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Messages - stockmarketer
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501
« on: March 01, 2012, 07:00 »
February is always a tricky month for making comparisons, and this year is especially tricky because it was a leap year. We have to keep in mind that comparing Jan to Feb 2012, we're comparing 31 to 29 days. For that reason, my Feb 2012 grand total was a bit down from Jan 2012 (my previous BME), but the daily average was up 4%. In that sense, I can declare Feb 2012 my BME.
Also keeping in mind that Feb 2012 had 29 days vs. Feb 2011's 28 days, my year-over-year grand total comparison enjoyed an extra boost, so again I turn to daily average for a more apples-to-apples view. My avg daily income for Feb 2012 rose 65% vs Feb 2011.
All good signs heading into March, which is always one the best of if not THE best month of the year (at least for me). Sales will take a significant dive in April, then slowly claw their way back from May to Aug, and I don't expect to see a big gain again until Sept, if historical trends hold true.
502
« on: February 27, 2012, 17:00 »
One thing to keep in mind is that the predictability of sales based on day of the week is dependent on a large sample size of data. Early on, I would see wild swings, but I've gotten to the point that sales volume is high enough that I can pretty much predict how a day will go based on what day of the week it is and how the previous several days have gone. One EL here or there doesn't throw it off too much.
This is how my total sales break down these days, not just at SS but I'm finding the sites are pretty consistent. Week after week, there is little variation to these percentages unless a holiday is in the mix (each day is a percentage of the weekly sales adding up to 100%):
Sun: 10%
Mon: 15%
Tues: 18%
Wed: 18%
Thurs: 18%
Fri: 14%
Sat: 7%
503
« on: February 27, 2012, 13:08 »
4. Historically Tues - Thursday have been my best sales days, that has recently changed. It is hard to tell if this is permanent because my sales have been negatively impacted by numerous site bugs.
In general, Tues, Wed, and Thurs should always be the best sales days. Some percent of buyers will take Monday or Friday off to extend the weekend, making those days a bit lower. If you are seeing T, W, Th drop relative to the other days, it is likely a statistical anomaly, or as you point out, a temporary bug.
504
« on: February 27, 2012, 11:26 »
Just to reiterate, the "honest" way to track RPI is: TOTAL income across all agencies divided by TOTAL images in your port (every image you've created for the purpose of microstock).
Adding results from more agencies, no matter how large or small, will only drive RPI higher. It would not decrease it.
505
« on: February 27, 2012, 08:00 »
And there lies the flaw in RPI. How many pictures, how much did they cost, how many agencies. The obvious also is I have some photos that have never sold in five years and probably never will. Best thing for me to do is remove them and make my RPI better. 
There's really no flaw in RPI if you calculate it correctly. TOTAL income across all agencies divided by TOTAL images in your port (every image you've created for the purpose of microstock). Playing with the numbers (not counting the poor selling or rejected shots) is like saying "I make $50,000 a year at my job, but about half the time I sit around doing nothing, so I really make $100,000!" An intelligent forecaster and analyst knows how to calculate an honest RPI and use it to his/her advantage. Someone with a shrinking RPI may try justifying a poor number by claiming it's unimportant or deceptive, but those folks are shooting themselves in the foot. The truth is it's an honest number (if calculated correctly!) that will tell you which direction you're REALLY going and if it's time to alter what you're doing.
506
« on: February 26, 2012, 19:37 »
I care about RPI for two reasons:
1. It helps me project. If RPI is steady (and it has been for me for nearly four years) I can set up a simple formula on an Excel sheet and see what my earnings will be a year from now if I upload a certain number of shots per day. So a year ago, I predicted almost to the dollar what I am earning today. Who wouldn't like an earnings crystal ball? For me, RPI is that crystal ball, and a shockingly reliable one at that.
2. If I see a fall in RPI, I will know something is wrong. It won't tell me the cause, but it will set off an alarm and tell me to dig for an answer. Maybe my OLD stuff has stopped selling, in which case there's not much I can do about it. Or maybe my NEW stuff isn't selling... which tells me that I need to reassess what I'm doing and change course.
507
« on: February 26, 2012, 12:35 »
I tend to go by total number of images submitted/ produced as I submit everything to every site.
Even if the image is rejected by some or all of the sites or I later remove it, I have still payed out to produce it so this RPI of total potential portfolio is the most useful to me.
+1 Exactly how I do it. If I create 99 pieces of crap that don't get accepted anywhere and 1 great pic that sells like hotcakes, I should divide my sales by 100. Otherwise, if I just divide by 1, I'd distort things so I feel like a genius when in reality I'm pretty lousy.
