MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => Microstock Services => Topic started by: avava on January 06, 2009, 16:54
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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
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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.
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It sound like that Lookstat will implement the statistics first for the Big 6 first. Will they also include Cutcaster soon?
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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
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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 :)
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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
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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.
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It looks neat...
(https://www.lookstat.com/images/graph.jpg)
Is this all or is there even more?
Can you also see your portfolio sizes?
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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 ;D
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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
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I have signed up. Might as well get some stats.
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I have signed up. Might as well get some stats.
Thanks for giving us a shot!
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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?
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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.
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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
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Hi Rahul,
i would be interested as well.
Tks. a lot
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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
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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.
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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...
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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 registered into lookstat with one stock site ( just in case:) ) and I will do the rest after security confirmation from security audit or a good words from wellknown high profile microstock contributors. But so far everything looks good.
The data which the program collect is looking good and I can see it's huge benefit to contributors in a long run. We can have much more knowledge about what is selling and when and overall statistics as well. But ofcourse you have lot of coding work to get everything done, so good luck with the development phase.
Maybe you could provide simple secure interface specification to low earner/smaller sites which they can implement to allow easier integration to lookstat (I think that way sites win(they might more users since good contributor tools) and lookstat get information easily and more securely etc (e.g. seperate passwords for data gathering etc) ).
I will post ideas and suggestions in the future if I get good ones:) .
br, MjP
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I registered into lookstat with one stock site ( just in case:) ) and I will do the rest after security confirmation from security audit or a good words from wellknown high profile microstock contributors. But so far everything looks good.
The data which the program collect is looking good and I can see it's huge benefit to contributors in a long run. We can have much more knowledge about what is selling and when and overall statistics as well. But ofcourse you have lot of coding work to get everything done, so good luck with the development phase.
Maybe you could provide simple secure interface specification to low earner/smaller sites which they can implement to allow easier integration to lookstat (I think that way sites win(they might more users since good contributor tools) and lookstat get information easily and more securely etc (e.g. seperate passwords for data gathering etc) ).
I will post ideas and suggestions in the future if I get good ones:) .
br, MjP
Hi there,
Thanks for being willing to try us out and for the kind words of encouragement. Please feel free to contact me directly at anytime as well. We definitely have a ton on our plate from a development standpoint, but user input is always very valuable and definitely shapes our thinking.
Your thought on providing an API is a great one and it's something we have definitely talked about internally. My guess is that we will be very focused on moving the product forward in the immediate term, but that an API is definitely something we should do.
Thank you again for trying us out. I'll definitely be in touch as our third party seals get put in place but in the meantime, here are a couple of mentions:
http://blog.lookstat.com/2008/11/24/some-encouraging-early-feedback-on-lookstat/
Cheers,
Rahul
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I signed up to try, but I feel quite nervous about giving my login data. Whatever, it is mentioned that stats per image over sites are grouped. Does that mean that lookstat has some sort of image recognition software, or do we have to specify ourselves which image is which on the different sites?
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I signed up to try, but I feel quite nervous about giving my login data. Whatever, it is mentioned that stats per image over sites are grouped. Does that mean that lookstat has some sort of image recognition software, or do we have to specify ourselves which image is which on the different sites?
Thanks for trying out the service. Please feel free to email me directly (my email is on my profile) and I'd be happy to call you to talk about security and our future plans. LookStat attempts to match images across multiple sites automatically. We occasionally get this wrong and plan to release a feature that allows you to correct any errors you notice in the matches. Once that is done, the system will recalculate your stats. Our goal was to have the system do as much work for you as possible.
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I would like the ability to see the top performers by Downloads at each site. The reason I suggest this is 1 EL sale, or even a On Demand sale at SS can vastly skew the data. The way I tend to judge a photo's performance is to look at the DL's at each site, and then multiply the average earnings per DL at the site to get a better gage of earnings performance...assuming that over time the subscription sales, EL's, and PPD's all even out.
