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Messages - Rahul Pathak
26
« on: October 02, 2009, 14:04 »
Hi All, Thought I would dive in here. We've been handling keywording, retouching and submission for stock photographers for some time now and have been working with great customers like Jonathan (thanks for the mention sir!), Tom Grill and others. Our goal with our Back Office services is to allow photographers to spend more time creating images. If you're interested, please drop me a line/pm me and we can chat about requirements and specifics. Cheers, Rahul [email protected]
27
« on: July 17, 2009, 04:12 »
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
28
« on: June 23, 2009, 10:39 »
Sean - I wonder if a self-portrait of with a current newspaper and several tupperware items should be sufficient proof for verification purposes.
29
« on: June 22, 2009, 16:09 »
Great idea Tyler. Thanks for reaching out for feedback.
30
« on: June 09, 2009, 19:45 »
It isn't a good sign that Rahul hasn't been here to keep people up-to-date with things, that's for sure. Taken together with iStock's latest change, the future isn't looking very bright for stats-based ventures.
My apologies for the quiet from my end. We've been working hard to adjust to the marketplace but regardless, I should have been more present and open. That will be rectified in short order. Ultimately open makes sense and I'm optimistic about microstock and the role we can play in it. In startup land, the path between A & B is rarely a straight line 
31
« on: June 09, 2009, 18:37 »
The point I tried to make is that as god-like as Google is, they have a certain threshold on some services where they say "enough is enough" and cut you off if you make "10,000 phone calls a day". I don't think someone from outside a business can presume to be able to estimate CPU cycles, bandwidth, disk IO, logging overhead, administration fees, backup, etc. resulting from a given action, and at the same time define the value of the process to the business. You may believe it's a needle in a haystack but if agencies are resorting to such measures as captchas then you can know it's probably for good reason.
I personally think it's my right to wear no shoes or shirt into a 7-11 but the sign says on the door no shirts, no shoes, no service, so I just don't.
I would just like to see a standardized API format evolve, it would make things real simple. All that is needed is to define the data items required and then it's a no-brainer: instantly agencies would have a quantifiable business process they could choose to offer, and the artists would get the data they need.
I love the standardized API idea. What's the best way to move forward on this? I would like nothing more than a fully open, agreed upon approach.
32
« on: June 09, 2009, 18:33 »
Hi All, This is a great discussion and I'm happy it's happening. As a company, we would love to engage with agencies about setting up API arrangements that deliver value for agencies, contributors and for us. I would love nothing more than to have a standardized model, and pay/exchange value in some way that made sense. The lack of SS data in our system is definitely an issue and we are working to find ways to work with the agencies. Permission driven APIs would be better all around and ideally would also help us since we would no longer need to invest as much in credential management as we do today. We also have no issues with rate limited APIs - it's a smart way to go and better for everyone. One good thing from the SS situation is that it has brought our conversation into the open with a number of agencies and I'm cautiously optimistic about the outcomes. In the meantime, we have to find a way to continue to keep our heads above water and deliver value to contributors. We are working on that one and I think we'll be talking about those ideas soon  Ultimately, we want to help contributors create and sell high performing microstock and I'm optimistic that in time we'll get there. As we've seen with Facebook, Google, Twitter - APIs drive innovation which ultimately makes the underlying platforms more valuable. I hope that LookStat can be part of driving that conversation forward. Rahul @Melastmohican - your point about 3rd party access is well taken. It may well be true that a local client app is the only non-API solution but that is less than ideal from my perspective. Ultimately, there needs to be an open agreement and we'll get there in time. @zymmetrical - very much appreciate your point about resource intensity & security and I do agree that metered APIs make sense. Perhaps we can chat live sometime soon?
33
« on: May 07, 2009, 02:10 »
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.
34
« on: May 07, 2009, 01:37 »
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/
35
« on: May 06, 2009, 21:29 »
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
36
« on: May 05, 2009, 09:54 »
I think this is a good move by shutterstock, hopefully they are able to cooperate with the likes of Lookstat.
If l was Shutterstock, I'd charge an appropriate fee to bypass this 'security' feature. It would have been prudent for these statistics/uploading companies to approach the agencies before they started developing, but I doubt that happened. Somebody from these places should have appeared here by now, if only to say 'It's not a problem for us' or 'We're working on it' ... another bad move on their part.
Hi All, Apologies for the late reply (thanks for the nudge) - I was on a plane all day yesterday and woke up to this thread. In the long run, as we work through this, it will be a positive for all parties concerned. We look forward to working this out with shutterstock and the other agencies. I'll be monitoring this thread and will keep you posted. It will take some time to work things out though. Rahul Rahul
37
« on: May 03, 2009, 22:34 »
That one is definitely on our list and makes a ton of sense as a feature. Thanks for the feedback!