508
« on: February 25, 2012, 20:58 »
Nothing here.
Seams some buyer pick up you similar images as a whole story.
No, I don't think so. That might explain a few bursts of sales. But there has been a sustained trend for me from Feb 15 through today. Feb 1 - 14 : 12 downloads Feb 15 - 24: 40 downloads
509
« on: February 25, 2012, 18:49 »
I haven't paid much attention to StockFresh lately. I typically just check my sales once every few days, and see a handful of sales a week.
But today (a Saturday, no less) I had a nice surprise at SF. Nearly $10 today alone. Looking back over the past few weeks, it appears that the site is picking up steam. I've seen close to $30 in earnings since Feb 15, which seems to be about where the trend begins.
Anyone else experiencing this? I wonder if SF has been stepping up its marketing these past few weeks?
510
« on: February 23, 2012, 12:01 »
Low is a relative term. If you only submit to two agencies, one will be higher than the other, so you will have a high earner and a low earner. But that doesn't mean that the low earner is delivering "bad" income and should be dropped.
I think the words we should be using are significant vs. insignificant. I have several high earners and several low earners. Then I could divide my low earners into significant and insignificant earners. But even then, I haven't dropped my ports at the insignificant earners... what is the point? To punish them? Why not keep them open in case they get bought, start aggressively marketing, or some other change occurs that suddenly brings in lots of sales?
So under these definitions, here's how I look at the agencies:
High Earners
SS
FT
IS
DT
Low Earners - Significant Income
123
DP
BigStock
CanStockPhoto
Low Earners - Insignificant Income
GL
SF
Veer
Cre
511
« on: February 22, 2012, 16:10 »
If you have something new that's different and in demand... It Will Sell. 
+1 The "different" and "in demand" are the essential things here. Create your own style, a unique take on your subject matter. And make sure the subject matter is actually needed by customers. No need covering something that is already oversaturated, unless your originality will blow everyone's socks off. But as stated, no need to "feed the beast" anymore, expecting to see a boost for new images. Those days are over.
512
« on: February 22, 2012, 14:52 »
You should still compare your Jan 2012 vs Jan 2011 number to figure out the percent difference and apply that to each month in 2011 to figure out what your 2012 totals should be.
Pay me to update the calculator and I'll make it give you a non-committal prediction of the future  Or you could just revisit it next January and have a better idea of what your royalties will be.
I actually did my own "Excel-fu" on my numbers with the new rates last week, so I'm all set there... I just thought it was worth pointing out that if someone simply plugged in their past year's worth of numbers to figure out where they'll end up at the end of 2012 for the new 123RF structure won't give you an accurate result if you've been seeing growth lately. Just something to keep in mind.
513
« on: February 22, 2012, 14:27 »
But one thing to keep in mind is that if you have seen growth in the past 12 months, you should apply that rate of growth to the numbers this tool generates to figure out what percentage you will see at 123RF next year.
No guarantees growth will be sustained, aren't they telling us in fact that they can't sustain their growth with the measly 50% they are currently getting? Isn't that why this whole change has to happen in the first place?
Two things: Actually, Alex told us this: "With regards to sales, we're looking to more than double the figure. 2011 was great for us, we're looking to make 2012 greater. Ultimately your sales as a whole will more than just improve." Maybe it's a load of bs, but that's a far cry from suggesting they said they can't sustain their growth. But let's say there's none of the incremental growth that Alex predicts, and we all remain flat to where we are today, relatively speaking. You should still compare your Jan 2012 vs Jan 2011 number to figure out the percent difference and apply that to each month in 2011 to figure out what your 2012 totals should be. Again, that's FLAT... no additional growth for 2012... just taking your ACTUAL difference between Jan 2012 and Jan 2011 and applying it for each other month, and assuming your gains don't slide backward, but are simply consistent.
514
« on: February 22, 2012, 14:12 »
Nice tool. Thanks for sharing.
But one thing to keep in mind is that if you have seen growth in the past 12 months, you should apply that rate of growth to the numbers this tool generates to figure out what percentage you will see at 123RF next year.
For instance, my Jan 2012 number is about triple my Jan 2011 number, so if I assume my rate of growth will be consistent throughout 2012, I should be able to triple the number generated by this chart to figure where I'll land in the new 123RF structure.
515
« on: February 21, 2012, 16:22 »
Two questions:
1. Has anyone actually had sales there? I read the "csproductions" posts, so at least one person has, but how about the rest?
