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Author Topic: Disastrous performance of FT/AS in November  (Read 18375 times)

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« on: November 17, 2017, 11:57 »
0
I know how some of you hate this kind of topics, but this one appears to be out of an ordinary one (at least for me), and I'm on a verge of freaking out: my sales at Fotolia/Adobe Stock have almost stopped in November, with a projected drop in sales vs October by -20% (or considerably more if the trend remains) and could be my worst ever month in 2.5 years (port of close to 2K images). As you can see, in my case fluctuations month to month with FT/AS are common, but November is something special (remember, we're in 17 November, with less than 10 working days left in this month).

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Does anybody have a similar situation?


steheap

  • Author of best selling "Get Started in Stock"

« Reply #1 on: November 17, 2017, 12:02 »
+5
Sorry - normal month for me - perhaps even a bit better. And to add to your misery, we have Thanksgiving in the US next week so a loss of good buying days from that holiday.

Steve

« Reply #2 on: November 17, 2017, 12:58 »
0
Sorry - normal month for me - perhaps even a bit better. And to add to your misery, we have Thanksgiving in the US next week so a loss of good buying days from that holiday.

Steve

Thanks, Steve. Could explain in part such a drop, since this is also a case for me with Shutterstock. I somehow expected November to be on par with October which historically is my best-performing month.

« Reply #3 on: November 17, 2017, 13:28 »
+1
Why don't you use your weekly rank to understand if it is only you or a global trend? That's one thing I like about FT.
Personally, I noticed that I'm selling ~20% more than a year ago. Despite the growth, my weekly rank keeps on fluctuating around the same values. This November is no different.
Based on this indicator, I can say that, yes, competition is tougher!

« Reply #4 on: November 17, 2017, 15:09 »
+2
Different story for me.
I was only doing video and I was doing fine with Fotolia: I had not a lot, but my regular 10-15 uploads per month, average $28 each, but sometimes the odd $70, let's say 400-600 per month.
not really increasing, in spite of constant uploading, but it was OK.
Then I had the stupid idea of starting to upload also photo (about 3 months ago)...
Guess what, I still had the same number of uploads, but they were all photos, fro ridiculous amounts, so my income went from $400-600 a month o some stupid $10-15 from one day to the next.
So this week I went like crazy deleting all my photo portfolio, one by one, and guess what?
I finally had a video sale yesterday and another one today

« Reply #5 on: November 17, 2017, 16:10 »
+2
The short answer is no, I don't, but you want to compare this November with last November, not with October 2017.

If you don't have seasonal images, you might see a drop as this is the peak time of year for seasonal downloads - I just checked my last 200 sales on FT/Adobe and 39% were seasonal; SS was a bit lower this year at 33% of the total.

I have generally seen November be the peak sales month for my portfolio (started doing this in fall 2004)

« Reply #6 on: November 17, 2017, 16:48 »
0
I experienced some periods in the last couple of months when sales just came to a standstill for a few days this month luckily for me is more normal now it seems. I slipped down the ranking a long way.....luck or algorithm change who knows?

« Reply #7 on: November 17, 2017, 20:30 »
0
Different story for me.
I was only doing video and I was doing fine with Fotolia: I had not a lot, but my regular 10-15 uploads per month, average $28 each, but sometimes the odd $70, let's say 400-600 per month.
not really increasing, in spite of constant uploading, but it was OK.
Then I had the stupid idea of starting to upload also photo (about 3 months ago)...
Guess what, I still had the same number of uploads, but they were all photos, fro ridiculous amounts, so my income went from $400-600 a month o some stupid $10-15 from one day to the next.
So this week I went like crazy deleting all my photo portfolio, one by one, and guess what?
I finally had a video sale yesterday and another one today

I readed already this topic, and I am worry about it, I am a video principally, but I also uploaded some photos, an even having more than 1k of videos I sell more photos (just 300) in AS and SS... Would I to delete them???

« Reply #8 on: November 18, 2017, 03:34 »
0
Different story for me.
I was only doing video and I was doing fine with Fotolia: I had not a lot, but my regular 10-15 uploads per month, average $28 each, but sometimes the odd $70, let's say 400-600 per month.
not really increasing, in spite of constant uploading, but it was OK.
Then I had the stupid idea of starting to upload also photo (about 3 months ago)...
Guess what, I still had the same number of uploads, but they were all photos, fro ridiculous amounts, so my income went from $400-600 a month o some stupid $10-15 from one day to the next.
So this week I went like crazy deleting all my photo portfolio, one by one, and guess what?
I finally had a video sale yesterday and another one today
That is my experience, but yours maybe different.
Let us know how you get on, but if you are mainly a videographer, stay away from photo: they are at best a waste of time and can also hurt your video sales

I readed already this topic, and I am worry about it, I am a video principally, but I also uploaded some photos, an even having more than 1k of videos I sell more photos (just 300) in AS and SS... Would I to delete them???

« Reply #9 on: November 18, 2017, 03:35 »
0
That is my experience, but yours maybe different.
Let us know how you get on, but if you are mainly a videographer, stay away from photo: they are at best a waste of time and can also hurt your video sales

« Reply #10 on: November 18, 2017, 05:41 »
0
The short answer is no, I don't, but you want to compare this November with last November, not with October 2017.

That's fair enough, I agree.

