Author Topic: Istock's "Most Popular files" back in action! (Read 9595 times)

Gregor909 · « **on:** November 03, 2007, 13:19 »

Istock's "Most Popular Files" is back in action!
Finally.

Do you think it will increase sales for those that are in it?
Are customers also checking the most popular files?

thesentinel · « **Reply #1 on:** November 03, 2007, 16:25 »

I'm sure that the biggest use for that section is by contributors for 'inspiration', I doubt many customers use it.

It also shows how Best Match is a self feeding function.

zorki · « **Reply #2 on:** November 03, 2007, 18:21 »

I don't get this... I hear designers talking constantly about not downloading files that have a huge amount downloads, yet the most popular files get hundreds or thousands of downloads!!! Who is downloading?

Susan S. · « **Reply #3 on:** November 04, 2007, 18:29 »

Well I for one can say that being on the front page of the most popular image can help sales of that image - I currently appear at the bottom of the highest rated of the last three months (only because the image was image of the week back in July). When the Most Popular page disappeared sales of that image slowed a fair bit. I've had another little rush of interest now it's back up there (I was expecting it to be bumped off by now - I think their three months must be running a bit slow)

maunger · « **Reply #4 on:** November 05, 2007, 07:52 »

Quote from: zorki on November 03, 2007, 18:21

I don't get this... I hear designers talking constantly about not downloading files that have a huge amount downloads, yet the most popular files get hundreds or thousands of downloads!!! Who is downloading?

"designers" aren't the only people using microstock - i wish someone would give out some stats on this (not that they are really possible to get unless you did some kind of poll) because i seriously believe that maybe 50% of the buyers are NOT designers.

if what you said were really true, places like IS would hide the number of downloads from everyone and they certainly wouldn't put "flames" on top of those that had lots of downloads. if it were true, there wouldn't be a "most popular" page on any site.

the 'follow the herd' mentality is true in MS just as it is anywhere. IMHO

maunger · « **Reply #5 on:** November 05, 2007, 08:01 »

another thing... i seriously believe that much of this MS biz is pure luck...

i made a friend over on IS last fall - she and i both had the same number of downloads after a year - somewhere around 1500 as i recall... and she had a couple of images that were of christmas ornaments (and they were excellent don't get me wrong) - but they got "hot" and one of them appeared on the IS most downloaded page... and BAM! she was off and running. She's now close to 50,000 downloads and I'm sitting at about 3500 or something like that... she was in the right place at the right time with the right talent and she exploited that correctly too.

again, don't get me wrong, she's very talented with her studio work and she focussed on what was selling and uploaded lots of images. But for the first year she was on IS, she was just like me, struggling to get some good sales. Now, she's on everyone's list and can sell an image of an isolated baseball over 600 times in a year. I couldn't sell that in a decade. if i shot that image, it would get lost in all the other 500 images of isolated baseballs.

Yes, she's exclusive with IS. And last week, she had 5 images in the top 25 on IS - most of them christmas ornaments

so yes, in my eyes, getting on that top 25 list is well worth it if you can get there.

zorki · « **Reply #6 on:** November 05, 2007, 10:00 »

I had an image that used to show at the top of Best Match when you typed in the word "vineyard". I thought it was an OK image, not spectacular, but it was on the first row of best match for about 3-4 months. I sold hundreds of copies of that image in a couple of months and IS changed the search engine back in January and that image got shoved back about 10 pages and has had about 5 downloads in 10 months

It really shows how lazy people are, but it can do wonders for you portfolio.

OTOH, a bunch of us over at the Yahoo Microstock group decided to do some testing to see what was driving the search engine and one thing we came up with was a new submission that got a lot of ratings stayed on top of Best Match for quite some time. Hence the ratings gangs that rove IS rating each other images. I really need to get into one of these to boost my earnings...

Gregor909 · « **Reply #7 on:** November 05, 2007, 10:48 »

Quote from: Susan S. on November 04, 2007, 18:29

I currently appear at the bottom of the highest rated of the last three months

Congrats Susan, it's a great image.

Quote from: maunger on November 05, 2007, 07:52

the 'follow the herd' mentality is true in MS just as it is anywhere. IMHO

Yes I think that's true!

thesentinel · « **Reply #8 on:** November 05, 2007, 12:04 »

Well just have a look at how few of the most rated files of the week actually have ANY downloads these days!
The view and rating per downloads ratio for those files seems to show that manipulation, if it did ever really work, is a busted flush.

Quote from: zorki on November 05, 2007, 10:00

OTOH, a bunch of us over at the Yahoo Microstock group decided to do some testing to see what was driving the search engine and one thing we came up with was a new submission that got a lot of ratings stayed on top of Best Match for quite some time. Hence the ratings gangs that rove IS rating each other images. I really need to get into one of these to boost my earnings...

vonkara · « **Reply #9 on:** November 05, 2007, 14:50 »

Quote from: zorki on November 05, 2007, 10:00

OTOH, a bunch of us over at the Yahoo Microstock group decided to do some testing to see what was driving the search engine and one thing we came up with was a new submission that got a lot of ratings stayed on top of Best Match for quite some time. Hence the ratings gangs that rove IS rating each other images. I really need to get into one of these to boost my earnings...

Wow, I was thinking IS have removed this feature of their search engine, exactly because of those rating "gangs"?

zorki · « **Reply #10 on:** November 05, 2007, 15:54 »

That's what we thought too. After that last big change to the search engine earlier this year we decided to test it out and see what effect the ratings had on Best Match and just what we could uncover about the search engine in general. Keywords help as does, but we had similar images with the same exact keywords, titles and categories and they showed up all over the place. So that led us to believe that there was something else effecting the search engine. Newness has some effect as does the ratings that others give (to a lesser degree now, but still there). What we decided was that there is some type of hidden ratings system that the reviewers have because there simply can't be any other external factor. Way, way back when IS started they used to have an "initial rating" given to the picture. This was a subjective rating the reviewer gave to the image and it was used in ranking the image. It used to show up when the image came on line. For some reason they stopped showing this field, but we came to the conclusion that it's still there simply because there is no other ways for the photographer to manipulate the keywords to get it to climb the best match search.

Susan S. · « **Reply #11 on:** November 05, 2007, 18:47 »

Initial ratings of 5 are still given (see the file I mentioned above - amusingly this was given its "initial" rating several days after approval, after it was chosen for image of the week.

vonkara · « **Reply #12 on:** November 05, 2007, 19:20 »

I always thought that reviewers was having something like rating, who is pushing up the files. You just confirm my thought!

Gregor909 · « **Reply #13 on:** November 09, 2007, 16:17 »

Cool! Made 1st place last month.

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Author Topic: Istock's "Most Popular files" back in action! (Read 9595 times)

Gregor909

thesentinel

zorki

Susan S.

maunger

maunger

zorki

Gregor909

thesentinel

vonkara

zorki

Susan S.

vonkara

Gregor909

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