So ... I gather that the overwhelming consensus here is initial exposure of an image plays at best such a minimal role in its long-term performance that I'm wasting my time by trying to maximize and/or control it. True?

Spending the same time taking one more photo is probably more useful.

Quote from: Travelling-light on February 29, 2008, 23:44

You can't know that you would be losing 10% of your StockXpert earnings.

You don't know if you would have made those sales as credit sales on StockXpert, or even if you would have made more sales on other subscription sites, if StockXpert hadn't decided to compete.

Yes I can. Steve-Oh once commented that credit buyers and subscription buyers represent two separate markets on StockXpert. If this is true, and subscription buyers license images solely by subscription, then I will never make a credit sale from a subscription buyer. I also doubt that the subscription buyer would purchase the same image from another suscription site - that would mean he/she would have concurrent subscriptions at competing sites, which doesn't make sense.

I stand by my conclusion: if I opted out of subscriptions my income from StockXpert would drop by 10%.

If a buyer needs one of your photos, he'll download it, subscription or not, particularly since you have a rather unique portfolio.

If you went into a shop, and found that all the goods could be paid for with a credit card, except beer. Would you stop drinking beer?

FT is really flying for me at the moment. Many sales, and most of them 3s and 4s. I guess it must be a BME, although I haven't checked yet.

Adelaide,
The forum-* are really active at DT these days. Both your and another thread about the theme appear to have be removed completely.

I made a couple of points in the other thread, particularly about vectors. The two last dl's of one of my most popular vectors there have been subs. A normal dl of those generate a profit of $5.00. That's 16 times more than a sub (and sometimes the subs go even cheaper, my record the last week is $0.21).

The interesting aspect about that, apart from the low price, is that my vectors are very unlikely to be used as comps, since they are mostly garments used for testing out colours and logos for promotional clothing. In other words: my loss of 94% is absolute and irrevocable, and the gain for the customer likewise. By downloading less than 10 vectors, he has already received value corresponding to his complete monthly fee, while the creator receives between 5 and 10% of what he would usually get. Still, the customer can download 290 more images, creating a very healthy image archive for future use.

For DT, the risk is zilch. Even with customers who download their full quota, their loss is only a maximum of $0.01. Very few customers probably do download all, since the advantage of having a subscription is so enormous. And for every not downloaded image, DT earns another 30 cents. Tick tack, tick tack, tick tack.....

I spend about 5 minutes a week making comments, it isn't a big deal.

It's not a big deal, but it's also completely pointless.

I'm surprised to see all the aggression against Canstock here. Although I agree that they behave strange sometimes, they do sell five times as much as LO for me. I don't upload at the moment, but I won't completely count them out either. Sales have actually been increasing lately.

Dan, I think your portfolio is good and you should do well there.  I noticed you have only made 4 comments on other peoples images.  The images with comments go on the front page.  If you leave comments, other people comment on your photos and they go on the front page.  I think this is a good way to increase downloads there.

That's a completely amateurish way to run a stock agency. It's like saying that everybody who wear a yellow T-shirt with an LO logo will get to the front page this week.

As a buyer, I want to see the best, most relevant photos on the front page, not the photos from those with enough time on their hands to comment on the photos of others. As a photographer, I want to improve my photography and key-wording skills, not waste my time on commenting the photos of others.

I'm uploading there right now without problems, but at times of the day when the connection is slow, it tends to do weird things, and nothing works. They have some user interface solutions that are supposed to look cool, but that only slow things down. I get the impression that they simply don't work if the communication is too slow. Sorting the portfolio by views, is one that doesn't always work.

I don't think the top contributors are going to give up on subscription as long as we can show subscription is an additional source of income, rather than cutting into credit sales. We've said all along that subscription is to target a different set of buyers.

If subscription sales are not cutting into credit sales, what are they cutting into?

What is this "different set of buyers" you are talking about?

Let's just talk about DT. One of the best managed sites with a clear professional business mind and friendly to its main asset, which is its contributors. FP and LO I don't know. They are sailing a very conservative course, with their own servers and apparently spending what their shallow pockets allow. To stay around, an agency doesn't have to make profit but just break even. If you can't win on the profit battlefront, you can stay afloat by being slim on the expenses line.

Problem is: some of those agencies spend a lot on advertising etc. As long as they grow, that works fine. If they stagnate or shrink, that may be the end for those who don't have solid financial backing. I prefer slow growth combined with realistic, long term targets rather than an explosive growth ending in a spectacular crash. Fireworks give a lot of pleasure, but a candle will keep me warm longer.

I agree about DT. To me, they are the most professionally run agency at the moment, and my earnings there are developing very nicely. I'm more than 100% above 2007 ytd.

Quote from: epixx on February 12, 2008, 06:09

Why do you want to give away the photos for free? If they are godd enough, why don't you upload them as editorial at existing agencies/

often during live music gig the lighting is not so good, so you have to use at least iso 800 or even 1600 with a result of noisy pictures. every stock agency will reject such noisy images...

and also tons of concert pics are published for free on flickr, deviantart, picasa, & co. i want to create an archive for them

Editorial photos shouldn't be a problem at ISO 800 if you have a halfway decent camera. Try Alamy or Featurepics. I haven't tried editorials at DT yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if they accept them. The fact that others are publishing for free doesn't force you to do it.

Why do you want to give away the photos for free? If they are godd enough, why don't you upload them as editorial at existing agencies/