Just wanted to highlight this outside of the features thread.

https://contributor.stock.adobe.com/en/insights/best/contributors

Some pretty nice work.

And just for continuity:

The goal of this feature, apart from celebrating our talented contributors, is to inform you of what type of content is trending based purely on sales data.
Contributors of the week are determined each week using the following process:

    For each asset type we generate a list of 400 contributors who made the most sales in the previous week, only considering their uploads from the past six months. Then, we order the list based on each contributor�s uploads/sales ratio, and the top 10 contributors on this list are featured as �Contributors of the week�.

    Contributors are eligible to be featured at most once every five weeks. This selection process is subject to change in the future.

1) most sales in the previous week,
2) only considering their uploads from the past six months
3) uploads/sales ratio

Looks like a fairly current viewpoint, not a historic catalog. Just imagine if "popular" also worked something like this on some sites. 

Thanks for  Pete. I'm glad you like the feature. We are open to improve the formula but this seems to provide useful information for now. As mentioned, the goal is to inform you and all contributors what buyers are actually looking for and purchasing. Any and all suggestions are welcome, we are happy to test and improve.

-Mat

I hope none of that looked critical, I was just making the Contributor OTW it's own topic and pointing out some parts behind the how. LOL  In my view, the formula "is what it is" and the idea is showing what's actually most popular subjects or concepts is pretty good.

Years ago some places had most popular keywords searched. It was rubbish, just imagine what some people search for on the web. Another has some good data which is so specific that sure if someone sold photos of 7,000 Macidonian's in full battle array, it would look like the latest hot topic, while it was just the most downloaded because someone, somewhere in the world was doing a feature. In other words, after the fact, and of no practical future use.

Someone at Adobe came up with a good real plan, that uses, more recent uploads, recent downloads, and that uploads to sales ratio, so it's weighted. Pretty good concept.

Thanks for  Pete. I'm glad you like the feature. We are open to improve the formula but this seems to provide useful information for now. As mentioned, the goal is to inform you and all contributors what buyers are actually looking for and purchasing. Any and all suggestions are welcome, we are happy to test and improve.

-Mat

There in lies the problem Matt.

If everyone started following the Top Ten and shooting similar or the same stuff you would end up with little diversity.

Why does video always get left in the cold?

Because they don't want to let folks know you're making a killing with those Videos 

Quote from: MatHayward on October 12, 2018, 14:11

Thanks for  Pete. I'm glad you like the feature. We are open to improve the formula but this seems to provide useful information for now. As mentioned, the goal is to inform you and all contributors what buyers are actually looking for and purchasing. Any and all suggestions are welcome, we are happy to test and improve.

-Mat

There in lies the problem Matt.

If everyone started following the Top Ten and shooting similar or the same stuff you would end up with little diversity.

I understand your point. It can be a challenge to find balance when dispensing information. My personal opinion is that the more transparent we can be, the better it is for everyone. I feel this feature strikes a good balance of real time intelligence on what is selling and it provides enough diversity in content that there isn't any one thing that has the magic formula everyone wants to copy. If we just showed one image or one portfolio and said "This is the best! Everyone wants this" then sure, we would all rush to our cameras and shutters would be clicking left and right capturing the same thing. From what I have seen so far there is a fairly wide range of content that is succeeding.

It's great feedback, I appreciate the debate.

-Mat Hayward

I got one question: why is the fluctuation rate in the sales so extremely high? its like suffering from a weekly bipolar disorder from total depression to euphoric mood and back again. Hopefully you got my point.