MicrostockGroup

Agency Based Discussion => Bigstock.com => Topic started by: Polo on September 10, 2010, 05:55

Title: BigStock Dead?
Post by: Polo on September 10, 2010, 05:55
Hello All
 I have been with BigStock for a while now but I have noticed that since September 1st the system seems to have died. For example: No views at all on any files. No sales, No response to any posted questions with problems from the administration. System stat counts are off or showing incorrect data. Uploads started taking longer since September. It is like the whole system has stalled out. There is no exposeure to be found anywhere. There are no notices that there is a system problem or any explanation. Having done a date of responce check to the posts I see only one from administration unrelated to the problem. Prior to September  1st all went smooth. Anyone having these problems out there also? Anyone know anything?
Title: Re: BigStock Dead?
Post by: FD on September 10, 2010, 05:58
Anyone know anything?
There are rumors.  ;) - Yes it totally died since September one. Probably Getty bought them.  :P
Title: Re: BigStock Dead?
Post by: Polo on September 10, 2010, 06:08
Thanks for the reply
Can you elaborate a bit? What does this mean to all the contrbutors with files on BigStock? Should they let them stay there or in your expertise what would you do?
Title: Re: BigStock Dead?
Post by: FD on September 10, 2010, 06:41
Can you elaborate a bit? What does this mean to all the contrbutors with files on BigStock? Should they let them stay there or in your expertise what would you do?
Just wait till it gets better, like the weather.  :D
Title: Re: BigStock Dead?
Post by: Colette on September 10, 2010, 06:42
FD made a joke... ;D

Views and sales are a bit low at BigStock, at least for me last week, but there are.
No idea about posted questions, for I sended none lately.
No idea about incorrect data. Seems normal to me.
Ups and downs are normal in stock. Everyone has them sometimes.
Title: Re: BigStock Dead?
Post by: FD on September 10, 2010, 06:48
FD made a joke... ;D
Not totally. Probably the SS guys are working under the hood on the site, especially on the search engine. In my charts, BigStock has been going down since May 2008 but one whole dollar for the month of September, I never saw before. Ebb and flow are not the same as a tsunami.
Title: Re: BigStock Dead?
Post by: RT on September 10, 2010, 07:00
Earlier in the year the Shutterstock CFO Adam Riggs made this comment in an interview: (I've highlighted bits)

Q - "Last year you acquired a competitor, BigStock Photos, which uses credits as its payment method. If you're so committed to subscriptions, why did you do that deal?"

A - "It was a pretty easy decision. For a long time it's been a question of whether to buy or build to get into the credit-purchase side of the business. I feel it's clear that if you line up these two pricing models next to each other, the subscription solutions are a better value. But it's a fact that a lot of customers don't feel like a subscription solution meets their needs. One challenge for us has always been to educate people as to why a subscription would meet their needs, and at a lower price. But being realistic, it can't all be about education; we also have to go after customers directly."


I think that says it all!
Title: Re: BigStock Dead?
Post by: luissantos84 on September 10, 2010, 07:04
I am with 2 sales for 0.5$ each!
Title: Re: BigStock Dead?
Post by: scottbraut on September 10, 2010, 07:14
Hi guys,

If you experience any issues with the site, please reach out to Support.  We have an active customer service team that's very good about responding to questions and making sure that issues get fixed.

The site is functioning fine and if any bugs are reported to us, we generally fix them as soon as soon as we find out about them (new feature requests may take longer, since we're coding something new from the ground up that needs to be created, tested and deployed).  For example, users requested the ability to read metadata from JPEGs uploaded with an EPS file and we put that in relatively quickly.  

We made some adjustments to view numbers a month or two ago because certain non-human activity was getting recorded in views (such as automated bots).  We want to make sure you're seeing actual users who view your images.

**edit** -- Also - to be clear - our "views" are only "image detail page views."  Customers who view your image thumbnails or medium-sized previews in a search result will not be recorded as "views." 

That said, if you're seeing a low number of "detail page" views, we find that it can be for a few reasons:

-- Keywording.  We generally recommend 25-40 or more **accurate** keywords per photo, since keywords drive search results.
-- Size and diversity of your portfolio.
-- Holidays / seasonality / weekends.  Obviously, activity can dip during these periods and we just had Labor Day weekend in the U.S.
-- Topical nature of content.  Certain topics are more popular at different times of the year - for example, some of our "Back to School" images are getting a good amount of activity now because bloggers, students and educators are illustrating the concept of the new school year.

We do put recommendations for success in our blog and our newsletters for contributors:
http://www.bigstockphoto.com/blog/theupload/ (http://www.bigstockphoto.com/blog/theupload/)

For example: Words to Sell By: Seven Essential Keywording Tips
http://www.bigstockphoto.com/blog/theupload/2010/07/keyword-tips/ (http://www.bigstockphoto.com/blog/theupload/2010/07/keyword-tips/)

As always, feel free to reach out to Support if you see something amiss.  We have some very nice folks staffing Support and when issues come in, those issues are pitched over to our development team immediately for resolution.  We have internal email distribution lists so that the team gets visibility into what's going on when issues come in.  

http://www.bigstockphoto.com/contactus.html (http://www.bigstockphoto.com/contactus.html)

We don't continually monitor forums for support requests, though I'll pop in here on occasion.  It's much more effective to contact the team directly.

Best Regards,

Scott
Product Manager
Bigstock
Title: Re: BigStock Dead?
Post by: madelaide on September 10, 2010, 10:08
I had two sales there this month, the norm.

Scott, I sent two suggestions/comments in the past months through the website form and to both I got a reply from Joseph saying that he would "let the owner of the site know", what I personally find an ackward reply from customer support, not to mention that I never heard about these again.
Title: Re: BigStock Dead?
Post by: scottbraut on September 10, 2010, 10:35
Hi Madelaide,

If it's a feature suggestion, you can also send it to feedback (at) bigstock.com.  That goes to the product team, which includes myself.  But the Support team is quite good at passing them along.

When it comes to feature requests, we get a large number of them.  Users often have a hard time understanding why a feature will (or won't) make it in.   As a general concept, we listen to all requests and try to prioritize the product features and suggestions that will return the most value to our users.

In other words, if there's a feature that will drive significant sales for contributors, fulfill a legal requirement, make it easier for buyers to successfully find images, etc..., those will tend to get prioritized first for our development team.  For that reason, we made large improvements earlier this year to search and the general usability of the site, and those changes have been successful.  There are a large number of new marketing initiatives and we've got additional improvements coming. ;)

Feel free to use that email address above for other feature ideas.  I can't promise that things will go in right away given the broader list of requests, but I can promise that we read them and listen to all feedback. :)

Best,

Scott
Product Manager
Bigstock