I'm around there, currently.  I had hoped for better.

I'm around there, currently.  I had hoped for better.

*results not typical. 

All these RPI comparisons are completely useless for the OP.
I assume an IS-exclusive dropping exclusivity would want to upload their portfolio in a reasonably short period of time. It would make sense. And this is the problem. Their files would compete with one another. The download numbers would be divided by all the images of one subject and as a result none of the images would take off. Most of the images would be soon burried in the endless gazillions of SS images.

The trick at SS is getting to the first page, preferably to the top of the first page. Yes, it's true for most agencies, but not to the same extent as at SS.

It's much easier to achieve good results at SS when you slowly feed them and don't compete with your own images. See if one image of a subject takes off. If yes, then don't compete with it, let it accumulate download numbers and establish itself high in the search results.

If you upload hundreds or thousands images in a short period of time that is one great way to fail at SS.

IMHO the last good moment to join SS was around 2011 or 2012.
My RPI used to be around $1, now it is lower.

It used to be fairly easy to reach the first page, now it's no longer the case with over 300.000 images added every week.
Do the OP a favor and don't compare established ports with portfolios of newcomers to SS, no matter how good they are.

The whole RPI/RPD discussion is fine and all, but in the context of this discussion, it's kind of pointless, no? The OP is making almost nothing as an iStock exclusive. It doesn't matter what the average RPD at SS is, it's still better than nothing.

actually it's the RPD being pointless if you don't make any donwloads ...

the RPI is just a generic catch-all performance indicator.

in this case i think he's getting a raw deal because there's an incredible oversupply of travel images now.
either that or IS is particularly bad for Travel.

the only way to know is to upload in other agencies and see the difference.

The answer to all of these is What are the photos? not how many, not RPD and not RPI.

exactly.

i never see discussions about specific categories of images, like lifestyle, business, travel.

travel is just not selling much compared to business or conceptual.
how much less ? we don't know ... it could be even 10 times less, especially for travel images of places and locations that are not much in demand and there's plenty of them.

1000 pics of London will probably outsell 10000 pics of Papua New Guinea and by a long shot !

Yeah, but in reality SS has 152,000 pictures of London and fewer than 2,000 (a lot fewer once all the postage stamps and computer-generated flags are discounted) of Papua New Guinea.  So if 200 pictures of London sell for every one of PNG then the return per file will be similar. Some very small and very popular places (e.g. Venice and Oia on Santorini) as so swamped with near identical images of iconic scenes that it is purely pot-luck (or search-placement luck) whether you will ever be able to sell anything from there.

and that's just for SS.
on Alamy there are 15000 photos of Papua, 1.3 millions for London, and 3.5 millions for UK (that's 5% of their whole archive).

i've no magic recipe for the oversaturation in Travel.

ultimately buyers will probably stick with new uploads or a mix of new and old, nobody is going to browse more than 10 pages with 50 thumbnails each, soon the search placement will become the biggest factor even for "long tail" search keywords.

I wish I had a clue about how bad my IS sales are now. My stats page stopped updating a while ago, just times out. Bunch of clowns.

I'm glad I'm not the only one with time-out troubles. It's getting so bad that it can take more than a day for me to get through to the payment page when I need to (not too often, unfortunately). Of course, all the failed attempts will just increase the congestion on their servers.

Quote from: Sean Locke Photography on October 01, 2014, 09:08

I'm around there, currently.  I had hoped for better.

*results not typical.

Right. At 31 cents rpi I have my work cut out for me.  This is a significant indicator of how OD's SOD and EL help boost RPI. I don't get a lot of these.

I think the point is that slow feeding may result in a steady appearance of your files at the top of the search before they disappear as they age. As a result, people may see one of your files and then be encouraged to look at others in your portfolio. If everything arrives in a single block they will all move down the search together and disappear together, so you lose the benefit of having at least something in an early search page.

Still strikes me as "folklore". Without any kind of real guidelines, maybe it makes sense to upload a few thousand files over say a few months as  a compromise or safeguard.

Quote from: Realist on October 05, 2014, 15:03

All these RPI comparisons are completely useless for the OP.
I assume an IS-exclusive dropping exclusivity would want to upload their portfolio in a reasonably short period of time. It would make sense. And this is the problem. Their files would compete with one another. The download numbers would be divided by all the images of one subject and as a result none of the images would take off. Most of the images would be soon burried in the endless gazillions of SS images.

The trick at SS is getting to the first page, preferably to the top of the first page. Yes, it's true for most agencies, but not to the same extent as at SS.

It's much easier to achieve good results at SS when you slowly feed them and don't compete with your own images. See if one image of a subject takes off. If yes, then don't compete with it, let it accumulate download numbers and establish itself high in the search results.

If you upload hundreds or thousands images in a short period of time that is one great way to fail at SS.

IMHO the last good moment to join SS was around 2011 or 2012.
My RPI used to be around $1, now it is lower.

It used to be fairly easy to reach the first page, now it's no longer the case with over 300.000 images added every week.
Do the OP a favor and don't compare established ports with portfolios of newcomers to SS, no matter how good they are.

Help me understand this (I am not trying to be facetious, I am seriously trying to understand). I have heard about the recommendations to "slowly feed them" so your files do not "compete with one another".
But, aren't your files competing with all the "300,000 images added every week" (not to mention the entire SS portfolio) anyway?
Isn't that a far more dominating factor than the relative handful of images if one was to upload their entire portfolio within a few weeks?

The only way it would seem to make sense to slowly upload is if SS was playing games within a given contributors portfolio based on its size and upload rate.

What am I missing?

Look, everyone here is just guessing. If you upload at once, your portfolio will be pushed down. The best pictures will survive (the best pictures will survive in any scenario). If you upload slowly, you lose money buy keeping your pictures on hard disc and not selling them. So, no perfect solution here.

I considered a working vacation, someplace different that could fill a hole and make money. Including writing much of it off as business. Then I looked:

Easter Island Stock Photos, Illustrations, and Vector Art (2,482) - IS 1,844 - Alamy 8,913.

Probably double what the demand is and they are very well done, creative, nice images. What would set mine apart?

Why spend thousands of dollars and ten days, for what?

I might as well take weekends locally and get things that aren't over covered.

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on October 09, 2014, 06:47

Quote from: Hobostocker on October 09, 2014, 05:33

and that's just for SS.
on Alamy there are 15000 photos of Papua, 1.3 millions for London, and 3.5 millions for UK

So the ratio of roughly 200 London pics for one Papua pic holds on both Alamy and SS.  I've always felt that "low commercial value" is a bit of a red-herring, because people don't shoot so much of it, so it benefits by having less competition. There are some LCV niches with so little stuff in them that a buyer can easily browse everything there - and if you have the best shot it will pick up most of the sales for that subject.

sure, but Papua is too expensive, you won't recoup the production costs and you'll probably catch malaria.

there must be little demand for it and yes, low commercial value.