2. Am I looking at this right? I go to the AYCS home page and sort by downloads. There are four images that have been downloaded twice and most or all of the other "most downloaded" shots on the first page have had 1 download.
I think I'm going to need a lot more encouragement before putting my port there.
The financials sure are intriguing, though.
516
« on: February 21, 2012, 14:19 »
So you decide to sweeten your financial arrangements with your 20 best selling vendors and make the deal less financially attractive for the other 80. The end result is that the 20 best sellers give you more and more stuff since you strengthened those relationships, and a number of the other 80 decide to stop supplying you. You're OK with this, since their products weren't bringing in customers, and the extra shelf space makes more room for the additional products from the top sellers.
This makes sense in theory. Unfortunately, in practice, there are a few kinks. Sites have discovered that rigging their search engines to promote the images they make the most profit on is preferable to boosting the (previous) best selling contributors.
I am black diamond on Istock, but my stuff has been buried there, and sales have been in decline for a year or more. Same story on Fotolia. It's no coincidence that since the last major search engine shakeup Emeralds have reported plummeting sales, and lower ranked (lower percentage) contributors report sales are booming.
Once 123RF figures out it can boost it's profits by pushing its lowest ranked (most profitable) artists to the front of its searches, the same thing will happen.
The real death of this industry will be the fact that it punishes its successful suppliers in its pursuit of short-term profits.
I'm not sure what you describe is happening to everyone. Some have reported this experience, but I'm not seeing it myself... sales have been steady at FT and other sites despite me being in the higher commission groups. 123RF is actually doing the opposite of what you describe... they are rewarding the top sellers. Let's not punish them now for what they MIGHT do later, when in fact they're doing what smart business says is the right thing... recognize what sells and reward those who provide it. From a business standpoint, I think it would be suicide for an agency to say "Here's the stuff that sells really well... I'm going to push this to the back of the shelf where it won't get seen... all because this new, untested stuff makes me two cents more on the dollar." Yes, you should give new stuff a chance to rise up and get seen to see if customers want it, but you wouldn't bury your tried-and-true hot sellers for a quick few cents. I know your gut says this is what's happening today on some or all of the big sites, but I don't buy it... it assumes total ineptitude on a widespread basis. For all our complaints about the agency owners, they must know a thing or two about what their customers really want.
517
« on: February 21, 2012, 13:36 »
Imagine you open a store and 100 vendors sign up to supply you with products.
After a few years, it's clear to you that 20 of those vendors are supplying products that fly off the shelves, and the other 80 are giving you products that don't sell very well, and frankly, are taking up space on the shelves. If you could put more products from those 20 high-selling vendors front-and-center in front of your customers, you would probably sell more. You could make your store larger and larger to treat every vendor the same and give everyone equal shelf space, but your customers would get lost, and the shopping experience would become maddening, sending them elsewhere.
So you decide to sweeten your financial arrangements with your 20 best selling vendors and make the deal less financially attractive for the other 80. The end result is that the 20 best sellers give you more and more stuff since you strengthened those relationships, and a number of the other 80 decide to stop supplying you. You're OK with this, since their products weren't bringing in customers, and the extra shelf space makes more room for the additional products from the top sellers.
And before the obvious is pointed out, yes, a physical store is very different from an online store... one has a fixed amount of space for products and one has infinite space. BUT... as a buyer, wouldn't you rather be presented with 100 great results than 10,000 -- some great but many more just OK? Looking at it like that, I think the analogy holds up.
Frankly, where the analogy truly breaks down is here... if you were the store owner in this scenario, you simply wouldn't carry the stuff that doesn't sell. Those non-selling vendors would be history.
518
« on: February 21, 2012, 13:20 »
My uploads typically take around 5 or 6 days to get reviewed.
519
« on: February 21, 2012, 10:26 »
For me, BigStock is at about 1/6 my SS earnings. (It is usually matched these days by 123RF.) I'm in the "Bridge" program, so it's nice having one fewer place to upload to each day.
520
« on: February 20, 2012, 09:02 »
DT was always on par with FT, this month it's not even 50% of FT (FT went up a bit as well). Looks like this site is loosing ground, a shame, I kind of liked them for their level system
The lvl system is the reason.... from lvl 3 up the images are just too expensive for the buyers (using credits) and lvl 5 using subs.