For instance I know that over time I tend to make about 40 cents per DL at Shutterstock. If I am getting 10 DL's per month from an image at SS, I know that image is worth about $4.00 per month from SS even if one recent EL sale generated $28.
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I would like the ability to see the top performers by Downloads at each site. The reason I suggest this is 1 EL sale, or even a On Demand sale at SS can vastly skew the data. The way I tend to judge a photo's performance is to look at the DL's at each site, and then multiply the average earnings per DL at the site to get a better gage of earnings performance...assuming that over time the subscription sales, EL's, and PPD's all even out.
For instance I know that over time I tend to make about 40 cents per DL at Shutterstock. If I am getting 10 DL's per month from an image at SS, I know that image is worth about $4.00 per month from SS even if one recent EL sale generated $28.
Thanks for trying out the service and I think your suggestion is a good one. I'll see what we can do about it. Also, thanks for sharing your thinking about averages and per site earnings performance. It's really helpful to get a feel for what matters in terms of metrics.
Cheers,
Rahul
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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 there,
Thanks again for this feedback. We have implemented daily third party intrusion testing via McAfee Secure. I am proud to say that we passed out of the gate and you can see the badge in our footer. (This is the same vendor used by SS/DT/123.)
Cheers,
Rahul
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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?
Image sales history by site is live.
http://blog.lookstat.com/2009/01/28/image-sales-history-thumbnails-are-now-clickable/
Cheers,
Rahul
PS: For those of you who I've told about this already, my apologies.
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Rahul, what time the date is changed on the site?
Cannot catch exactly, but at least at 7PM PST it is already tomorrow at lookstat...
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Rahul, what time the date is changed on the site?
Cannot catch exactly, but at least at 7PM PST it is already tomorrow at lookstat...
it's on GMT. This is something we know about, but have not gotten to yet.
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To the guy who doesn't want his name released to the public I have sent you the second PM to answer your questions if you don't receive it this time this is to let you know I have sent your answer this morning.
Hope it helps,
AVAVA
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Hi All,
The new feature Rahul has added is now making this software very helpful if you use multiple sites. It only now shows you a handful of images separately but once it can show you all you images I think it will help a great deal in seeing what is making you money and what isn't as well as what season and that image. Looking forward to the upgrade let us know when it is going to be released I would love to try it.
Best,
AVAVA
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Signed up a couple of weeks ago. Cool site! looking forward to the addition of the other missing sites, particularly FT, STX.
It doesn't appear to be recording EL sales properly, maybe Rahul can clarify this?
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Signed up a couple of weeks ago. Cool site! looking forward to the addition of the other missing sites, particularly FT, STX.
It doesn't appear to be recording EL sales properly, maybe Rahul can clarify this?
Thanks for signing up! We currently do have a bug with istock EL sales but it is something we aim to fix in very short order. Also, Fotolia is next in the pipeline. We don't cover every single earnings scenario yet, but we are committed to getting there.
Avava - thanks for the kind words re: image earnings history. (You can currently hack the site URL to see more images (change the 1 to the 2 etc but a page showing all images is in the works!)
To all of you - thanks for the support and the feedback. It's a real treat to not be working on this in a vacuum.
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Per-image stats would be useful if it was correct. Just checked one of my images - its downloads in IS and DT are shown being ~ twice more than in reality.....
Too bad, I hoped that I just missed some downloads ;)
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Per-image stats would be useful if it was correct. Just checked one of my images - its downloads in IS and DT are shown being ~ twice more than in reality.....
Too bad, I hoped that I just missed some downloads
While we are hoping that we can help contributors boost their earnings, this is clearly the wrong way to do it. Thanks for pointing this out. I'll follow up directly so we can get this resolved asap.
Thanks for the feedback and sorry about the discrepancy.
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Per-image stats would be useful if it was correct. Just checked one of my images - its downloads in IS and DT are shown being ~ twice more than in reality.....
Too bad, I hoped that I just missed some downloads
While we are hoping that we can help contributors boost their earnings, this is clearly the wrong way to do it. Thanks for pointing this out. I'll follow up directly so we can get this resolved asap.
