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Agency Based Discussion => iStockPhoto.com => Topic started by: ichiro17 on June 08, 2009, 13:03

Title: How effective are Lightboxes and UBB links?
Post by: ichiro17 on June 08, 2009, 13:03
Just wondering what people think of lightboxes on iStock vs UBB links vs. neither.

Do people believe its worth the effort? A lot of the bigger contributors do take the time to do it, and I have up until now.

Title: Re: How effective are Lightboxes and UBB links?
Post by: CJM Grafx on July 17, 2009, 22:24
I am still relatively new with just hitting 100 uploads and 64 downloads, but I just recently added a few lightboxes and links to the lightboxes withing my photos.

I am curious to see if it helps or not. Only time will tell.
Title: Re: How effective are Lightboxes and UBB links?
Post by: Graffoto on July 17, 2009, 22:59
Sean (SJLOCKE) says that he sometimes gets additional downloads from the lightbox files.
I believe him.
Title: Re: How effective are Lightboxes and UBB links?
Post by: Phil on July 17, 2009, 23:11
the other one is to do the link thing in deepmeta.

I havent updated in quite some time and really need to.

from what I read 12-18 months ago when first putting them in, if the image thumbnail or lightbox thumbnail is related to the image that someone is looking at it is good, if not it is usually a waste of time (unless you have lots of realy amazing stuff that the thumbnails of which could convince someone to look for your portfolio and then basically become one of their favourites sellers)
Title: Re: How effective are Lightboxes and UBB links?
Post by: Freezingpictures on July 18, 2009, 02:05
Just wondering what people think of lightboxes on iStock vs UBB links vs. neither.

Do people believe its worth the effort? A lot of the bigger contributors do take the time to do it, and I have up until now.



I guess it depends how specialized your collection is. I have a fairly big collection of penguin images, almost a hundred, and each image has a lightbox link to my penguin lightbox. The lightbox has because of that now almost 6000 views. I am pretty sure I got a couple of sales through that. On the other hand I have only a quite small sandwich collection. I did the same there. And the lightbox is older than a year I think, with only 23 images and got just over 200 views. I might have gotten sales through the lightbox as well, but if then only a small amount. If I would have only five images from one subject, I think I would not really bother.

On the other hand you could get together with another contributor who has a similar subject and make lightbox with him or her together. Not only will you increase exposure for both of you, but you will also make the lightbox public, which means it will be searchable through the lightbox search function.
Title: Re: How effective are Lightboxes and UBB links?
Post by: Gannet77 on July 18, 2009, 04:58
It's obviously not really possible to tell how effective they are, but it seems to me that if a buyer has found one of your images to be worth viewing, then it can't hurt to put any similar images or a related lightbox link into the description - if the one they found isn't quite right, they are quite likely to look at the others first before searching elsewhere, and you get the sale.

I've several private lightboxes with links from images, and they get hits, some in the hundreds - so obviously people do look.

UBB links are harder to judge, but as you would probably only put a few similar images in as UBB links they could be even more likely to be of interest and get sales.

Besides, it's not difficult to do, so why not?  I always feel it's giving me a little extra influence on the marketing too, something I can do for myself to help my image exposure rather then just relying on the site search and the best match.