Yes, the level system could be keeping the volume of sales down, but I still do a fair number of high level sales per day, in the $5 or $6 dollar range. What I still can't figure out is why they run in waves... I'll get a ratio of 80% OD to 20% subs on a good day, then the next day get 95% subs to 5% OD. My volume is too high to chalk this up to one or two sub buyers downloading a bunch of my stuff. I wonder if it's something in the reporting system at DT. Maybe the system gets "backed up" and they end up reporting one type or another in waves, like a faucet being turned on or off?
521
« on: February 20, 2012, 08:55 »
I believe the OP is elaborating on a post from "rinderart" a few days ago in the "Let's punish the bad agencies" threat.
Rinderart said "...I've been here like others at the beginning when we got 20 cents an Image. No EL;s Or OD's , Nothing..."
I haven't been in ms nearly as long as him and some of the other real vets. We'll need him and the other very early contributors (I'm guessing from 2006 and earlier) to weigh in.
522
« on: February 20, 2012, 08:39 »
I'm curious how many others see a marked increase in ELs beginning on or around Sept 22, 2011?
Please go look at Sept and see if Sept 22 was a turning point for you as well. (You probably need to have a large volume of monthly sales to spot a real trend.)
Here's my theory, one that I've proposed a few times before...
Mid-Sept was when SS began a significant marketing effort for its new "Single and Other Downloads" option. This probably attracted a large number of buyers who instead of opting for the monthly plan started purchasing single images as needed, and a side effect of this was that many more ELs were sold as well.
Does this make sense?
523
« on: February 20, 2012, 08:10 »
This raises the issue I have been wondering for some time...
Back in September 2011 (starting Sept 22 to be precise), there was a sudden rise in ELs... not just for me, but others experienced a weird EL boost all of a sudden as well. Since then, it has tapered off, risen up again, and gone in waves, but definitely more than in pre-Sept 2011 days.
To illustrate the trend I describe, here are my EL ratios of going back to June 2011...
Feb 2012 = 1 in every 371 downloads
Jan 2012 = 1 in 164
Dec 2011 =1 in 155
Nov 2011 = 1 in 128
Oct 2011 = 1 in 150
Sep 2011 = 1 in 136 (increase began Sept 22)
Aug 2011 = 1 in 939
Jul 2011 = 1 in 1814
Jun 2011 = 1 in 1201
(all months prior to June 2011, ratio hovered around 1 in 1000)
524
« on: February 19, 2012, 23:00 »
...I take a very big picture view of my microstock efforts. I don't even track RPD. It doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is that my images maintain a healthy RPI, and that I stick to my quota of uploading a certain number of shots each day.
So if the agencies were increasing sales volume, decreasing your take of the total by a slightly smaller percentage so you saw a small rise in your income, you'd be happy? Really?
The reason to pay some attention to what individual images are selling for is to get an idea of what's going on overall in the business. So, for example, if agencies are increasing volume by discounting credits heavily, keeping their take constant by reducing supplier's percentages, looking at the prices paid by buyers would help us know what they were up to.
If you don't track the business overall, you end up joining that long line of artists who have been "had" by their managers, agents, whatever.
I'm not saying I don't pay attention at all to image prices or commissions. On the contrary, I've avoided agencies that sell for too low and I have given up on IS due to its changes. But... aside from this awareness in a big-picture scale, I don't fixate on RPD. It boils down to this... RPD won't pay a single bill... I just care about how much each image actually earns when all the numbers are crunched, and can I increase my uploads, multiply my number of new images by my RPI, and control my growth.
525
« on: February 19, 2012, 20:32 »
I'm having my BSuE (Best Sunday Ever) so the title of this post struck me as false before I even read it.
Then I got in and saw that we're talking individual image prices. Does anyone really fixate on individual transactions? Folks, this is a volume business. Yes, it would be a dangerous sign if the trend was that more and more of our downloads brought us just .19 each.
But check out Rinder's post on another thread (can't recall which one... how's that for helpful?) He points out that in the very early days of microstock, it was common to see tons of 20 cent downloads. He's been at this longer than just about anyone here, and in his macro view, earnings have been creeping upward, not downward.
Back to my original point, though... I take a very big picture view of my microstock efforts. I don't even track RPD. It doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is that my images maintain a healthy RPI, and that I stick to my quota of uploading a certain number of shots each day. Then I can project growth at Port Size x RPI = Total Earnings. I won't bat an eye if I notice that I get .19 for this image, or even .09 for that image, because my daily RPI right now is .125 (was just .09 or so in my first year or two in microstock, and I've managed to goose it up by getting smarter about what I upload, and adding a few more agencies to my mix).
So, I suggest retitling this thread, The Stock Market is Alive and Well.
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