I've been thinking about taking the top 10 popular pictures (of models isolated on white background) from SS and either creating a transparent png or a clipping path for these.  Is anyone seeing any increase in sales doing a strategy like this?  On Yuri's site, he offers transparent png...

http://peopleimages.com/image/new-custom-retouching-transparent-png-file-ready-for-download-denmark-serbia-czech-republic

I saw a few posts about clipping path by Jo Ann, but not sure if she thought sales had increased because of them.

I've been thinking about taking the top 10 popular pictures (of models isolated on white background) from SS and either creating a transparent png or a clipping path for these.  Is anyone seeing any increase in sales doing a strategy like this?  On Yuri's site, he offers transparent png...

http://peopleimages.com/image/new-custom-retouching-transparent-png-file-ready-for-download-denmark-serbia-czech-republic

I saw a few posts about clipping path by Jo Ann, but not sure if she thought sales had increased because of them.

I put clipping paths into certain images where it seems to make sense - for example for an image of someone at a desk with something on the monitor, I include a clipping path so they can easily slip in their own screen image if needed. I have no clue if it helps with sales and I'm not sure how you'd ever really track that down. I think everyone who has been selling a while will have a puzzle of one or two images from a series are much more popular than the others, not always for any reason we can fathom. So even if you had some with and without for similar images, I don't know you could be sure about the influence of the clipping path vs. the image itself.

Given the time involved in making the paths, I'm guessing you wouldn't see as much return as working on more images. For a photo, a 24 bit PNG is much larger than the equivalent JPEG. I just saved a recent 21 MP image (this one) which was 8.8 MB as a JPEG (Maximum quality 12 in Photoshop)  and it was 23 MB as a PNG - about 3x the size.

Given that you were planning to take a top 10 to work on-selling well without a clipping path- did you have any reason to believe you'd sell even more? Had a designer contacted you to ask about PNG?

Thanks for the comments everyone.

JoAnn, in response to your question, no, there have not been any designers contacting me about PNG.  The only reason I brought this topic up was because Yuri had offered PNG transparent background service on his website, so I assumed if he was dedicating a chunk of time to this, there must be some commercial value to it.  I had not realized (as rimglow) pointed out that only Dreamstime and PNGStock sold PNG.  I thought maybe there were others doing it as well. 

As far as the clipping path question, I remember reading on a few forums on different stock sites, how designers wished that photographers would include clipping paths in their pictures so that it would make it easier for them to manipulate in their projects.  It is only speculation on my part that perhaps adding clipping paths to popular files might make them sell better.  At least I can experiment, and let everyone know if I see an increase in sales.  If I add the word clipping path to my new clipping path photos, and all of a sudden start seeing that in my keyword searches, I will know that it has resulted in increased sales.

Did anyone ever prove or disapprove the theory that a clipping path was only viable if the largest/native size was purchased?  Supposedly the image processor that creates the smaller sizes "damages the clipping path". 

This theory came up again recently on Symbio, but I never saw the outcome.

I don't remember whatever conversation it is you're referring to, but I did download a test purchase from my own site in a medium size (i.e. not the largest) and, using ImageMagick as the image processor both paths in the file were preserved correctly

I sell reasonable volumes of pngs on DT but virtually always a sub (the exception a rare EL) - none of these delivers extra commission.  Possibly these are sales I wouldn't have made otherwise but who knows?

Nope, that changed. If you look under your images there is a note saying "Name of Image isolated on white with a clipping path (at ALL sizes)." It was instituted some time last year on DT.