rofl this is funny. who's going to admit ?   

I admit... I spend hours looking at everyone's portfolios just so that you won't get as many downloads. I've also contracted half a dozen low-paid workers to do so full time.

  funny ! but i don't think all sites work that way ie. many views no dls. 
does it not only affect you if you're with StockXpert and IS?  DT, FT, BigStock, Alamy,Cut, don't do this ,right?
maybe someone like Xalanz , FlemishDreams, who are knowledgeable in IT could tell us.

Quote from: tan510jomast on April 29, 2009, 07:41

Obviously it must hurt my images, as the ones that sold do not have many views. Either that, or someone is enjoying stalking micro images. Perharps to pick up keywords or to pick up ideas for their own portfolio.

OK, sorry pal. I have to come out on this. My sales really sucked big deal, and I didn't know what it was. I tried to copy Yuri Arcurs, but it's very difficult to find blue-eyed blonde models in Asia. I think it's genetic. So then I saw your port and I have been copying everything since then, included all your keywords. Sorry again. 

And guess what? YES! I got one BME after another, except on Fotolia and Istock. I'm sorry, those are the confessions of a gigastalker. I won't do it again, promise! At least  not too much. 

rofl, i wasn't sure why  i am getting this hilarious answers about stealing my ideas.
then i read your quote of what i wrote.

Obviously it must hurt my images, as the ones that sold do not have many views. Either that, or someone is enjoying stalking micro images. Perharps to pick up keywords or to pick up ideas for their own portfolio.

shoot, i should proof read my comments before publishing it.

ok, i will correct what i really meant. 
snurder told me NOT TO SPAM KEYWORDS BECAUSE GETTING TOO MANY VIEWS WITHOUT DOWNLOADS WILL HURT SALES AND TURN OFF BUYERS.

SOMEONE ELSE HERE ALSO TOLD ME IT COULD AFFECT YOUR SEARCH PLACEMENT.

 i do notice some images without sales are getting unusually lots of views .
i am wondering if people are visiting my images and other images to find keywords or ideas to shoot.
REPEAT    i don't mean that those who do that are robbing me of my sales,   
i mean, do YOU find that checking on others for keywords and ideas  are helping you with your portfolio.

AGAIN,  it's not to point a finger, as i indicated at the onset, don't kick me in the arse for publishing this.  IT'S JUST OUT OF CURIOUSITY to see how many people visit other contributors,
not just me, but every one else , ie. new images.

I used to do that on Alamy as their keywording was quite different, and I am not used to that. In fact my keywords are not that hot either.

OK, no more insults, ok? I didn't mean it the way you construe it to mean.

OK, no more insults, ok? I didn't mean it the way you construe it to mean.

It wasn't meant as an insult, you should know me better. I didn't even insult Betty Spam with her Ego-Rythm. 

Seriously, many views are from random traffic from Google. Not even from prospective buyers.

This one has over 3,000 views and just one download. And guess why? They see the long hair on the thumb and they figure it's a broad. They just want to zoom in to see the t%ts. Big disappointment from the Google droolers. Men are so predictable 

and batman, don't come in here with your flippancy, i know you and you 're always tempted to do so. 

Hokey Pokey I promise ! Mum's the word 

 NO PORN ARTISTS INSERT PLEASE , especially male ones ..   

I was going to upstage FlemishDreams with a nudie of myself, but what looks like my spandex Bat outfit is really my skin. But tan, since you said no Male Porn Artist,  I guess this one is Okay . Credit mentions to Whitechild...

I usually have a bit of look at the current featured contributor on dreamstime (for how long depends on how much it inspires me). 

Quote from: FlemishDreams on April 29, 2009, 10:31

Seriously, many views are from random traffic from Google. Not even from prospective buyers.

As a general thing yes this is a big factor in any image agency that is properly SEO'd. http://www.zymmetrical.com/info/forum/aff/17/aft/3166/afv/topic/ is my PG-13 sanitized version of the strange business that occurs in the web logs of an image business. After viewing the raw logs most normal people would probably feel a bit .. unclean..

Keith , good to see you.
In response to FlemishDream, I thought so too. So it's not even our peers checking out on our work out of curiousity, but just random traffic . sheesh ! with some sites it will hurts our image in the search process , right?
Keith, i think you're the right person to ask that question. would this random traffic hurt your image in the long run?

