Hi All,

I met with a really nice gentleman today that is offering a way for people to track stats in Micro. His name is Rahul Pathak you have seen him on here speaking on the posts. He offers an interesting service so I thought I would take it for a spin. My first stats don't come back up for 24 hours so I can't wait to see the data. I realize a lot of this data is available at the Micro sites and some people that aren't doing this full time this might not be the perfect match but for the bigger players I think it would be worth your while to speak with Rahul for a minute and get an idea of what his software and outsourcing can do for you.

Best,
AVAVA

rahul is a really smart guy and has a great idea. i have met with him a few times and like where he is going with lookstat. 

It sound like that Lookstat will implement the statistics first for the Big 6 first. Will they also include Cutcaster soon?

Avava - Thanks a ton for taking the time to meet with me and for trying out LookStat. I learned a great deal from our conversation and I'm looking forward to your feedback both positive and negative. It's great to hear the good stuff, but even better to hear about what we need to be improving.

John - appreciate the kind words and looking forward to the next time we meet in person.

If I can answer any questions about LookStat, please don't hesitate to get in touch. If any of you are in the Seattle area, I'd be happy to sit down with you in person.

Happy 2009 everyone!

Rahul

Quote from: oboy on January 07, 2009, 00:22
It sound like that Lookstat will implement the statistics first for the Big 6 first. Will they also include Cutcaster soon?

John and I are chatting in the very near future. I'll definitely share more details when I can

Looksat is of limited use to me as an IS exclusive but I have been giving it a spin over the past month or so.

I've only spoken to Rahul over the phone but he seems like a nice guy and the service he is providing with LS is really breaking new ground in terms of stats for microstockers. He is also very on the ball about adding new features and integrating user requests into the service. I would definitely recommend trying it out.

NS

Also, as an iStock exclusive, what does LS do, that DeepMeta doesn't show in its stats section?  What I would like is a way to see trends, ie., my series on X is down overall for Y period.  So I know to research why.  Like green or red arrows by images.  I would also like to know how much X series or image has made for Y period.

It looks neat...


Is this all or is there even more?
Can you also see your portfolio sizes?

Neustock - was great chatting with you on the phone and thanks for your time and suggestions and the kind words below. I hope we can meet in person before too long.

sjlocke - Deep Meta is a great piece of software for IS and does provide a tremendous amount of detail for IS exclusives. Your points about tracking earnings by shoot or by category, or by model over a specific timeline are very well taken and those items have been part of our roadmap for a while. We've also gotten this input from quite a few others so it will definitely be part of what we offer. We are not there yet. Hopefully, you'll give us a whirl when we get some of those features in place.

schamle - With LookStat, we're focused on cross site earnings tracking so we match images across sites and provide an integrated view of image performance. At this stage, we're just tracking earnings at DT/IS/SS. Specific items coming very soon are more sites, individual image sales histories and the ability to query your stats over an arbitrary time slice - which images sold best from June 2008 - Sep 2008, for example.

We decided to release a fairly early beta to the community so we could involve our users in defining the evolution of the service. I've also been soliciting input (here and elsewhere) about which sites we should be thinking about, what metrics matter etc. We've gotten a ton of great feedback and we're working hard to get some of those ideas into the service.

To the new users trying out the service - thank you! I really appreciate your willingness to give us a shot and look forward to getting your input.

Cheers,

Rahul

SJ,

Part of the conversation I had yesterday was also about his ability to track what is selling and what isn't to give you a much better idea about what images are making you money. I usually just use the info of images that sold poorly and don't try to reproduce them instead of duplicating all my best sellers and just cut out the stuff that doesn't sell and move on to new looks. but it might be worth a chat with him. He is very big into trying to make his company fit your needs.

Best,
AVAVA

SJ - If you have some time, I'd love to spend 30 minutes chatting with you about some of the metrics that matter to you. It would be great to get a clear understanding of your requirements and for us to see if we can meet them.

Hello Rahul,

I have been playing with some of my stats there are some fun features in here. You asked for the problems more then what is working. Well everything works great for me and although it has only been an afternoon I would love to be able to set the dates that I am checking on. For example a pull down date box that lets me set specific date periods such as Dec 22nd thru Dec.1st or something of the sort. Does that make sense. You already have them broken down into days and weeks and month but I would like a little more control if that is something you could manage. Not all my data is up yet and maybe we can talk on the phone next week when it is all up and running.

Thanks,
Jonathan

Quote from: avava on January 07, 2009, 22:17
Hello Rahul,

I have been playing with some of my stats there are some fun features in here. You asked for the problems more then what is working. Well everything works great for me and although it has only been an afternoon I would love to be able to set the dates that I am checking on. For example a pull down date box that lets me set specific date periods such as Dec 22nd thru Dec.1st or something of the sort. Does that make sense. You already have them broken down into days and weeks and month but I would like a little more control if that is something you could manage. Not all my data is up yet and maybe we can talk on the phone next week when it is all up and running.