Thanks for the feedback and sorry about the discrepancy.
No problem, at this stage of your site development I see this as just a funny bug - though hope you can fix it soon :)
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No problem, at this stage of your site development I see this as just a funny bug - though hope you can fix it soon :)
Thanks for understanding and we will definitely get this sorted out as soon as we can.
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I just signed up and am in a holding pattern while my stats are collected. I'm curious to know how it handles the same image across sites, but with a different title on some sites.
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I just signed up and am in a holding pattern while my stats are collected. I'm curious to know how it handles the same image across sites, but with a different title on some sites.
Hi there,
Thanks for signing up. Our matching is definitely not perfect but it will improve over time. Please let me know how it turns out. The initialization process can take up to 48 hours but in most cases is quicker than that.
Please feel free to contact me directly with any questions or feedback.
Sincerely,
Rahul
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Hi All,
The new feature Rahul has added is now making this software very helpful if you use multiple sites. It only now shows you a handful of images separately but once it can show you all you images I think it will help a great deal in seeing what is making you money and what isn't as well as what season and that image. Looking forward to the upgrade let us know when it is going to be released I would love to try it.
Best,
AVAVA
Just a quick follow up to let folks know that we added the ability to view all images that sold at all the sites. More details on our blog: http://blog.lookstat.com/2009/02/05/new-lookstat-feature-view-all-images-that-sold-at-all-microstock-sites-in-one-place/
Also, Fotolia stats are next and should be available in the very near future.
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ok, created an account and will see how it works...
When you're adding Fotolia, do you consider different currencies? As I am in FT Germany, I'm paid in Euros. So you need a currency conversion somewhere in the system.
And Fotolia changed the credit value (at least in Euros in in Pounds) a few months ago, so you need to consider that credit values may be different depending on the time the credits are earned.
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Very nice Rahul I like the new feature! As dirkr said you might have a problem of currencies with FT. Being in UK zone, pounds will be considered as dollars certainly at first . Hope you can anticipate that !
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Nice feature. Unfortunately the systems doesn't recognize the same image from all the sites, so some images have their earnings split in two or more.
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Nice feature. Unfortunately the systems doesn't recognize the same image from all the sites, so some images have their earnings split in two or more.
We knew this feature would highlight areas where our matching doesn't do as well as it should. I've updated the known issues page on our blog to reflect this. This is definitely an area that will get our attention but it will be after we add fotolia support to the the site.
dirkr - thanks for signing up - great to have you as a user. also, thank you for flagging the currency & credit issues.
ldambies - glad you like the feature! also, thanks for the fotolia currency nudge as well. we'll do the best we can on this.
Thanks a ton everyone.
Rahul
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First impression: Looks good. Can't wait to have FT and StockXpert integrated.
Besides the image matching, that needs some tweaking (as has been mentioned here before, so let's wait...) one more point for your list: How to handle refunds. I just had a sale removed due to credit card fraud on DT, but on Lookstat it's still reflected in both total sales and on the day it was done (yesterday).
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First impression: Looks good. Can't wait to have FT and StockXpert integrated.
Besides the image matching, that needs some tweaking (as has been mentioned here before, so let's wait...) one more point for your list: How to handle refunds. I just had a sale removed due to credit card fraud on DT, but on Lookstat it's still reflected in both total sales and on the day it was done (yesterday).
Thanks for signing up and for your patience re: image matching. I've added the refund issue to our list as well. We are actively working on FT.
Cheers,
Rahul
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I've signed up also, very nice idea, I like it, despite being a tad anxious re giving my passwords to a 3rd party site.
Would love to see StockXpert and 123RF on here also, besides FT of course :)
Excellent work Rahul, what's your personal motivation for doing this? do are you looking at a monthly/yearly subscription fee down the track ?
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I've signed up also, very nice idea, I like it, despite being a tad anxious re giving my passwords to a 3rd party site.
Would love to see StockXpert and 123RF on here also, besides FT of course :)
Excellent work Rahul, what's your personal motivation for doing this? do are you looking at a monthly/yearly subscription fee down the track ?
