MicrostockGroup

If it does, I'm afraid nobody knows besides them: search engine internal rules are usually well kept secrets.

They once explained it in relation to subscriptions. Your ranking has little to do with it (unless that's changed).


So anyway I've made a bit of a 'research' project of this recently and I've come to the conclusion that there are a few pretty smart FT contributors out there. Whilst most including myself whine about newly accepted images never being seen and, of course, not selling, there are others whom I suspect have applied the system to their own, considerable, advantage. How otherwise can one explain a perfectly good food shot being viewed 250+ times and downloaded 12 times within a couple of days of its acceptance. Similar sort of thing happened with the same photographer's non-food shot one week later. IMO there are only a couple of ways of achieving this: either there are loads of customers out there hanging on your every upload and waiting to pounce or.................you do a bit of self-promotion (tax deductible) and buy a sub for a month (or get someone to do it for you). Remember, the object of the exercise is to get to page 1 in the search on the basis of relevance, popularity and downloads as fast as possible. With your sub contract for $200 you may download as many as 750 images in a month. Start downloading certain selected images of your own............and earn back your sub at 29 cents per sale (silver rank). Probably means working weekends (60 downloads) if you want to make a profit but that's not really the idea. Feel a bit queasy about embarking on this enterprise? Get someone else (or a company) to buy a sub with unlimited users......costs a little more but enables you or your proxy to mail everyone you know to go buy a designated file with attached subs code.

Don't get greedy, don't download all your 750 image entitlement thus leaving a fair bit of subs profit on the table for FT and I don't see anyone objecting! All purely hypothetical, mind you........I'm not doing it. Don't upload enough per month to make it worthwhile but there may be others for which this would work.

 


I don't see gaming the system as "smart".  I see it as dishonest.  Not to mention very, very risky.  People have had accounts closed for similar types of behaviors.

Simply like this:
Since the relaunch of the site, there are 28 images featured in the newest uploads section. Three of those are visible on the front page for a couple of hours, sometimes all day long. Those are the images that get lots of views and sometimes more than 20 downloads on their first day on the site. It happens to a lucky few every day now...
 

I view such a method as being dishonest too and wouldn't do it, as I already stated. No doubt it is risky but in these hard times much seems to depend these days on whether it's 'just not done' or whether it's downright illegal /forbidden. Is there any rule when buying a sub that says that you can't use all your downloads buying just one contributor's images multiple times? Or just to be safe, you get a proxy to buy a sub and download mostly your images multiple times plus a few of someone else. At what point does FT accuse you of being a proxy for a contributor gaming the system that they created for their benefit? As I said, it's all my own fantasy. No evidence only observations and questions.   

Just an update:  I wanted to get an idea of how Fotolia would feel about the above-described system of downloading one's own images by subscription, either directly or through a proxy, and this is the reply I got from a high level Fotolia administrator:

It is not smart to play these games for sure. If we notice abuse (and we have ways to see) then we will delete the accounts associated with these games.

Section 4 of the terms and conditions addresses this issue:

"You may not use the Website in a fraudulent manner, or otherwise in a manner for which the Website is not reasonably intended to be used. By way of example, and without limiting the generality of the foregoing statement, you will not download works for the primary purpose of artificially inflating the ranking of a given contributor or for the primary purpose of artificially triggering payments to contributors. A contributor, or someone else on his/her behalf, may not download Works that such contributor has uploaded."