As for the other section of your link, those weird definitions... lol. i wonder if this is the cause of using a translator to English from the searcher's own language.

btw,  i like the one that says ...African Facesitting   

In the meantime - no, as a stock artist it does not affect you, "any press is good press" ..    even if 1 out of 5000 visitors converts into a buyer via a random-type visit (someone not coming explicitly to buy stock), it is well worth the expense in bandwidth etc.

thanks Keith, good to know. by that last paragraph response i gather you meant that you would not be thinking, "wow, look at this image from tan... 1900 views 0 download, let's get this out of sight".
from my understanding there are some stock sites that would do this.
for that reason, lately, i've been thinking of deleting those images with such unrealistic large view:0 dl
ratio.  thankfully, most of my dls are pretty much low ratio eg 3:8  2:6,etc  which i am told is supposed to be better than 1:280, 0 :600.

thanks Keith, good to know. by that last paragraph response i gather you meant that you would not be thinking, "wow, look at this image from tan... 1900 views 0 download, let's get this out of sight".
from my understanding there are some stock sites that would do this.
for that reason, lately, i've been thinking of deleting those images with such unrealistic large view:0 dl
ratio.  thankfully, most of my dls are pretty much low ratio eg 3:8  2:6,etc  which i am told is supposed to be better than 1:280, 0 :600.

Dan Hellers message here:http://www.microstockgroup.com/general-stock-discussion/non-traditional-image-buyers/msg94314/#msg94314 .. is right on the money.  In our type of marketplace at least, where the pricepoints are typically higher and the perceived value vs price can have a much bigger spread both ways, trying to influence buyers with historical stats is a dangerous game. The  Long Tail means attempts to proactively steer the buyer to certain files can easily backfire - the buyers need to be allowed to bring the agency to the content and not just the other way around. Kind of like the tail wagging the dog.

As the 'viewcounter' type info is, as described, always somewhat flaky on it's own, you need to try and follow the visitors path - where did they come from and where did they go after viewing your photo - with the big goal of course being a purchase. The catch using that as a ranking factor is, an agency could license a photo from us for a national ad campaign - is that photo now worth a higher ranking in the search result? Hard to say, as maybe the next prospective buyers have already seen the image and are not interested in using the image they know has been used.  Imagery can easily become saturated and lose it's perceived value in the marketplace. Even if you have a huge pile of carefully checked data, using a round-robin "ok visitor A viewed/bought this photo, so it should go +1 in the rankings,  visitor B did not view/buy, so photo goes -1 in the rankings" technique is always going to be prone to some level of failure. Clearly the volume of selling/subscription downloads in microstock allows some agencies to use that type of analysis to everyones benefit - there is definitely algos that can be applied.    For a value-based business model thought, this type of number crunching needs to be downgraded in importance and more attention paid to everything that makes a product better (new/rare/quality/etc.)

It's the same marketing psychology as is demonstrated in supermarkets where the top moving products (or seasonal/sale products) are placed at eye level to the consumer, and the less often purchased items languish at the top and bottom away from the first-impressions zone. In Zymmetrical's case, we try to offer a more department store-experience, where there are less variations of the same 'product' and plenty of space, no need to play the narrow-margin product juggling daily like a supermarket needs to.  This is why we maintain a harsh editorial policy, part of the expectations of a buyer willing to part with more money than they would for the same image at another agency, is that a) the search is quick and effective, b) the buying process is buyer-friendly, and c) the quality of the downloaded file is always as expected.       

Wow get me on the first cup of coffee and I'll write a book.. anyhow, in short - our own experience is that crowdsourcing to steer your image selection and presentation (including rankings) is a very difficult puzzle as we are not selling fixed commodities like Blu-ray Movies or cars. We do take into account image views and any subsequent visitor actions into account on some levels - someone who comes and bounces back to the net is clearly not as good a "vote" as someone who logs in, views several images in the same search subject, and then proceeds to a purchase. Aside from the sheer entertainment and horror of scanning our search data manually, it also is part of a strategy of always balancing math algos with a human touch - same way as Google hires interns to manually check website quality, even with all their Phd's and resources they still benefit from some students sitting around making simple analysis that the software fails to perform.

Lol .. well I do have a book i've been working on for years now but it's content is more towards real-life James Bond than photo business theory. Thanks regardless- I would love to get out to the east coast again, i've got family in PEI and Nova Scotia, it's been a while. Mmmm lobster..      poor little (tasty) crustaceans.

Thanks for that useful list.  I'll be out this weekend shooting as many of those requests as I can .  The builder working on our house at the moment does archery so I just need to get him out of his clothes and I can get started

As a general thing yes this is a big factor in any image agency that is properly SEO'd. http://www.zymmetrical.com/info/forum/aff/17/aft/3166/afv/topic/ is my PG-13 sanitized version of the strange business that occurs in the web logs of an image business. After viewing the raw logs most normal people would probably feel a bit .. unclean..