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Author Topic: Graph plotting downloads decline at SS  (Read 4344 times)

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« on: January 31, 2008, 15:44 »
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I calculated how many images were in my portfolio at the end of the month by exporting the accepted images page to Excel then did some sums.

I then divided how many DLs in a month by the number of images in my portfolio that month then plotted this graph it shows November 2006 to January 2008 so for my portfolio it peaked in March and has declined every since.


« Reply #1 on: January 31, 2008, 15:55 »
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Interesting.  I'll have to try that, although I already know mine will look about the same.  I had a huge surge in November 2006 (doubled my sales in one month) and haven't made any progress despite more than doubling my portfolio since then. 

« Reply #2 on: January 31, 2008, 16:23 »
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interesting graph I plotted a similar one on my blog a while ago it was going but this month it is going down quite deep >:(
Will make an update soon

« Reply #3 on: January 31, 2008, 17:34 »
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SS have 3 million images now but a high proportion of the older ones don't make much money.  They should come up with something to bring these images back to life.  Perhaps they should let us mark 5% of our portfolios as new each month.

« Reply #4 on: January 31, 2008, 22:23 »
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This is the wrong chart to plot for SS.  It's the right chart for all the other agencies, but not for SS.  On this basis everybody's chart will look the same.

SS thrives on new uploads and the 'wham bam thank you ma'am' of immediate downloads.  The correct chart to plot is income/uploads.  Yes, income should increase with portfolio size, but the effect of that is only slight at SS particularly once a portfolio has reached a decent size.

Income/portfolio size will nearly always show a declining chart because that is not SS's game plan.

I like SS; I think SS is great.  SS is the only agency that gives an immediate thrill to newcomers.  But SS is like sex and marriage: a marriage based on the short term thrill of sex can only be maintained so long as the sex continues........

I recall back at high school that there were the girls you had sex with, and the girls you might marry.  SS is great for sex, but I'll get married to iStock.....

PaulieWalnuts

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« Reply #5 on: January 31, 2008, 22:37 »
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So Hatman, are you feeling any different about marrying Istock with a potential Getty divorce?

« Reply #6 on: January 31, 2008, 23:29 »
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Even more positive.  iStock is the jewel in Getty's crown; any venture capitalist buying the business will probably strip Getty and reinvest for pain and gain in iStock.

« Reply #7 on: February 01, 2008, 03:20 »
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But istock is a small part of Getty and is taking away business from the traditional site, so they might not get a good price for Getty if they build up istock.

« Reply #8 on: February 01, 2008, 03:29 »
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In the past like one-two years ago, when I was not doing as well in editing images and had a crappy monitor and computer, I uploaded a lot of images without editing or poor editing. Now I started to delete old images. I deleted like 15 or so and one image of them I changed a little bit and downsized it (thats now what I do with SS) and then I uploaded it again. Now SS has better quality (except that it is downsized) and the image is renewed. It was prior one of my bestsellers, but it never had as many sales in two days as in the last two as I remember.
Maybe I will delete a lot of more images on SS, rework them and upload them again and give them a second maybe even better life :)

DanP68

« Reply #9 on: February 01, 2008, 04:00 »
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To understand Shutterstock's sales, and why they decline so drastically after the "newness" factor wears off, you need only to look at their Search.

Yes, designers can choose "Random" as a search but I don't know why they would.  So you have a "Sort by New" and a "Sort by Popularity."  We all know what Random and New is, so how do they sort by Popularity?

I've sorted my own portfolio many times using their algorithm, and it seems "Sort by Popularity" is basically just DL's divided by time online.  It isn't 100% exact in my tests, but it is darn close to perfect.

So as an example in my case last week, I uploaded a picture of Strawberries.  It was immediately downloaded a few times the first day, probably by designers searching for New images.  So after Day 1, it now averages 3-4 DL's per day.  This high average catapults the Strawberries picture into the Top 100 most popular images in its category.

So now it is selling based on high placement in both the Newness sort, and the Popularity Sort. 

The image will immediately start to drift down the Newness search, but if it got a bunch of downloads early it will remain near the top of the Popularity search for a few weeks.  Eventually the law of averages catches up, and it cannot maintain such a high DL/day average, and the slow death begins.

How do you get images to continue to sell months after you upload them to Shutterstock?  Or in the Hatman's case, how do you get the hot sex to continue?

Your image is obviously doomed by 1/2 of the Search choices.  It will never be New again, and will continue to drift down in the order.  But if you sold it enough times in that first magical month, it can maintain a lofty standing in the Popularity search.  The thing is, I think you need to sell it an awful lot of times to keep it reasonably high in Popularity.

I now keep in my spreadsheet a list of images which have been online at Shutterstock for at least 3 months, and what their DL's per time online is.  This tells me where they rank in the search, and gives me a clue as to how often they will sell.  It seems to me it is important to stay above 10 DL's per month to maintain decent sales.  It takes a pretty special image to stay above 20-30 DL's per month.  Yes, I do sell the occasional oddball from way back which was never popular.  Probably from the "Random" searchers?  But those oddball sales are not dependable.

That's how I see the search algorithm, which by my data looks like the simplest one in the business.  The only way for older images to continue to sell at a nice pace is for them to be ranked very high in popularity, or for the search algorithm to eventually change.  I'd like to see "total downloads" incorporated into the Popularity algorithm as a factor.  If it is one now, it is a small one.




« Reply #10 on: February 01, 2008, 05:18 »
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The original graph dls/total portfolio



New graph as suggested DLs/uploads that month



November'06 is artificially high as I only uploaded 92 files, the numbers at the side don't mean much

DanP68

« Reply #11 on: February 01, 2008, 07:36 »
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Fintastique-

Just out of curiosity, how many successful/accepted uploads do you tend to make at SS per month?  I had 65 in January, which was way above what I normally do.  I haven't decided how active I am likely to stay.


 

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