Thanks for signing up!
Our goal is to build a business by making life better for contributors so we do intend to charge in the future. It will be free for the vast majority and when we do charge a subscription it will be affordable. We're hard at work on Fotolia and will be adding more agencies in short order.
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I am also in... Looks very good!!
Also stats need some kind of technical analysis (SMA,EMA,various trendlines,averages,projections etc.)...
Thanks!
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I am also in... Looks very good!!
Also stats need some kind of technical analysis (SMA,EMA,various trendlines,averages,projections etc.)...
Thanks!
Thanks for signing up - we're excited to have you as a user!
Hear you loud and clear re: more analytics.
Cheers,
Rahul
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I signed up about a week ago. Great service! I just emailed some feedback to your support.
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I signed up about a week ago. Great service! I just emailed some feedback to your support.
Thanks for signing up and glad you like the service!
I'll make sure we act quickly on your email.
Rahul
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How about a page displaying top personal earners across all sites with no graph, just images with say 25/50 and 100 view option, sorted either by income or downloads.
Also the information that I'm finding quite relevant is when looking at my top earners and realizing I don't have a given image on the other sites, would it be possible for that information to be displayed as a java rollover on the main graph page ? ie just which sites the image is on...
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Our goal is to build a business by making life better for contributors so we do intend to charge in the future. It will be free for the vast majority and when we do charge a subscription it will be affordable.
Sorry to be too outspoken sometimes, but I'm used to deal on Asian markets and they always tell me "very affordable sir, only for you sir, special price sir". Then my shields go up as usual and I tend to ask in the local lingo "pila na??" or in Tagalog "magkano po?". :o
So "how much" is "affordable"? As much as I admire your programming and marketing skills, becoming profitable on a tiny market like microstock photographers is a daring endeavour. Count you plus overhead plus one part-time force and you need at least 7K$/month to keep things going. If you got 1000 paying members, they'll need to pay 84$/year for basically a counting service.
The number of 1000 isn't a wild guess since I'm near the top 1000 on Dreamstime, and I don't think you can enlist all those on top of me. 20% of them would be a success. The question whether it's affordable or not is a bit irrelevant, the question would be, do I want to afford it? If it's 10$/month, well for that price I can hire an unemployed grad student for 5 days in SE Asia, and even if he counts by hand on a piece of paper, it will still be much cheaper. Also, many volume stockers are in Eastern Europe, and they won't be eager to cut off 7-10$ from their earnings since it's a low wage area there too.
Pardon my rant :P
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Sorry to be too outspoken sometimes, but I'm used to deal on Asian markets and they always tell me "very affordable sir, only for you sir, special price sir". Then my shields go up as usual and I tend to ask in the local lingo "pila na??" or in Tagalog "magkano po?". :o
Hi there,
First, I'm sorry to have triggered a rant. I grew up in India and Africa so I know all about the special price for you and I should perhaps have expressed myself more carefully. Having said that, I was being sincere. Unless we can deliver value at a price the market will bear, we're not going to be around in the future. Pricing a service is always a tricky thing and we will make mistakes but we'll try and correct them quickly.
Rahul
PS: I like outspoken and direct so no worries there :)
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How about a page displaying top personal earners across all sites with no graph, just images with say 25/50 and 100 view option, sorted either by income or downloads.
Also the information that I'm finding quite relevant is when looking at my top earners and realizing I don't have a given image on the other sites, would it be possible for that information to be displayed as a java rollover on the main graph page ? ie just which sites the image is on...
You mean this feature? :)
http://blog.lookstat.com/2009/02/05/new-lookstat-feature-view-all-images-that-sold-at-all-microstock-sites-in-one-place/
You can't sort yet, but that will come.
As for your other suggestions, those make sense and we'll definitely look into them. We're very focused at the moment on adding more sites but presenting information without requiring a click is a good idea.
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts.
Rahul
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ahhh great work :) serves me right for not reading your blogs ;P
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ahhh great work :) serves me right for not reading your blogs ;P
Actually, I think this means we need to do a better job of highlighting new features on the site. :)
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Rahul, basic economic technical analysis is the best solution for projection stats...
