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Messages - Rahul Pathak

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1
General Stock Discussion / Re: website to monitor sales
« on: August 21, 2010, 13:22 »
I realize that for people where SS is the dominant earner, we have a gap.  But we're finding that this isn't true for a lot of contributors. After SS, which sites matter most for you?
Shutterstock makes up the vast majority of my earnings and donwloads. For a proper analysis on the level of images and especially shoots, it is vital. The other ones are Dreamstime and iStock but they have tools onsite to quickly evaluate sales per image.
Probably the main reason most of your users don't care about Shutterstock is a selection artifact because people that do care about ShutterStock (like me) won't even sign up. I enjoyed Lookstat long ago when SS, IS and DT were there, but after SS went, it wasn't of much use any more.

Fair point on selection bias. Nevertheless, I'm confident all users learn something from istock, whether you're exclusive or not.

Why don't you reactivate your account and I can run a quick analysis for you?

2
General Stock Discussion / Re: website to monitor sales
« on: August 21, 2010, 12:56 »
We focus on analytics, not addition. We won't track every last dollar and cent, but we will help increase your performance and find gaps in your portfolio. We offer a free version but also have paid plans that offer more insight and functionality.
But it doesn't work for ShutterStock, the largest seller for most, certainly in number of sales. Until then, it's pretty useless.

I realize that for people where SS is the dominant earner, we have a gap.  But we're finding that this isn't true for a lot of contributors. After SS, which sites matter most for you?

3
General Stock Discussion / Re: website to monitor sales
« on: August 19, 2010, 09:18 »
Dook - Thanks for mentioning us.

mtkang -  If you are looking for something to track all your sales, then some great options have been mentioned. If you are looking for ways to improve your microstock performance, we are a good fit.

We focus on analytics, not addition. We won't track every last dollar and cent, but we will help increase your performance and find gaps in your portfolio. We offer a free version but also have paid plans that offer more insight and functionality.

Cheers,

Rahul

4
General Stock Discussion / Re: How cheap can you get!!??
« on: July 15, 2010, 13:41 »
I replied asking her if she worked for free for that organization... I got no answer for that...

Genius. LOL.

5
Fair enough. although I'd be curious to know what net margins really are in photography.

also, I think the idea is that if you can get to $1M in revenue, if you cut production to zero, your profits skyrocket. If you can scale and maintain RPI, I think the idea is sound.

6

Hmmm. 20% of one million sounds an awful lot like a profit of $200,000.

Which can be looked at two ways ... I made $200,000 over the course of an entire year .. or .. Hmmm I just lost $800,000  ???

$1,000,000 gross - $800,000 costs = $200,000 profit ........ where exactly have you lost any money?

ok I'm going to invest into expenses in order to run a business .. smart idea moving on .. So I'm working with $800,000 capital .. now I'm going to invest it all on expenses .. year is over and now how much do I have in my pocket? $200,000 ... it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out you are losing money and need to take a serious look at your business model. Would have been better off not working at all and hanging on to the capital and maybe using it to pay for some business classes.

Randy,

Maybe I'm misunderstanding. If I invest 800k every year and clear $1M every year, I'm happy. There are many businesses that do much worse than 20% net margin. Even google and microsoft run at ~40%. This would mean they take $600k and produce $1M in revenue therefore $400k in profit. Are you saying that no business that has less than 50% net margin is a crappy business?

What am I missing?

Rahul

7
Interestingly enough, since these images & photographers are being funneled to Getty it may help protect iStock & its contributors.

I also wonder if we'll see flickr photographers who wouldn't have considered licensing, now being aware of it or buyers/photographers just doing an end-around Getty, as Sean alluded to. Probably some of both.

I think earlier in this thread there was a mention of staleness at Getty vs. istock and I think that's spot on. I've written about it on our blog as have others like John Lund - http://blog.johnlund.com/2010/06/choosing-for-future-of-stock.html

8

One good thing that may come of this is less Flickr people giving their photos away for free. In the long term this could raise overall industry pricing or even increase sales for micros. The freebie hunters who normally take advantage of Flickr snappers with BS "we'll give you credit and exposure" will now be facing some steep pricing which I doubt they'll pay. Where will they get their images now?



Paul Melcher had a similar take - http://blog.melchersystem.com/2010/06/21/blowing-a-candle/

"It will only help the widening market to know and understand that usages of images should be compensated for, and for a reasonable price...So, although we might not be huge fans of Getty on this blog, we reasonably give them a big Kudos for advancing the cause of our industry with this move."

He does mention that this will only add to the challenge for individual stock photographers at Getty, but at least it will be from people attempting to license images.

9
Microstock Services / Re: Lookstat Alternatives ??
« on: June 09, 2010, 16:31 »
Hi randy,

Just wondering if the new analytics is getting you what you need or if you have any feedback. Would love to hear from you re: your thoughts.

Cheers,

Rahul

10
Microstock Services / Re: LookStat Analytics Upgrade
« on: June 09, 2010, 16:22 »
Thanks for the input & kind words!

11
Microstock Services / Re: LookStat Analytics Upgrade
« on: June 08, 2010, 21:12 »
I hear you on SS. We'd love to have them in and we'll keep working on it. Things are already more open this year than they were the year before so I hope we keep heading in that direction.

