MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => iStockPhoto.com => Topic started by: lagereek on May 15, 2011, 01:11
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Is very good ofcourse and same as the E+, is supposed to generate more revenue for agency/contributor. We had some good days here, buyers were curious as to what P+, was, added a few bucks and bought.
However, the novelty will as always deflate and then we are left with what?
At this moment, no best match change, not even a tweak has been done in favour of boosting P+. In many big searches we still see useless Vetta/agency files, non-commercial and with zero dls, just "hanging-in" there, taking up valuable slots simply because some contributor has nominated something that doesnt sell???
Well, charity, is something we cant afford not even to exclusives.
So, all in all, what was in fact the philosophy behind this P+ ? when you build something, you also have to support it, it will stand for a while and then suddenly come crashing down. Building P+, was great but where is the support? Im earning slightly more, so what? not important since the amount of DLs are pretty much the same.
If the philosopy was just a flash in the pan, just a quick boost of cash? its worthless! both for agency as for contributor, or can we assume that buyers are so incredibly stupid and naive that they will still wade through all the rubbish, for hours on end, until they come to a file with a P+ and then BINGO! they will buy!.
I think not. I give the P+, another week, if no support of a best match change has been done in its favour, we are back to square one. Nothing.
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the good part is that buyers - after meandering through heaps of vetta/agency files - won't probably care too much about P+ (compared to regularly priced files) and buy it without serching further
provide they don't give up before reaching one
question: isn't price itself part of the equation for best match? if it is, then P+ should automatically have a slight advantage - just guessing
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Im earning slightly more, so what? not important
So it isn't the money that's going to make you happy?
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Photos+ mean little satisfaction for contributors but much bigger for IS...
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[double post. Sorry]
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question: isn't price itself part of the equation for best match? if it is, then P+ should automatically have a slight advantage - just guessing
E+ was promised a slight bump in best match and it hasn't happened. A 313-post thread about it was locked by one of JJRD's obfuscating posts saying it might happen 'sometime' when they judge the time is right, waffle waffle waffle.
"realize that we are releasing changes as we see fit"
Funnily, he wasn't so fudgy when he launched the program and promised the boost.
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The P+, novelty will last for a couple of weeks. Buyers probably dont even know what . it is? with so many collections going. Dont matter, without a best match tweak, it means nothing, exept that our files are locked for six months ofcourse. Smart move.
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If P+ doesn't meet with price resistance from buyers, at least it means we get more money for the same # of sales.
I didn't go into it expecting a best match boost because I had read about the failure to give E+ the promised boost. Although a boost would be nice to have :)
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Im earning slightly more, so what? not important
So it isn't the money that's going to make you happy?
Why should it? All he wants is enough to buy a new lens cap anyway. ;)
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hard to deal with contributors :P
some think that p+ is going to be good.. other think that even with a little more money that isnīt enough (and before p+ it was?)
if we had a best match boost I cannot even imagine what exclusives would have to say! (and werenīt they right?)
jeez letīs all earn a few more bucks :)
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Anything that pushes stock prices upwards is a good thing. Buyers get images far too cheaply.
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It's naive to think we would notice a best match boost, anyway. Suppose average cash value per sale is plugged into the search? Or average sale value over a certain period. Or value of sales in the last 12 months vs the value of sales in the previous 12 months, or artist's overall earnings in a given period.... all of these would lead to the sort of gradual, progressive shifting of file rank over time that wouldn't be obvious and might also be countered by other factors - age, dl/month etc.
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With or without search boost, I'm not too pessimistic this time: P+ may be the first good thing IS did in months... time will tell
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It's naive to think we would notice a best match boost, anyway. Suppose average cash value per sale is plugged into the search? Or average sale value over a certain period. Or value of sales in the last 12 months vs the value of sales in the previous 12 months, or artist's overall earnings in a given period.... all of these would lead to the sort of gradual, progressive shifting of file rank over time that wouldn't be obvious and might also be countered by other factors - age, dl/month etc.
Thanks but you dont need to be a stock-market analyst for this. My wife is one, thats enough. Obviously I meant a boost for both E+ and P+. Both ofcourse. also Im happy to dissapoint you but no, money is not everything to me, far from it.
