MicrostockGroup

Agency Based Discussion => Dreamstime.com => Topic started by: littleny on March 06, 2018, 17:01

Title: Images with no downloads
Post by: littleny on March 06, 2018, 17:01
Ive been a contributor since 2010 with about 4400 images in my portfolio.  I always had a positive experience here with a reasonable amount of success.  My sales over the past year have dropped off considerably and I'm thinking perhaps I need to do some portfolio spring cleaning by deleting older images with no downloads.  Im talking about a considerable amount of dead wood - maybe even reducing my portfolio by 20% and keeping only images that are a few years old and images that are older but have a least 1 download.  Has anyone here done this? Was it helpful to getting more portfolio visibility?  Or is this a bad idea?
Title: Re: Images with no downloads
Post by: Pauws99 on March 06, 2018, 17:16
Ive been a contributor since 2010 with about 4400 images in my portfolio.  I always had a positive experience here with a reasonable amount of success.  My sales over the past year have dropped off considerably and I'm thinking perhaps I need to do some portfolio spring cleaning by deleting older images with no downloads.  Im talking about a considerable amount of dead wood - maybe even reducing my portfolio by 20% and keeping only images that are a few years old and images that are older but have a least 1 download.  Has anyone here done this? Was it helpful to getting more portfolio visibility?  Or is this a bad idea?
Why do you think this would help? My crappy unsold 5 year old images might sell if they are on the site. Possibly the algorithm may be affected by having a lot of unsold images. But the only certainty is if the images aren't up for sale they won't sell. I have found certainly on SS some really old and pretty poor images start selling for unknown reasons ;-).
Title: Re: Images with no downloads
Post by: littleny on March 06, 2018, 18:55
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Why do you think this would help? My crappy unsold 5 year old images might sell if they are on the site. Possibly the algorithm may be affected by having a lot of unsold images. But the only certainty is if the images aren't up for sale they won't sell. I have found certainly on SS some really old and pretty poor images start selling for unknown reasons ;-).
My reasoning is maybe portfolios that have 3000 images that sell and get views may get more exposure by showing more towards the beginning in a search, then a portfolio of 4500 with 1500 images that have gotten lost in the shuffle.  Idk.  but after years of sales where i was making a few hundred dollars a month to being lucky if i sell pocket change, it seems like i need to do something to shake things up.  btw..many of my images that have 0 views and 0 downloads sell on a regular basis at SS, FT and IS. 
Title: Re: Images with no downloads
Post by: Danybot on March 06, 2018, 21:42
It's hard to make any predictions with DT, as sales volumes generally have been weak for the past few years.   I just had a rare EL sale, and it was an image that hadn't sold at all for two years before that.
Title: Re: Images with no downloads
Post by: pancaketom on March 06, 2018, 22:47
DT does seem to order things somewhat by artist, so maybe there is some way to move your ranking up by having a higher sale percentage (deleting no sale images). Or maybe nothing will change. If you are going to delete stuff you should check your image search position on a computer without cookies or login and then see if they change. It might take a while for changes to take effect too.

It sure would be nice to know how the search rankings work, but of course the sites keep their secret sauce secret to try to keep people from gaming them.
Title: Re: Images with no downloads
Post by: namussi on March 07, 2018, 06:57
Last month an image I uploaded in 2004 sold for the first time.

(Apologies: that was on iStock, not DT. I didn't see this was a DT thread.)
Title: Re: Images with no downloads
Post by: niktol on March 07, 2018, 08:38
Or is this a bad idea?

Who knows? It sounds pretty random. By the same token someone could argue that removing content from the site might send a signal that the contributor is about to leave and that will downgrade his portfolio even more.

One thing's obvious, agencies don't want you to remove dead wood, or they would have done something about it.
Title: Re: Images with no downloads
Post by: littleny on March 07, 2018, 13:04
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One thing's obvious, agencies don't want you to remove dead wood, or they would have done something about it.
well they do alert me when something is over 4 years old with no downloads.  they suggest putting them in the free section.