Thanks,
Jonathan

Hi Jonathan,

Glad you were able to get in and check things out. I hear you loud and clear on date ranges and it makes perfect sense. That functionality is very high on our list of product priorities. I'll definitely look forward to chatting next week. Thanks for taking the time to try us out and to share your thoughts.

Rahul

If you could convince the sites involved to introduce seperate passwords for financial transactions to that of the normal account then I would use your software tomorrow.

I appreciate you use a high level of security but personally I don't like the thought of all my user accounts and passwords being stored on one external (to me) system.

Good luck with the project though, very clever.

Just out of curiousity I made an account to see what lookstat does.  Although I'm not convinced at the moment if it will be more than a gadget.  Will it bring something meaningful to my 'business' ?  Not sure yet.

Why ?

Because if an image sells at one site or not is not (alone) about the quality of the image but maybe even more about the 'exposure' it is granted. Exposure can come with best match results, lightboxes, and so on.  And this differs from site to site.  That's why some images sell good at one site but doesn't sell at an other.  

It would be of great interest which keywords are search for for a certain image.  How many views are generated by which keyword.  That would be interesting.  

But we'll see  

RT - I think is prudent to think about security and we take it very very seriously. Truth be told, I would much rather not require credentials to make this work. As sites implement this sort of thing, we will definitely adapt. Until then, we will be very paranoid about security and as transparent as we possibly can to build trust. I'm proud of the job we do in terms of safeguarding user data but I do understand and appreciate the concerns. Thanks for the good wishes and for sharing your perspective. If you'd ever like to chat live, it would be my pleasure.

Perrush - thanks for signing up to try us out. Your point about exposure is definitely valid although in theory, as images age, exposure and quality should correlated - high quality images get viewed more, get downloaded more etc. I did a interesting quick and dirty on conversion rate and human emotions on DT a while back and it was pretty interesting. I'd love to get my hands on search data - keywords:views:dls would be huge. I know a couple of people are doing some interesting things with SEO that could let you correlate inbound traffic & referrers to click through but it's not perfect. Please let me know if you have any questions as you explore LookStat.

Cheers,

Rahul

I have signed up. Might as well get some stats.

Quote from: litifeta on January 08, 2009, 00:59
I have signed up. Might as well get some stats.

Thanks for giving us a shot!

I'd be more interested in seeing my sales volume by image in a coherent manner. Istock is best in that regard with their Sales per Month stat as an example. SS's stats suck big time, worthless in most cases. It would really help to see all my images plotted out with sales stats per site. Just dreaming, I know. But I wonder how many sales are lost by, say, SS, by not providing meaningful results for contributors?

Quote from: louoates on January 08, 2009, 03:05
I'd be more interested in seeing my sales volume by image in a coherent manner. Istock is best in that regard with their Sales per Month stat as an example. SS's stats suck big time, worthless in most cases. It would really help to see all my images plotted out with sales stats per site. Just dreaming, I know. But I wonder how many sales are lost by, say, SS, by not providing meaningful results for contributors?

This is one of the core features we're working on - individual image sales history across multiple sites plotted over time. Not being able to look at this data in a consistent way has always irritated me and I'll be thrilled when we solve it.

Is there any third party security audits planned on site security so we can trust to store our passwords? And how about thawte or similar daily security scans etc?

The idea behind the system is very good and I will gladly use the system, but I need to well known third party confirmation about site security before I can trust my passwords to any third party organizations.

br, MjP

Hi Rahul,
i would be interested as well.
Tks. a lot

Quote from: mjp on January 08, 2009, 08:59
Is there any third party security audits planned on site security so we can trust to store our passwords? And how about thawte or similar daily security scans etc?

The idea behind the system is very good and I will gladly use the system, but I need to well known third party confirmation about site security before I can trust my passwords to any third party organizations.

br, MjP

This is a great point and a very reasonable perspective.

My intention had been to put in place McAffee daily secure scans (as seen in the footers of DT/SS) and I have no issue with a 3rd party review either although I must confess I have not yet selected a provider yet. I'm very proud of our commitment to security and I'm confident that from a technical perspective we're doing the right things so I have no issue whatsoever with either of these steps.

My belief on trust was that I needed to build it directly with the community by being transparent and available, asking our users to talk about us and then using 3rd party validation after that. Overall I think your suggestion is terrific and it is definitely something we plan to do, I just wanted to share my thinking behind why it hadn't happened yet.

Basically, this is a long way of saying that we'll act on this item in Q1 of this year and I'd be happy to get in touch with you with an update once I get that ball rolling. Thanks for taking the time to share your perspective and being open to using the service in the future.

Rahul

I'm not a big player in the micros but I signed up and from what I see so far it will serve me well in the future. Once you have all six sites in, it will be a great tool.

Quote from: brm1949 on January 08, 2009, 12:28
I'm not a big player in the micros but I signed up and from what I see so far it will serve me well in the future. Once you have all six sites in, it will be a great tool.

Thanks for signing up and the kind words. More sites are definitely in the works...