38
« on: May 03, 2009, 21:40 »
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
39
« on: April 21, 2009, 20:08 »
I looked in two different ways at my earnings (and RPI) from IS and SS portfolios as a function of
- time of downloading (sales) - a more common way
- time of uploading (submitting) pictures
There is a ton of data on your post and it'll take me a little time to digest it. In general though we fully intend to allow you to group images and track the groups earnings over time. I'm going to spend some time with your blog post and will get back to you as I get through it. Just so I understand, the green bars represent the total earnings (from upload date to the present) of images uploaded during a particular month. And, the red bars represent sales for all images in that month. Is that correct? Rahul
40
« on: April 21, 2009, 15:18 »
You raise a great point. This is a proxy and enables some inference but does not provide true transparency. I do think there's value and correlation and while this does show user search behavior, it doesn't show microstock buyer search behavior.
Thanks for the cautionary words.
41
« on: April 21, 2009, 11:39 »
Thanks for posting, Leaf. Glad you found it useful. I think there's a ton of useful information to be gleaned.
42
« on: April 15, 2009, 11:16 »
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
43
« on: March 30, 2009, 09:17 »
Hi Guys,
I was just reading some of the info on Lookstat, and it occured to me that it would be really good if microstock sites could introduce, another layer of security for requesting pay. That way it will be easier to sign up to sites such as Lookstat without worrying about anybody stealing your earnings. This extra level of security could only be reset via the email by which the photographer signed up with. Infact if microsites provided an extra feature that allowed photographers to login just to view their stats, and a seperate one for uploading and requesting pay it would be very useful.
What do you think?
For the record, we would love to see this happen - it would make our job much easier. I think that it will happen over time but it will probably take longer than we'd like. The technical solutions are out there its just a matter of when implementation will take place. Rahul
44
« on: March 29, 2009, 23:55 »
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
45
« on: March 25, 2009, 17:03 »
Good point re: shoot, my thought was an image could belong to a shoot but also an 'industrial' collection vs. a 'lifestyle' collection.
That was my thought as well, so I would like to be able to have the same image in multiple collections.
Btw, any dates for inclusion of FT and StockXpert? And for some update on the image matching?
Unfortunately I don't have a good date for you right now. We have had to do some back end work to deal with scale and performance and we're starting to see the end of that but I think we're still a couple of weeks off. Thanks for your patience with us.
46
« on: March 25, 2009, 14:52 »
I'm assuming you would want to be able to have the same image in multiple groups.
Not necessary for a shoot. An image can't belong to two shoots. Actually I love playing with lookstat. I've always been too lazy to keep earning spreadsheets. I found out that the "top shoot" in my mind/perception wasn't really my top shoot, since that one is industrial/editorial in a niche I'm virtually alone. Strange how you can deceive yourself... I think the keywords are overkill, but if it's easy to do, why not?
Good point re: shoot, my thought was an image could belong to a shoot but also an 'industrial' collection vs. a 'lifestyle' collection. Really glad you're enjoying the site. I agree with you about our capacity to deceive ourselves. One of my hopes was that LookStat could help people better understand what was working for them. A user recently told me we helped him realize what his top selling image was (and it wasn't the one he thought it was)
47
« on: March 25, 2009, 14:38 »
Earnings by shoot, return by shoot definitely makes a ton of sense.
There should be an option on Lookstat to manually group individual pictures that belong to the same shoot, and present the statistics of this collection the same way as now for individual pictures. I agree with the OP, for yield calculation, you don't need individual images but all the images from one shoot.
This feature is very much on our roadmap. Arbitrary groupings of data - shoot, keyword, model etc so you can track earnings across those categories. I'm assuming you would want to be able to have the same image in multiple groups.
48
« on: March 25, 2009, 14:29 »
Great points on RPI and it's limitations. I think another issue is that it doesn't account for age of image. The Monthly RPI (in micro at least) for a 1 year old image will be very different that the RPI for a image that is brand new.
Earnings by shoot, return by shoot definitely makes a ton of sense.
49
« on: March 20, 2009, 21:51 »
That is actually a really great idea. Especially today when self-branding is such an important topic.
50
« on: March 20, 2009, 13:10 »
I'm surprised to see Shutterstock with the most RPI. I thought Istock would be first. Maybe subs are working after all, but only on SS
That's because you've misread it 
IStock gave the highest RPI with 38.11% and then Shutterstock was 26.64%
What I don't understand though is that Shutterstock came out top for earnings in 2008!
I wonder if it's because people had larger portfolios on SS, especially given IS non-exclusive upload limits.
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