I'm experience a mild improvement over past months.  I only sell credit, no subs.  What I have noticed recently is the disappearance of large size sales.  I don't sell an XL since October, and an L since November.

Overall in 2009 I saw a huge decline over 2008.  My worst month in 2008 was the same as my best in 2009. 

I read somewhere on the IS forum (in the thread of Frank DM and his brainchild DeepMeta) that the project has been delayed. He was promised to have the API for the new Getty subs site by December, but he still didn't get it 2 days ago.
I'm not so sure any more StockXpert will be phased out by Getty. We all thought so last year, but perhaps they found out too that Peter Hanza (the original coder of StockXpert) is making a new site very deep under the radar.

If I were Getty, I wouldn't just phase out the market segment that StockXpert has now. Maybe they just will give a face-lift to JIU and position StockXpert as their B-site, JUI as their subs site, keeping iStock as their A-site. That makes total sense to me, having a presence in all the market segments, and attacking SS on their USP. Market shares are very difficult to come by, so why throw them away?

I can only dream of sales like Sharpshot reports there, and his reduction to 1/10th sounds almost incredible. I had a reduction when photo.com went, but just by 30%. In short, I'm not giving up at all on StockXpert for now. They might have some surprise in petto.

The ones that really goofed up are SS-BigStock. My sales on BigStock went down a lot, not compensated at all by an increase on SS. In fact, SS is losing for me consistently. 123RF wil cut itself deeply with the new strict acceptance policy and they weren't much anyways.
It looks like we will have a tripolar world soon, with the Getty-empire, SS-BigStock, and DT, - and with FT as a wild card.

Thanks for the info about the Getty Sub site being on hold.  Never did understand why they felt the need to reinvent the wheel there.  Just to hose us out of another .05?  C'mon!

Very astute assessment of the evolution of the industry Flemish.  I would not be surprised if you are pretty much on the nose.

Only thing I would disagree about is Fotolia as a wild card.  I have seen a lot of growth there.  They are frequently my number two site now.  Going forward I think they will be Istock's most serious competition.

Quote from: lisafx on January 22, 2010, 18:46

Only thing I would disagree about is Fotolia as a wild card.  I have seen a lot of growth there.  They are frequently my number two site now.  Going forward I think they will be Istock's most serious competition.

I know, reading all the reports here from the big guns (like you). I'm probably biased. I don"t fly there at all and I have my doubts about their coding and attitude about contributors. In the long run, that might prove detrimental. By the years, I predicted the downfall of LO, Snap and Zymm just by gut feelings. I never opened my bad mouth about Zymm   but Keith knew my feelings.
I also predict the fall of Veer and CutC, but not of FP since the girl has balls (and a nice cat!). But for FT I'm probably wrong... sometimes my gut feelings are wrong. That's why I called them a wild card. A lot will depend on the way they play. They have very nice cards in their hands.

I think it was that twit of an ex-CEO at IStock that spouted off in their forums, that portrayed a negative attitude towards independents, at least that's the impression I got. Hopefully, the new guy in charge over there is a little less biased.


Edit....oh... thought this thread was about StockXpert

I'm experience a mild improvement over past months.  I only sell credit, no subs.  What I have noticed recently is the disappearance of large size sales.  I don't sell an XL since October, and an L since November.

Overall in 2009 I saw a huge decline over 2008.  My worst month in 2008 was the same as my best in 2009. 

I had more or less stopped uploading to StockXpert during the period when that person came in to preach all this magical things of subs, and then all of a sudden our sales disappeared.
So I never did bother with StockXpert until very late last year when I got a feeling that IS is looking favourably on StockXpert contributors who has been getting approvals at IS.
Since then I revamped my activity with StockXpert and as  I said, 100% approval, and many times approved within the moment I upload my next image.

These images are so new, I don't expect any great change to my dls . But I feel it's a good move to plant myself in anticipation of the new change I am having a good feeling .
At worst, if I am wrong, nothing happens. At best, when things get moving again and we get back to the old StockXpert, my new works are already in place ready for their revival.

When that revival happens, I will then cut out on FT and DT so I can concentrate my energy on both IS and StockXpert.