Please forgive my bad English - remember I'm Swedish 


//R

Its called 'Swinglish' I think.. at least thats what someone posted on twitter recently 

I have been with MP for over 1 year now. The figures are not very much encouraging. I am thinking of quitting MP. The biggest issue is, you can upload what ever you wish. Nobody bothers whether there is any quality in those images. This is like crowd sourcing the images. Too low sale. I still stand on zero. I took jump out of pond and got with the premium agencies now. I am quite happy there.

Hi friends!

Here are some tips to sell more of your photos.
Other tips and manuals can be found in our Help Center at the bottom of our page.
http://help.mostphotos.com

1. Build your self a large portfolio with commercial viable images. The photographers who have good sales have often large portfolios.
 
2. Publish images with good quality. It's possible to zoom in to 100% and when a buyer does that you don't want them to see a noisy image.
 
3. To provide relevant keywords are very important. Mostphotos search engine keeps track of keywords relevance.

Apart from developing and improving the page in general we are also working on a new ranking system that will give photos with potential bigger exposure, not only photos that has proven to sell.

If you ever have any questions or issues, send us an email at [email protected] and we will help you asap.

Best Regards,
Lina @ Mostphotos

Quote from: pro_microstock on January 25, 2013, 08:54

I have been with MP for over 1 year now. The figures are not very much encouraging. I am thinking of quitting MP. The biggest issue is, you can upload what ever you wish. Nobody bothers whether there is any quality in those images. This is like crowd sourcing the images. Too low sale. I still stand on zero. I took jump out of pond and got with the premium agencies now. I am quite happy there.

Hi friends!

Here are some tips to sell more of your photos.
Other tips and manuals can be found in our Help Center at the bottom of our page.
http://help.mostphotos.com

1. Build your self a large portfolio with commercial viable images. The photographers who have good sales have often large portfolios.
 
2. Publish images with good quality. It's possible to zoom in to 100% and when a buyer does that you don't want them to see a noisy image.
 
3. To provide relevant keywords are very important. Mostphotos search engine keeps track of keywords relevance.

Apart from developing and improving the page in general we are also working on a new ranking system that will give photos with potential bigger exposure, not only photos that has proven to sell.

If you ever have any questions or issues, send us an email at [email protected] and we will help you asap.

Best Regards,
Lina @ Mostphotos

How large is large? 500, 1000, 5000?
Who determines commercially viable? As the person who took my pictures I think they are all commercially viable, otherwise I would not upload them.
Is it not down to your reveiwers regarding quality? If you accept then does that not say the quality is good enough?
Be interesting to see how you determine an image has more potential than another.
In my experience in business, sales tend to increase with your marketing spend - care to share your spend over last three years and total sales value so we can see any relation between the two?
But what you are basically saying is have a large, high quality portfolio full of high commerical value images and we might see some sales?

Goddamn, why didn't I think of that before - keep that quiet otherwise everyone will want to know that secret!!!

Keyword relevance
Part I: Add many and relevant descriptive keywords so that when buyers search for a specific theme/motif that your image could match, your photo shows up. You need to almost try to foresee which different campaigns the buyers could use your photo in and what words they will search for. (Many of you know this)
Part II: "Our search engine keeps track of keyword relevance". What this means is that if you post a picture of a zebra and tag it "zebra" "animal" "africa" and "bicycle", our search engine is being taught to disregard of the tag that isn't relevant (bicycle). (This is an ongoing progress).

High resolution
We accept photos that are minimum 5 mpx but we recommend that your photos have a higher resolution than that.

Marketing
Just as with the webpage, functions, customer-and technical support and everything else, we are constantly working on improving. We have found new investors and just in the last couple of months we have hired a new marketing director, several sales accountants to bring in more and more buyers and have a done a lot of work in SEO and social media. And more is to come, we are putting all our focus on marketing and sales.

If you would like specific feedback, have any issues at all or any ideas on what we can do to increase sales or improve the page, please send us an e-mail to [email protected].

Best Regards,
Lina @ Mostphotos

@mostphotos support
From what I am reading in this thread it seems that where your images come in the search position is largely based on how many people 'like' your photo.  Is that still true? As I will never contribute to a site where my images can be  pushed back behind inferior images just because  a group of people are forming ratings gangs.

Well, when you go to "explore" and look at "popular contributions", that is true.
However, that is not how the buyers look for images. They search for keywords and then it is the images that have been sold and viewed the most that end up first in the search results.

We are working on a new formula that will take more factors into consideration but it will never be likes that determine what comes up first in the buyers' searches.

I hope that answers your question!

Lina @ Mostphotos

... it is the images that have been sold and viewed the most that end up first in the search results.

This ends up being the bottom line just about everywhere, for example FAA as well, and of course the micros.  And any retailer, online or bricks-and-mortar, usually ends up giving the prime shelf space to what's sold in the past.   

Obviously this leads around in a circle, but I just don't think sellers realize the extent to which that is true.  In reality, some powerful and sophisticated math and even 'game theory' would be necessary to fully understand the dynamics. My non-mathematical instincts tell me it's a downward spiral, as past sales receive too much weight,  causing sellers' offerings to lag further and further behind changing market tastes. 

At some point any successful retailer has to include his own judgements as to quality and what's "good".   Automated crowd-sourcing can't do it all.   How to do that, with millions of photos? I don't know. But someone will figure out a way.

Well, when you go to "explore" and look at "popular contributions", that is true.
However, that is not how the buyers look for images. They search for keywords and then it is the images that have been sold and viewed the most that end up first in the search results.

Lina @ Mostphotos

If this is true then why even have the "popular contributor" feature?  It's misleading for the reasons stated, not based on merit.
[/quote]

+1

Hi guys.

The "popular contribution" is mainly for you as contributors, like a photography community, and is a very appreciated feature amongst most of our photographers.

Regarding the search results we are working on a new formula that will take more factors into consideration, not only past sales but also for example "potential". This is, as some of you pointed out above, a tricky formula. We hope to find a good balance between rightfully rewarding contributors that sell well but also give exposure to photographers that have not sold so well yet. Apart from the search enginge formula we are also working on some other ways for you all to get more exposure.

We will keep you posted on this!

Lina @ Mostphotos

Just when I thought it was going to be a zero year a sale comes along....for 0.18 Euros

I should reach payout by 2068 - which means I'll be able to make a down payment on a new air freshener for my flying car. Luvlly Jubbly.

Not a single sale in 5 months with half portfolio, +400 images. I�m not expecting a lot in the future.