Everything is in the future forecasts, and economic indicators will give your stats excellent new dimension...
Also very useful for all of us...
Statistic for stock exchange market is very similar to microstock...
You have many of programs for economic technical analysis to include similar calculations in this site...
Maybe you heard for some, "Metastock" is on the top...
Also, all formulas for EMA,SMA,Bollinger Bands,RSI etc. you can find on internet...
I know its will be hard project, but it will be top statistic site for microstock....
Regards
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Rahul, basic economic technical analysis is the best solution for projection stats...
Everything is in the future forecasts, and economic indicators will give your stats excellent new dimension...
Also very useful for all of us...
Statistic for stock exchange market is very similar to microstock...
You have many of programs for economic technical analysis to include similar calculations in this site...
Maybe you heard for some, "Metastock" is on the top...
Also, all formulas for EMA,SMA,Bollinger Bands,RSI etc. you can find on internet...
I know its will be hard project, but it will be top statistic site for microstock....
Regards
Thanks for this great input. We're definitely thinking along these lines. A great deal of effort has been put into statistical thinking on economic and stock market data and a lot of that could be applied here. Thanks for all the specifics, I will definitely follow up.
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Rahul you might wanna check the monthly stats. IS shows 10$ more than I've really earned (when I select "This month"). Also previous month's stats are incorrect for all the sites. Maybe it is because of the time you do updates.
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Rahul you might wanna check the monthly stats. IS shows 10$ more than I've really earned (when I select "This month"). Also previous month's stats are incorrect for all the sites. Maybe it is because of the time you do updates.
We'll get right on it. I'll email you directly so we can troubleshoot. Also, you know you can always write me directly about issues. It's generally faster.
Thanks for the heads up.
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Rahul you might wanna check the monthly stats. IS shows 10$ more than I've really earned (when I select "This month"). Also previous month's stats are incorrect for all the sites. Maybe it is because of the time you do updates.
$10 exactly? Do you do referrals?
Lookstat doesn't (didn't?) track referral income last I looked. Huge problem for me since I do a decent number in ref$.
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Great stuff. What is a roadmap for adding rest of top 5 agencies?
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Rahul you might wanna check the monthly stats. IS shows 10$ more than I've really earned (when I select "This month"). Also previous month's stats are incorrect for all the sites. Maybe it is because of the time you do updates.
Hi CofkoCof,
Thanks again for your note. As I mentioned in my email, we don't currently track referral earnings. I expect that we will in the future but it will be after we add direct earnings from more sites. I am fully aware that Matt will give me grief until we do so we are highly motivated to get there ;)
The IS issue for Feb is an issue on our end and we will fix that shortly. The issue occurred in connection with a release a week ago. It has since been fixed but there is some data in the system that needs to be cleaned up.
Sorry for the annoyance and thanks for being a LookStat user!
Rahul
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Great stuff. What is a roadmap for adding rest of top 5 agencies?
Thank you!
Fotolia is very close to ready and the others (StockXpert, BS, 123) will be coming soon after. I don't have concrete dates yet but broadening our coverage is an area of focus at the moment.
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This is a great tool. Can't wait for the other sites, will save a lot of time getting stats. I do seem to have a problem though. I find that the images are not accurate across all sites. I think I have caused it for myself. If a post a pic of a whitetail deer buck I use "Whitetail Deer Buck" in the description for all files of whitetail deer buck. Same goes for Wild Turkey. I think I will have to come up with a different description field for each file. Unless Lookstat has a way around it. Even though I have this issue, I still like Lookstat very much.
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This is a great tool. Can't wait for the other sites, will save a lot of time getting stats. I do seem to have a problem though. I find that the images are not accurate across all sites. I think I have caused it for myself. If a post a pic of a whitetail deer buck I use "Whitetail Deer Buck" in the description for all files of whitetail deer buck. Same goes for Wild Turkey. I think I will have to come up with a different description field for each file. Unless Lookstat has a way around it. Even though I have this issue, I still like Lookstat very much.