While it remains to be seen how the full month of November will compare to previous years when the month is closed, based on the current status (18 days of the month) I'm down 50% compared to the same period of 18 days in November 2016 and down 65% compared to 18 days in November 2015. Needless to say, that my port increased substantially over the same time, and that I didn't do anything unorthodox just overnight (e.g. uploading different type of assets, or deleting large chunk of photos, etc.) to potentially cause such a disturbance to my performance. With less than 10 working days remaining (or even more due to looming holidays as mentioned here), I can be certain than my November 2017 will be very very much down compared to the same period of the last two years.

This looks very similar to what the SS did in April this year when a lot of people including myself saw a drastic fall in sales just overnight (my sales levels got to pre-April 2017 just recently). And similar to what IS/Getty did sometime this summer when they reshuffled the database to put new and newer images on top of search, making all others (including myself) who didn't upload in while (for good reasons) just miserable (a fall of more that 50%).

I just somehow thought that Fotolia/Adobe Stock wouldn't go into that extreme...

Uncle Pete

  • Great Place by a Great Lake - My Home Port
« Reply #11 on: November 19, 2017, 10:20 »
+5
Agencies boost new images because buyers want fresh material and new images, not the same old shots that have been up front for 10 years. It brings variety and diversity to the buyers. Doesn't that make sense from and agency or buyers viewpoint?

« Reply #12 on: November 19, 2017, 10:35 »
0
And similar to what IS/Getty did sometime this summer when they reshuffled the database to put new and newer images on top of search, making all others (including myself) who didn't upload in while (for good reasons) just miserable (a fall of more that 50%).

I just somehow thought that Fotolia/Adobe Stock wouldn't go into that extreme...

Extreme? What?

That is how all businesses do it. For a good reason.

New products + proven bestsellers. The ratio may vary.

Justanotherphotographer

« Reply #13 on: November 19, 2017, 11:01 »
0
Normal looking for me too. How much in number of dls or $ are we talking here?
If you only make a couple of hundred dollars or less/ month you are going to see big fluctuations like this.

« Reply #14 on: November 19, 2017, 11:25 »
0
.

« Reply #15 on: November 19, 2017, 16:18 »
0
On track for another BME for me, overtaking the previous one set in August.

« Reply #16 on: November 19, 2017, 16:41 »
0
If you only make a couple of hundred dollars or less/ month you are going to see big fluctuations like this.

Can you please explain why would there be less fluctuations be it any other level of revenue (dozens of dollars or thousands of dollars)?

With a certain level of revenue at FT being almost stable for the last 2.5 years (my case), the drop in sales this month that I mentioned in my previous post is unprecedented to me, hence I started this thread to see if anybody else experiences this (so far I haven't felt it is the same for a lot of you).

Justanotherphotographer

« Reply #17 on: November 19, 2017, 23:51 »
+3
Because the smaller the data set the more random fluctuation in percentage terms you will see. If you sold an average of 1 licenses a day you would see 100% variations a day all the time.  If you sell 10 a day less variation but still a lot more than if you sold 1000 a day.

Justanotherphotographer

« Reply #18 on: November 19, 2017, 23:56 »
+2
Look at your April vs May vs July for example. Looks like 50% swings are not unusual for you at all actually. Doesn't the hollow chart indicate stock performer predicts a pretty standard November for you by the end anyway? (I don't use it anymore but if I remember rightly that is what that bar is supposed to be right?)

« Reply #19 on: November 20, 2017, 02:20 »
+1
I also experience drop in sales and earnings this month, maybe not as huge as yours.

derek

    This user is banned.
« Reply #20 on: November 20, 2017, 02:27 »
+4
Was doing excellent with old FT as an Emerald rank until Adobe took over. It went right down!....One would have thought that with the huge name of Adobe takings would just sky-rockett for everybody but not so. The opposite really.
« Last Edit: November 21, 2017, 02:10 by derek »

« Reply #21 on: November 20, 2017, 15:36 »
0
Look at your April vs May vs July for example. Looks like 50% swings are not unusual for you at all actually. Doesn't the hollow chart indicate stock performer predicts a pretty standard November for you by the end anyway? (I don't use it anymore but if I remember rightly that is what that bar is supposed to be right?)

Thanks. Sure, there are swings, likes everywhere else, my case with FT is not exception. The question is how much of a swing do you have. My average downward swing (i.e. a fall in % compared to previous month) is 25%, with the biggest so far being -50% (which happened during my third month of sales at FT when things were not stable with port increase etc.) I estimate that November 2017 will see a 70-80% drop (currently -76% to October 2017, with 8 working days remaining, some of them being public holidays). Isn't too much of a swing?

And the hollow chart indeed is a prediction by StockPerformer for the month, but I'm not aware of its algorithm (how they update it), and I can tell you that that hollow bar will stay very close to the filled dark bar you saw in my original post based on the performance up-to-date. It just doesn't fill up to honor what StockPerformer predicts now.

« Reply #22 on: November 21, 2017, 01:50 »
0
FT/AS is the only agency that keeps my average sales on Novembrer, SS and IS are in a really deep drop down.

jonbull

    This user is banned.
« Reply #23 on: November 21, 2017, 09:43 »
0
focolai is completely dead for me. i cannot understand what sell there. every agency is doing good even dreamstime seems to recover this month. fotolia zero.

derek

    This user is banned.
« Reply #24 on: November 21, 2017, 12:56 »
+1
Jonbull!  I havent got a clue and dont really care but rumor has it that they have broken the search ( happened to IS some years back) for those who remember!...IS was never the same after that and everything went wrong!

As I said this is what I've heard from a couple of sources but dont take my word for it. In any case Adobe is hardly movimng at all!


 

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