SS is my leading source of income, and I've always been curious to determine the optimal days to upload (if there are any) so that my income may be maximized. I've read a few threads on this subject, but haven't seen anything other than anecdotes or common sense/straighforward reasoning behind any statements. So I decided to investigate how my SS sales varied by day of the week:


I uploaded as regularly as I could to minimize bias (i.e. I tried to upload equally on all days), and I ignored EL sales. My sample size is fairly small (only 122 days), but after fiddling with various data treatments I didn't see any dramatic changes, which leads me to believe that I may have something statistically significant (i.e. it's reliable and I can make predictions from it). I wish I was enough of a stats wiz to determine if this is an accurate statement.

Looking at the chart, it appears that sales on Mon, Tue, and Wed are equal (about 17% of the weekly total). Sales on Thu jump to over 19%, then rebound to just under 16% on Fri. Total weekend sales are almost equal to Fri sales. Thu is the most volatile day, while Fri and Sun are the most consistent.

So what does this mean? It depends on how often you upload. If you do it once a week, then you should probably pick Sat so that your images are approved and catalogued for Monday. Tue is also a good candidate to hit the high Thu peak. Avoid posting on Thu and Fri, and possibly Wed as well.

As for me, I'll now post to SS only four days per week: Sat to Tue. It'll be interesting to model the effect this has in another 122 days ...

Very interesting I always wondered about the best day to upload and a lot of times I get a bit of a backlog and all the files are reviewed on the same day. Without looking at the figures I think Wednesday or Thursday have the highest DLs. Though this week was probably my best week ever and Friday had the most downloads.

I have seen that Sunday is more often than not higher than Saturday probably due to it being Monday in Japan and Australia and countries in those timezones.

I had a few trips coming up with no internet access so my uploading will grind to halt so I am curious how this will affect sales. Though I will try to upload a few files just before I head off.

Very interresting!  Thank you for sharing it!

from now on, I will try tu upload on Sat, Sun or Mon.  I will skip Tue because if SS takes 24 to 48 hours to approve, it may take another day for your image to show up in searches.

So uploading on Tue is a littlebit tight! 

Claude

Quote from: fintastique on May 12, 2007, 09:01
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I had a few trips coming up with no internet access so my uploading will grind to halt so I am curious how this will affect sales.
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I would like to investigate this as well, but doubt that I will this year (knock on wood). My plans for next year include a lot of travel, so I'll be experiencing the effect of extended zero upload days soon enough. I've read only anecdotal stories about the relationship between image uploading and sales and would like to see some analysis.