Hi there,
Thanks for signing up! We are definitely working on ways to address this and we'll be making improvements in the weeks to come. In the meantime, thanks for your patience and support! Glad you're enjoying LookStat.
Rahul
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Once Fotolia is added which site is next in line to be added ? Just curious, personally I would like to see 123RF added next :) I'm actually finding your stats quite useful now that you've pointed me to the earnings page with all images laid out... great work, keep it up Rahul!
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Once Fotolia is added which site is next in line to be added ? Just curious, personally I would like to see 123RF added next :) I'm actually finding your stats quite useful now that you've pointed me to the earnings page with all images laid out... great work, keep it up Rahul!
Glad you're liking the feature! In terms of what's after Fotolia, it's most likely StockXpert based on feedback we've gotten so far. Having said that, we will be adding more sites at a faster rate (we're getting better as we go :) ) so hopefully you won't have to wait too long.
Thanks for using the service and the words of encouragement!
Rahul
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Excuse me if this was discussed before but how about a "set" feature that would allow us to group our images by sets (selectable via lookstat and sets also to be named by users) that would also give a total income per set, per site. Something like that would then give photographers a better idea which of their shoots were the most worthwhile....
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Excuse me if this was discussed before but how about a "set" feature that would allow us to group our images by sets (selectable via lookstat and sets also to be named by users) that would also give a total income per set, per site. Something like that would then give photographers a better idea which of their shoots were the most worthwhile....
:)
After more sites, this is perhaps the most often requested feature and has been in our minds from the beginning. Being able to place images in multiple sets - e.g. by shoot, by keyword, by model - is a feature makes a ton of sense and we will definitely implement it.
Also, I just wanted to say thank you for your thoughtful comments. It's clear to me that you're using the product and thinking (and sharing) about how it could be more useful to you and others and I really appreciate it.
Cheers,
Rahul
PS: I should probably add a 'things we intend to do' page to our blog
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Is there a way to combine two images that are actually the same one, but that lookstat didn't manage to recognize as the same one? If that made sense...
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Is there a way to combine two images that are actually the same one, but that lookstat didn't manage to recognize as the same one? If that made sense...
Absolutely makes sense. As soon as we release Fotolia, we're going to be working on matching. We want to improve the automated system but also give you the ability to manually override any decision the system makes about grouping images. Sorry, I know this doesn't work as well as it should right now.
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Only to make sure your to do list doesn't get too short ;D :
How about giving users the ability to enter more sites manually?
I assume you will never be able to add all existing stock photo venues in an automated way. I for example have some (german) midstock sites that you probably never heard of (pitopia.de, digitalstock.de, shotshop.com, panthermedia.de, zoonar.de - at least the last two are mentioned here on MSG). And they do produce some sales, and although by far not as frequent as the big microsites, the amounts can add up since the prices are higher.
So a feature to add sites, add photos (if they are not already on the existing sites) and add sales manually might make sense - in the long run, definitely adding FT and StockXpert and sorting out the image matching are more important.
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Only to make sure your to do list doesn't get too short ;D :
How about giving users the ability to enter more sites manually?
I assume you will never be able to add all existing stock photo venues in an automated way. I for example have some (german) midstock sites that you probably never heard of (pitopia.de, digitalstock.de, shotshop.com, panthermedia.de, zoonar.de - at least the last two are mentioned here on MSG). And they do produce some sales, and although by far not as frequent as the big microsites, the amounts can add up since the prices are higher.
So a feature to add sites, add photos (if they are not already on the existing sites) and add sales manually might make sense - in the long run, definitely adding FT and StockXpert and sorting out the image matching are more important.
"The list is long and distinguished..." ;) (please excuse the Top Gun reference)
I think your assessment is correct - we're not going to be able to add every single site for every single user. To be honest, I don't think we had ever discussed a manual entry model but it's not a bad idea. In the near to mid-term, we're going to be adding the main sites as you mentioned. Beyond that, we'll see.