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If P+ doesn't meet with price resistance from buyers, at least it means we get more money for the same # of sales.
I didn't go into it expecting a best match boost because I had read about the failure to give E+ the promised boost. Although a boost would be nice to have :)
Hi!
No neither did I, but I must admit I thought they were going to take the opportunity to boost both E+ and P+, seamed logic.
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I still think Photo+ is a good idea.
It makes perfect sense for an agency to raise prices on popular images - however they decide to go about doing so. Dreamstime has their image levels which is basically the same thing as Photo+, except with more levels.
As most people get 90% of income from 10% of their port, we should be able to get higher prices on most of our sales. I'm not going to complain about that, best match boost or not.
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I still think Photo+ is a good idea.
It makes perfect sense for an agency to raise prices on popular images - however they decide to go about doing so. Dreamstime has their image levels which is basically the same thing as Photo+, except with more levels.
As most people get 90% of income from 10% of their port, we should be able to get higher prices on most of our sales. I'm not going to complain about that, best match boost or not.
That makes sense to me, too, but I thought a contributor could opt in ANY 10% of their port that they like. I would have a tough time deciding which images to opt in...if you put the top 10% of your port in, the price hike might stop sales cold. Glad I don't have to make the decision! :)
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..if you put the top 10% of your port in, the price hike might stop sales cold. Glad I don't have to make the decision! :)
But then they have announced that entering files into the extended license scheme improves their ranking, what if they lower the ranking of people who don't use the P+ facility? That would hit your sales, too.
In the final analysis, we simply don't know how any decision or lack of decision will pan out. I'm willing to gamble that P+ will benefit iS and therefore will benefit those who commit solidly to it. So my top 10% are already in.
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Anything that pushes stock prices upwards is a good thing. Buyers get images far too cheaply.
+1
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It makes perfect sense for an agency to raise prices on popular images
I don't quite understand the logic of that. Why would a buyer want to pay more for an image that so many others are using?
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It makes perfect sense for an agency to raise prices on popular images
I don't quite understand the logic of that. Why would a buyer want to pay more for an image that so many others are using?
Buyers (like most people) are like Lemmings.
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It makes perfect sense for an agency to raise prices on popular images
I don't quite understand the logic of that. Why would a buyer want to pay more for an image that so many others are using?
I agree. and isn't that one of the key things at Dreamstime with the image levels? price goes up the more downloads it gets. fine by me as long as it keeps selling!
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It makes perfect sense for an agency to raise prices on popular images
I don't quite understand the logic of that. Why would a buyer want to pay more for an image that so many others are using?
I agree. and isn't that one of the key things at Dreamstime with the image levels? price goes up the more downloads it gets. fine by me as long as it keeps selling!
Don't get me wrong, I don't begrudge you the chance to make more money on those images if they continue to sell at the higher price point. I just don't understand the logic. I usually try to buy images that don't have a lot of downloads and even then there are no guarantees. In fact, a client of mine was threatened with legal action by a competitor because I inadvertently downloaded an image that they were also using. And that image actually didn't even have that many downloads on Dreamstime - though it was also available at other sites. It was quite embarrassing. Of course, there was no legal action, because that person didn't have a leg to stand on, but I did feel bad that my client had to be put through the stress of receiving a nasty-gram.
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It makes perfect sense for an agency to raise prices on popular images
I don't quite understand the logic of that. Why would a buyer want to pay more for an image that so many others are using?
So that we can buy two lens caps! ;)
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It makes perfect sense for an agency to raise prices on popular images
I don't quite understand the logic of that. Why would a buyer want to pay more for an image that so many others are using?
Weird huh? I always search under 'newest'. I know that eventually the images I buy will oneday be bought many times, but at least I can be fresh for a while and when it most counts.
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It makes perfect sense for an agency to raise prices on popular images
I don't quite understand the logic of that. Why would a buyer want to pay more for an image that so many others are using?
Isn't it obvious? They are assuming that others have done the legwork and already identified the top handful of images. It's just like going to a subject-specific lightbox rather than searching the collection - somebody has pre-sorted the stuff to save you the trouble of wasting an hour doing it yourself. An extra handful of credits (that may get charged to the client, anyway) are worth spending to save an hour's work.
