MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: melastmohican on August 25, 2008, 14:26
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For last 4 months I have been uploading same photos to top 10 sites. It's amazing that I was able to sell almost 2000 subs on SS while other sites either rejected most of these photos or sold 100 times less. It this because SS got customers who are looking for pictures in my niche of photography?
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For sure, here is the explanation : SS only have blonds in their customer base :D
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Are you trying to say I am blond magnet?
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I know, buyers are present simultaneously at more agencies. I just buy some magazines to see what stock is printed there and I see constantly 2-3 agencies on the edge of the page. But the common thing I see is the names, shutterstock and istock almost everywhere.
We know, the customer's articles, blogs, magazines, etc. will be illustrated ANYWAY, but for an agency it's not just the same, where the customers buy the images.
The difference maker? It's the agency. The customer anyway will buy an image, so let's make them to buy from us!
Can we say that the customer base can be seen in the mirror of the agency? Let's think about how an agency treats us, photographers, so this way treats customers too, because they can't be different with the customers. We say what are our problems, but I'm not sure the customers will say too... They want to change something, or they just want to illustrate their articles?
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This is just my opinion but I wouldn't compare SS customers with those from any other stock sites, and because of that I wouldn't use sales trends on SS to base an opinion of what might sell anywhere else.
I like to think of SS as a 'ten minute grab all you can supermarket dash', customers go for what they want in the first two minutes and spend the last eight just filling the trolley with anything they can grab.
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@icefront: I think that contributors are just suppliers of the goods and only buyers are really customers for agencies. Supplier is nowadays overabundant resource so agencies can focus mostly on fighting for customers. So I do not agree that customers are treated like contributors cause agencies would start loosing them.
@RT: Interesting analogy, unfortunately everybody is going this way with introduction of subs on almost any major site.
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As far as I can see there's no way of telling who the customer base is on each site.
I find that an image that sells brilliantly on one site is somewhere down the list on another. In fact, each agency I submit to has a different one of my images as my best seller.
I've studied them and tried to work out the differences, but I can't make any sense of it.
That's probably a good thing. Spreads the sales, and another reason why it's worth sticking with a range of agencies rather than going exclusive with one.