I love having a long list of things to do. At least we'll never be sitting around wondering what to work on next :)
Thanks for the input. Please keep it coming.
Rahul
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Bit quiet on this thread, how are the new sites coming along Rahul ? I'm looking forward to not having to log into each my agency every day to check my stats :)
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Bit quiet on this thread, how are the new sites coming along Rahul ? I'm looking forward to not having to log into each my agency every day to check my stats :)
They are coming :)
We've been making some back end improvements to handle scale and to make sure we can quickly solve data issues. All this should let us add new sites faster. I too am anxious to get more released. I'm hoping days not weeks.
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Sounds great, thanks for the updates :)
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Heya Rahul :) nice maintenance release with this and past year on that stats. If I can also make another suggestion it's to add an option to either sort images in the Earnings section be either revenue or downloads, hope FT isn't too far away either, loving your site/product :)
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Heya Rahul :) nice maintenance release with this and past year on that stats. If I can also make another suggestion it's to add an option to either sort images in the Earnings section be either revenue or downloads, hope FT isn't too far away either, loving your site/product :)
Glad you found those two useful. One of our users had suggested it and it made total sense and we were able to sneak it in as part of a back end release. Sorting by $ or DL makes sense too. We'll see what we can do :)
We are working hard on FT and some other goodies.
Appreciate the kind words and continued support!
Rahul
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Just tried Lookstat a little and the one feature that I would be really interested to see is tracking of groups of images. It was mentioned before - the idea is to track not individual images across sites but results of complete sessions.
Tracking individual images like it is possible in the current version is nice for some analytical work but I don't see it very useful in routine day to day work.
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Just tried Lookstat a little and the one feature that I would be really interested to see is tracking of groups of images. It was mentioned before - the idea is to track not individual images across sites but results of complete sessions.
Tracking individual images like it is possible in the current version is nice for some analytical work but I don't see it very useful in routine day to day work.
Hi MikLav,
Thanks for trying us out. You're absolutely right about the value of tracking groups of images. This is planned and makes sense. Whether by shoot, by category or any other grouping, it will be extremely useful.
I don't have an ETA on it yet, but it is on our development roadmap.
Rahul
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hey rahul, i think this is a very useful tool. i have registered and i love how it works. my problem is that i have not much pics on shutter, dreamstime or istock... so it would be very nice, if fotolia will be on board soon..
i know that some day you want us to pay for this service *g but on my site it is no problem, if it works.
My only wish... fotolia, than stockxpert and bigstock...
the german agencies are not important for you i think, but a tool where i can add them would be great...
best regards
yvonne
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hey rahul, i think this is a very useful tool. i have registered and i love how it works. my problem is that i have not much pics on shutter, dreamstime or istock... so it would be very nice, if fotolia will be on board soon..
i know that some day you want us to pay for this service *g but on my site it is no problem, if it works.
My only wish... fotolia, than stockxpert and bigstock...
the german agencies are not important for you i think, but a tool where i can add them would be great...
best regards
yvonne
Hi Yvonne,
Thanks for the kind words and for sharing your site wishlist. Fotolia is next.
Rahul
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Just tried Lookstat a little and the one feature that I would be really interested to see is tracking of groups of images. It was mentioned before - the idea is to track not individual images across sites but results of complete sessions.
Yap, I asked for it before. This would be a most useful feature, since it would allow to calculate the yield of a total shoot.
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That one is definitely on our list and makes a ton of sense as a feature. Thanks for the feedback!
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It seems that Shutter Stock hasn't been reporting for me for past few days, is this a global issue with Lookstat or just on my account ?
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Hi Ozbandit,
SS recently blocked all third party applications/services from accessing their site which has caused the disruption. We'll be working to figure out how best to move forward and will be emailing users as we know more. Sorry for the disruption in obtaining your SS stats. This is currently a global issue for us and we are working on it.
Rahul
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We have a new post on our blog about Shutterstock's recent decision to block 3rd party applications and how it impacts LookStat. The short answer is that we have deactivated Shutterstock support but we will be working hard to try and resolve the situation.