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I dont believe a word of this! they just search, period. Majority dont even see the little P+, or couldnt care less. Pretty much the same as majority of buyers dont even think about the search-options in the roll-down menue, just use the old banal best match.
I know buyers myself who dont give a * about E+, and all the other collections as long as they get the shot, well, exeptions being Vetta, not worth its price.
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I dont believe a word of this! they just search, period. Majority dont even see the little P+, or couldnt care less. Pretty much the same as majority of buyers dont even think about the search-options in the roll-down menue, just use the old banal best match.
I know buyers myself who dont give a about E+, and all the other collections as long as they get the shot, well, exeptions being Vetta, not worth its price.
No doubt that is true for a great many, but the question was "why would buyers do it?". The existence of sort-by-downloads as well as the weight given to dls in best match searches suggests that buyers do see dls as an important indicator of a file's usefulness - or, at least, the agencies think they do.
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If P+ doesn't meet with price resistance from buyers, at least it means we get more money for the same # of sales.
I didn't go into it expecting a best match boost because I had read about the failure to give E+ the promised boost. Although a boost would be nice to have :)
Lisa, IS is truly winner here, we are just collateral winners!
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If P+ doesn't meet with price resistance from buyers, at least it means we get more money for the same # of sales.
I didn't go into it expecting a best match boost because I had read about the failure to give E+ the promised boost. Although a boost would be nice to have :)
Lisa, IS is truly winner here, we are just collateral winners!
I'll take it! First time we've been any kind of winner in a long time.
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If P+ doesn't meet with price resistance from buyers, at least it means we get more money for the same # of sales.
I didn't go into it expecting a best match boost because I had read about the failure to give E+ the promised boost. Although a boost would be nice to have :)
Lisa, IS is truly winner here, we are just collateral winners!
Oh youre thinking about the film? with Tom Cruise, where he plays a hit-man? yeah but he was a loser.
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My issue with P+ is the same issue I had with E+. Anyone can put any photo into the collection. I've seen stuff in E+ that is better suited for the dollar bin, and I'm sure the same will apply to P+. The flaw of the collection is that it's not a collection of better images across the board. It's better images from individual portfolios, and the level of quality and value of those portfolios varies greatly.
I think the whole + system is just adding another level of complexity to the system and will further frustrate buyers with varying price points. Since there's no Vector+, I'm not able to add any files to a plus collection. But if it were an option, I still don't think I'd participate.
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Helix, "better" is subjective. Some of my best sellers have no artistic value at all but are just useful as components of a design. By a designer's standards I guess that one of those is "better" than a high-production-cost, highly artistic, surreal composition that can't actually be used for anything much other than hanging on the wall as a piece of art.
I've selected my photo-+ collection purely according to my assessment of sales potential, regardless of artistic merit. With about 20% of my files nominated I seem to have 70% of my sales at the higher price point, which is fine.
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@Baldrick you're probably doing it the right way. You've take a good look at your portfolio and made logical choices for P+. But I doubt that everyone is using P+ in the same way as you. I've seen plenty of images that have low sales and are generally poor images with an E+ icon below them. They're not hard to find. Just do any search and you'll see a few questionable E+ images in there.
If everyone used the plus system as it was intended, it might prove more useful to buyers. But as it stands right now, I find it more of a nuisance than a helpful feature. If I could filter it out of searches, I would.
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Lisa, IS is truly winner here, we are just collateral winners!
I completely agree. I doubt any of us is naive enough, at this point, to believe Istock gives a rat's patoot about what's in its contributors' best interests.
But I'm with Dehooks. I'll take it!!
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Yeah I take it as well. Are we winners? and how? just because of a bit more money.
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It makes perfect sense for an agency to raise prices on popular images
I don't quite understand the logic of that. Why would a buyer want to pay more for an image that so many others are using?
If you aren't hoping to sell an image to more than one buyer, then I don't think microstock is a good fit :)
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It makes perfect sense for an agency to raise prices on popular images
I don't quite understand the logic of that. Why would a buyer want to pay more for an image that so many others are using?
If you aren't hoping to sell an image to more than one buyer, then I don't think microstock is a good fit :)
I'm not saying you shouldn't *want* to sell to more than one buyer. I'm just wonder about the logic, as a buyer, of paying more for a very recognizable image that is extremely popular.