusives have missed the Shutterstock express and the smaller microstock sites are not worth bothering with (the time involved vs shooting new, more commercial, work). Unless you are a factory or starting again from the beginning.

Yes, I think we are all trapped in the decisions we made some time ago - long ago, in my case.  Independents can't go exclusive because their files are already buried in the iStock search, while exclusives are unlikely to make a big hit on SS because they lack a track record there. There will always be exceptions, of course, who would do well anywhere.

Fall-back plans need to involve something other than exploring different sites. Direct sales, art sales, gallery sales, studio work .... whatever.

I think thats a good sum up

They don't care.
SearchFairy posted yesterday that they were going to tweak best match so that the newly ingested quasi-exclusive agency stuff wouldn't hog the top of searches - but it would take two weeks to code and test. Apart from it being surprising to me that they test anything, why would this tiny tweak take so long to code? I've seen weeks on iStock where the best match was bouncing like crazy inside one week; and another time when some eejit made the mistake of thinking it would be a great idea to promote certain people - only to have the search results majorly spammed, and when I pointed this out, it was changed to something more 'realistic' within a day.
Then after that, they're going to look at getting a better balance between old and new files. Will that take another two weeks?

Doesn't look like a site that cares about its buyers or contributors, where they go and what they do.

When I look at the December '12 sales thread at IS, I see that the Alexa rank is very much reflecting the terrible crash of sales in the last months. It looks like they lost the first place definitely to SS and Fotolia is slowly overtaking as well. It looks like especially the last 3-4 months of 2012 was abnormally bad for traffic to IS. It decreased to 1/3 of what it was in previous months of 2012.

Do you think IS can recover from here?

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So thats how you come back from a ban? ROFLMAO !! How you can be in this business for 25 years and waste your time with comments like that is beyond my comprehension 

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Welcome back. Bonne ann�e.

They don't care.
SearchFairy posted yesterday that they were going to tweak best match so that the newly ingested quasi-exclusive agency stuff wouldn't hog the top of searches - but it would take two weeks to code and test. Apart from it being surprising to me that they test anything, why would this tiny tweak take so long to code? I've seen weeks on iStock where the best match was bouncing like crazy inside one week; and another time when some eejit made the mistake of thinking it would be a great idea to promote certain people - only to have the search results majorly spammed, and when I pointed this out, it was changed to something more 'realistic' within a day.
Then after that, they're going to look at getting a better balance between old and new files. Will that take another two weeks?

Doesn't look like a site that cares about its buyers or contributors, where they go and what they do.

'Two weeks' can only mean that's when they plan to start work on it. I'd have thought it would only take a few minutes to dial down a single factor within the best match algorithm. TPTB obviously believe that Agency images, when highly visible at the top of the search order, make them more money. Whilst it is easy to calculate the value of those Agency sales it must be less obvious to evaluate how many other sales are being lost as customers exit stage-left, disgusted at all the high-priced images that clutter their search results. They come to microstock to avoid those prices, or at least that was the theory before Getty became involved.

Back to the Alexa ranking, it doesn't surprise me at all. You only have to read the 'How was your December?' thread on the IS forum to get an idea how dramatically sales and revenue must be falling. The only thing that does surprise is that IS appear totally unable to recognise the danger or take avoiding action __ like a deer caught in the headlights.

Quote from: ShadySue on January 04, 2013, 08:19

They don't care.
SearchFairy posted yesterday that they were going to tweak best match so that the newly ingested quasi-exclusive agency stuff wouldn't hog the top of searches - but it would take two weeks to code and test. Apart from it being surprising to me that they test anything, why would this tiny tweak take so long to code? I've seen weeks on iStock where the best match was bouncing like crazy inside one week; and another time when some eejit made the mistake of thinking it would be a great idea to promote certain people - only to have the search results majorly spammed, and when I pointed this out, it was changed to something more 'realistic' within a day.
Then after that, they're going to look at getting a better balance between old and new files. Will that take another two weeks?

Doesn't look like a site that cares about its buyers or contributors, where they go and what they do.

'Two weeks' can only mean that's when they plan to start work on it. I'd have thought it would only take a few minutes to dial down a single factor within the best match algorithm.

I'm only quoting SearchFairy:
We�re going to start with the problem of irrelevant Agency files often flooding the search results.  To that end, the Search Team is building a new �dial� to wave my wand at.  They need a few days to build it and a few days to test it out, so we hope to see this change on the site the week of Jan 14th.  I hate promising delivery dates because what seems simple sometimes becomes complicated, but that is the timeframe we are shooting for.

With that change in place, it will be easier to evaluate the impact of other Best Match settings.  The next broad area I want to take on is the impact of File Age. We turned some dials in mid-December, but now need to finesse it to get a better mix of older and newer files.
Whether we regard the postings of employees as being truthful or honest is another question. Which is worse - incompetence or dishonesty?