We're sorry for the disruption, but we remain committed to delivering multi-site analytics for contributors and will continue to work to achieve that.
http://blog.lookstat.com/2009/05/06/lookstat-update-shutterstock-support-deactivated/
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Thanks for the update, Rahul. I like what you guys have done and look forward to getting even more detailed insights into my sales. Assuming Shutterstock can provide APIs to give you the information with minimum impact, this may turn out to be a win for both sides.
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Thanks for the update, Rahul. I like what you guys have done and look forward to getting even more detailed insights into my sales. Assuming Shutterstock can provide APIs to give you the information with minimum impact, this may turn out to be a win for both sides.
Thanks for the kind words - they are much appreciated. We will keep working to improve LookStat and I agree with you re: APIs. I think if we can move towards APIs or other structured access mechanisms, it's going to be a win all around.
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There hasn't been any update regarding lookstat in months...
Should we consider the site dead or can we expect things to come...?
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I couple of months ago I joined... and I have come to like the site especially when they promised they add FTL and more sites very soon. Since then no improvements and they even lost SS from their list. Using lookstat is pointless now. A few months ago I logged in 2-3 times a day while now I log in every second week only. This is a sad story. :( i know this is not their fault but the agencies started a war against 3rd party stat services. But lookstat looked different, lookstat's aproach looked so professional.
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Without ShutterStock it's pointless. All we got by it was that stupid captcha when logging in at ShutterStock. I personally don't care for Fotolia since for some reason my port doesn't fly there, and I stopped uploading long ago. That leaves iStock and Dreamstime. But both offer a good statistics tool to check on the site itself.
Considering there was no news at all from Lookstat in a long time, I got worried and changed my passwords on the 3 microstocks supported, and I also changed my email to nonsense on Lookstat.
It was a great idea but I guess the microstocks don't like to spare resources on being compared to each other. But it's our stats and it's none of their business if someone comes up with a desktop application that logs in to the microstocks from our own PC and harvests the stats.
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Hi Everyone,
First, I owe you all an apology. SS's decision to ban third party apps made us reassess our situation and I made the decision to wait until we had more clarity before communicating. Clearly, this was a mistake and I own it. We as an organization, and me as an individual, have learned from this and I think you'll see more transparency from us from here out.
We are alive and well and committing to helping contributors. There have been some issues with our stats offering beyond Shutterstock and we are investing to resolve them. It will likely be early fall before you see progress from us on that front.
I realize this is a long time and that we will lose some of the people that were rooting for us as a result. I completely understand and respect that decision. My hope is that you'll be open to hearing from us again in the not-too-distant future.
Thank you again for your support and I hope you'll accept my apology for my misstep re: communication. I'll be posting some more in the next couple of weeks about what we're up to and our path forward.
Sincerely,
Rahul
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Keep up the good work.
_______________________
microstock agencies list (http://www.arcurs.com/)
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Hi Everyone,
Just wanted to say hello and let you know that we have launched our Back Office services and there is currently an offer for the first 25 msg readers to respond who can get 25 images keyworded and uploaded to 10 sites at no charge, with no strings. We hope you'll continue working with us after that, but if not, that's fine too. That URL is : https://www.lookstat.com/backoffice/msg.html (https://www.lookstat.com/backoffice/msg.html)
We have also launched a stats API which and are privately beta testing a new analytics feature that we're pretty excited about which should be live very soon. (If you're a LookStat user and interested in trying it out, let me know.)
There are quite a few updates on our blog about recent goings on. Hope everyone is enjoying great sales in October.
Rahul
PS: If you'll be at UGCX or PDN in NYC, let me know - would be great to connect in person.
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Hi All,
We've launched a new version and there are more details here:
http://www.microstockgroup.com/paid-established-microstock-services/lookstat-analytics-upgrade/ (http://www.microstockgroup.com/paid-established-microstock-services/lookstat-analytics-upgrade/)
I just wanted to notify this thread since it was active in the past!
Hope all of you are doing great.
Rahul