Quote from: Ron on November 06, 2013, 18:14

The poll is not about averages, its about what you made in the month. The comma changes the sentence, so you have that right, that was an oversight.

So for October is 20 points then. Still matches the poll. Its all works out, still.

But I am sure you have another theory lined up to try and prove everyone wrong. Whats your OCD with that poll man? Let it go. Try flipping the light switch 700 times.

So you're shown to be wrong again and your reaction is to make personal insults?  At least you haven't changed.

Quote from: Mantis on November 06, 2013, 18:41

Quote from: tickstock on November 06, 2013, 17:58

Quote from: Mantis on November 06, 2013, 17:54

Quote from: tickstock on November 05, 2013, 22:11

Sure it could be accurate but the average contributor would have to be doing better than Sean and his 2,700+ high quality, reasonably priced images.

The poll is nothing more than an indicator, crafted by reasonable parameters that won't fit 100 percent of the 10,000,000 examples you will give to debunk it.

What does that mean?  My point was that if Sean can't reach the average with his portfolio then it's likely the average is artificially high.
Go look at his portfolio and compare it to the ones in the symbiostock thread (because that's what got enough votes to make this number show up). 
The poll is an indicator of the average we enter in each month in terms of $.  100 on the poll being roughly equal to $500.

It means exactly what it means.  It is an indicator.  It's not 100% accurate, intended to be applicable as a guideline for MS site income, but not necessarily a representation for everyone's individual results. That's all it is, Tickstock.  So throwing Sean's portfolio into the mix really doesn't mean too much since there are data called outliers (I consider Sean's port an outlier from most of us who participate on MSG).  When  you incorporate outlier data into a data set you generally get a broader degree of error from the mean.  We call that standard deviation from the mean.  Because all of our techniques, shooting styles, commercial image value (quality), volume, key wording accuracy, etc. varies you are adding in more deviation to portfolio performance.  We call this poor repeatability and reproduceability (R&R).  When you have poor R&R you will NEVER have accuracy in these polls and that's why you can never compare Sean to, say, me (on a one to one basis). It's apples and oranges comparing just the two of us (not that you suggested this).  But add in a lot of apples and oranges to the mix and you have even broader deviation (large study variance).  What does this mean? When you add in broad deviation you don't have accuracy. This is why it is an INDICATOR.  So quit trying to pick it apart...it is what it is.

I'm not saying it's 100% accurate there are structural problems with the poll and people can skew some of the results.  It's also an average so of course it's very unlikely to represent everyone's results. 
Sean is an outlier you say?  I agree but not the kind of outlier that does worse than everyone else, if anything I would expect his numbers to be well above the average.  Wouldn't you?  Check out his self-hosted site, it's definitely not below average.
The last point you're making I think is wrong on a few levels.  First the more data you have the better the results will be.  Second the poll limits the max we can enter to a very low number reducing the effect outliers have on it.  If the poll is accurate as an indicator then it is accurate in talking about average $ because those are just two different ways of writing the same thing 100 = $500 you can switch those numbers in an out and not change the results.  If what you are saying is that when SS shows 80 and iStock shows 31 you can say SS is roughly 3 times more profitable you can also say SS earns roughly $400 on average compared to $150 at iStock.  If you don't believe you can say the latter then I don't think you can say that the poll is an indicator at all.  Hope that made sense.