MicrostockGroup

As far as I see, on most of the sites, the potential buyers follow two main options: To search by popularity (ie. number of DLs), and by age. So we can safley say that both new and popular images are promoted. As a new contributor with limited portfolio, I should say I rely upon searches based on age because I still don't have many DLs.

On the other hand, I guess Shutterstock uses a combination of both, ie. when you use "Most Popular" criteria, the images comes in an order which reflects NOT the all-time popularity, but the popularity in the past few weeks. So, some images which sell good in the past few weeks comes first, although they are not the most downloaded images in my portfolio. (Of course, as far as I observed.) I guess that is the reason behind SS's success although they have the smallest comission percentages. I would like to see the same approach in other sites too. What do you think?

Don't forget LO, photos that have a lot of chatter (comments) seem to float to the top along with the most downloaded.   Their manual sorting system is awkward and my impression is that new uploads get lost.  I think that LO will become a real player in the future so I hope they work on their sort order.  

My own preference is DT's sorting system, quick and straight forward pull-down method.  Relevancy, Most downloads, newest, oldest,  and you can sort ascending and descensing.  

When I purchase photos, if it is a popular category, I normally just sort by downloads descending, and a quick look at the first couple pages of newest.

Istock has the largest library,  but I really loath searching for photos there.  Sometimes their search system reacts like an overeducated snob.

I do like SS's "what's hot right now" approach.  And it worked extremely well for me in the beginning when I had just a page of photos.  I'm not uploading any of the old crap there and s-l-o-w-ly progressing, now that I'm up to 65 photos, I find that my popular ones cooling off.  I think I was generating sales because all of the similars were right there on one page.   Now they are spread around by popularity - falling on 3 pages.  (Or, maybe the buyers felt for "the new kid with the small port" and grabbed 5 or 6 at a time.)  I'm happy with my sales there though, for 65 pix I think I'm doing quite well.  If we could just get those numbers at the 50% commission sites now!