Hi everyone-

What data do you find most important to track and what systems or software do you use to do your tracking?

Right now we are tracking info at the file level (where each file is accepted, where it sells and for how much, year photo taken, session/trip/type of photo, etc). As our port grows, my little excel file is starting to get pushed to its limits.

Curious what others think is important to know and if you have any database management systems you like/think are worth learning.

Only my bank account.

Income per month by site. I used to spend 1/2 my previous life looking at spreadsheets....ask yourself what you will actually do with the data? (Not think you might do when you have a few 100 hrs to spend on analysis).

That's what I do.

I used to keep track of tons of things like you are doing including sales by image but it isn't feasible once you get more than a few.  Now I have two main tabs in an Excel spreadsheet.  One is for Submissions - I have the file name, title, descriptions and keywords for each image, then when it was submitted to each agency, when it was reviewed and the outcome.  I have another tab for Sales Summary where I keep the number of accepted images for each agency, then the number of total sales and the total amount by month.  From that it is easy to calculate RPDL or whatever else you want.  I always calculate Sales per accepted image for each agency each month - that tells me where I get the best return so where to concentrate on in the future.  And of course I then total it all up over all agencies each month.  I start over the next year.  Once you have a spreadsheet set up it doesn't take too much time, just don't do too much - try to only collect what will be useful to you in the future.

I always calculate Sales per accepted image for each agency each month - that tells me where I get the best return so where to concentrate on in the future. 

Shouldn't it be sales per submitted image you have done the work whether they accept it or not? Tbh I'm not running a huge operation so I pretty much know where I get best returns etc without having to analyse it with a spreadsheet ;-). To me the only relevant stat is money in the bank ;-) the others just confuse
 

Only monthly and yearly revenue (per agency and total sum), but it's mainly for administrative purposes, not for statistical analysis.

I track each site each month - total income and RPI - on a Numbers (Excel) spreadsheet. I don't keep track of which files were accepted or rejected anymore. It's too time consuming and I've been doing this long enough that I have a general idea of how my files will do so it's not going to teach me anything.

Then I also go through every few months and look at how I'm doing by shoot - I have contact sheets with my better-selling shoots and I update how much I've made by photo and for the total shoot - by concept, event (for editorial), place (travel) - broken down by site and by the photo and total shoot. Since I do a lot of travel this lets me know how long it takes me to make back the cost of each trip and has helped me to determine which places are worth returning to. Since I shoot both RM and micro, it also helps me determine how each type of image is doing for me on the different venues.

I also include POD and gallery sales where there's some overlap in my portfolios - again to keep track of the types of images and the venues (which POD sites, which galleries, etc.) are working for me.

You really need a few years of statistics before you can see trends. I try not to get caught up in the tiny details but look for larger trends such as which locations sell again and again - not which particular image - which types of concepts do well, that sort of thing.

This year, I returned to a location that has consistently done well for me - a 6 hour drive from my home - and made back more than the cost of the trip within a week of returning home through sales on Alamy and via my own site. I decided I needed some newer and better images than those I'd shot 4-7 years earlier - though many are still selling and it's a location that hasn't changed much if at all, you still need to keep travel images fresh - and those re-shoots are selling even better than the originals.

So, IMHO some analysis is worth the time - as long as it doesn't take too much time from shooting and uploading.

Quote from: Pauws99 on April 12, 2016, 12:21

Quote from: sgoodwin4813 on April 12, 2016, 11:36

I always calculate Sales per accepted image for each agency each month - that tells me where I get the best return so where to concentrate on in the future. 

Shouldn't it be sales per submitted image you have done the work whether they accept it or not?

No, I want to know which agencies are doing the best of marketing the images they have online.  Rejected images of course are wasted effort but it's worth it to try harder for agencies that have a better return.

The total amount you get of course is the most important overall but the return per accepted image I think tells you more.  For example, for me lately the one with the best return per accepted image is not SS and it tells me where I should concentrate on building up my portfolio.

So if you submit 1000 images and 10 get accepted on site a and make $100 that is better than getting 100 on b accepted and making $500? I guess if you track acceptance rates and aim to improve it on your "target" sites there is something to be gained also if you were to measure the time input on each site which is really what matters. My philosophy is all sites get everything in priority order by my perception of who is earning most.

I use a completely backward system. I have all sold jpegs in a folder and each time they sell I update the file name (e.g. woman-with-headset-smiling-while-eating-salad_SS39_FT56_YAY749)

I don't see any benefit of inserting the data into excel. Since all the file names start with the model's name and shoot, I can easily see which shoots are selling the best. To work out total sales occasionally I just multiply the sales number by the lowest common denominator of .25c to get a rough estimate. I only analyze shoots until they reach breakeven point for shoot.

Ingenious! But how do you find best sellers convoluted sort? I occasionally visit sites to use their stats to see whats selling but tbh I don't have enough best sellers not to know how instinctively what they are

I just use Excel... one tab for each year showing the dollar value of sales broken down into different sites and months. I then have an overview tab showing the overall sales by year and site. Got a little graph at the top so i can see trends in sales by month, but that's not broken down by sites.

Mostly I track Sales and Dollars per Agency. This helped me figure out the best working agencies (for me), and prioritize my focus on those.
recently (that is, a week ago), I've discovered https://www.stockperformer.com [nofollow] and Microstockr (the OSX app, I already used the iOS app for the first part), which will give you stats over many different agencies, and breakdowns per downloads/dollars per image. I hope this will help me figuring out which types of pictures to focus on too.
Microstockr iOS app comes with a small price per year, and as far as I've seen so far, the OSX app is free.
Stockperformer is an online tool, and thus available everywhere (which I like), but has quite a price, 9�/month (but with 1 free trial month, which I'm using right now).

I trank only Dollars per Agency as well. But also I use MicrostockAnalytics software.