12
Microstock Services / Re: Lookstat Giving it a try
« on: June 08, 2010, 12:46 »
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/

I just wanted to notify this thread since it was active in the past!

Hope all of you are doing great.

Rahul

13
Microstock Services / LookStat Analytics Upgrade
« on: June 08, 2010, 12:44 »
Hi All,

I hope you all are well. It's been a while since I created a new topic and I'm excited to reconnect with folks here. We recently launched a vastly upgraded version of our stats and I'd love for you to try it out at http://www.lookstat.com and let me know what you think.

Dashboard Screenshot


If you're doing any image, shoot or concept level analysis, I'm confident we have the best way to do it. For example, do you know which of your shoots generates the highest RPI for you?

Some of the new features we've added:
 
  • More metrics - RPI, Sell-through Rate, Portfolio Size, Earnings & Downloads
  • Keyword search for Collection Creation
  • Custom date ranges
  • Charts by Day, Week, Month
     
We have a free version and two paid plans. You're welcome to us the free version for as long as you like. Our hope is that some portion of you will find the service useful enough that you'll pay for it. For those of you who have tried our older stats, you'll find the newer free version is vastly improved.

Ultimately, the only way we'll survive if we can deliver value and help you find opportunities to increase your earnings by using LookStat. We're committed to creating software that helps microstock contributors sell more and your input & support is a big part of achieving that. I hope you'll give us a shot.

I'd love you to try out the site but if you have any questions, comments, feedback, I'll be monitoring the board and I'm reachable by mail & phone.

Cheers,

Rahul
[email protected]
206-569-5321

PS: We support iStock (and have a lot of exclusives on the system) and Dreamstime and will be expanding our site list significantly this year. Even if you are multi-site, the analysis of your partial sales is very instructive.

14
General Stock Discussion / Re: Finding a partner
« on: May 10, 2010, 16:46 »
Hi Jonathan,

Thanks for the note and mention below. Happy to help and answer any questions.

Cheers,

Rahul

Hi Surpaspro,
 
 I really think it is better in your situation to do the editing for what you know the market will need and then have an out source do them for a per image cost. Lookstat is a good choice. Rahul there could also give you feed back on the work before you spend money on the processing, he has a great deal of knowledge about what will and won't sell in the Micro market place.
 I would totally stay away from a percentage deal and pay for the cost of the salable images yourself. You might need a good editor more than someone to upload at first.

 Gostywk,

 200 photos from a months travel work.  Are you sure those are the correct numbers, they seem a bit low to me.

Good Luck,
Jonathan

15
General Stock Discussion / Re: The use of a square image
« on: November 03, 2009, 17:20 »
I think they changed it on their graph didn't they? Originally it was vertical outselling everything by 2x.

Hi there. The graph hasn't been changed. We do show that there are twice as many horizontal & vertical images as there are square ones and that may be the source of the confusion.

16
General Stock Discussion / Re: The use of a square image
« on: November 03, 2009, 12:09 »
Thanks for the kind words, Lisa and for sharing your experience.

17
General Stock Discussion / Re: The use of a square image
« on: November 03, 2009, 10:04 »
Cool image! (I also am a closet aircraft geek so it really does work for me.)

Thanks for posting that.

18
General Stock Discussion / Re: The use of a square image
« on: November 03, 2009, 08:53 »

Lookstat are claiming that vertical images earned double what horizontal and square images did in 2008

Hi there,

Sorry if the post was unclear, but we found that horizontal outsold both vertical and square, which does line up with the anecdotal searches you described. My guess is that there is more 'off-the-shelf' use than one might initially think and that more microstock images end up in electronic uses which are mainly horizontally oriented screens.

Rahul

19
Hi there,

Our hope is that we can deliver a cost-effective way to eliminate the headache of getting images online. Hopefully that frees up time and creative energy to work on creating images that deliver the sales needed.

Let me know if you decide to give us a whirl. Worst case, we get feedback, you get a feel for the service. Best case, we end up in a situation where we both win :)

Cheers,

Rahul

All said and done these charges are pretty reasonable...have just spent the best part of 3 weeks keywording, retouching, uploading etc 350 images to 13 sites to see how MS works for us...and would gladly pay someone to do all that...but what about the returns in the present economy...is the present RPI enough to justify anything but doing it yourself?

I hope this works for Lookstat...it's a great idea...

I guess it depends to a large degree on what you shoot. If you invest in high production cost shoots with correspondingly high sales potential then these costs are tiny in comparison to the overall outlay and the time saved might be more profitably used. If you're one of these 'photo factories' then it is probably cheaper and certainly more flexible than employing your own staff.


20
I'll echo the thanks to Jonathan. He's been generous with his knowledge and passion and it's been a ton of fun working with him. He's been an early (and vocal) supporter and I'm grateful for that.

Thanks Jonathan!

Rahul

21
Well let's get  your trial started :) - please use the MSG link above and I'd love a chance to show you what we can do and get your feedback.

22
Hi Gostwyck,

This is a great point and we have some work to do on the site in terms of diving in to how things work and pricing. In terms of how it works, it's relatively simple:

1. We activate SFTP for the photographer.
2. The photographer uploads images (either JPEGs or RAW/TIFF depending on whether retouching is needed or not)
3. We keyword the images and notify the photographer when this step is complete. Keywords can then be reviewed & edited online
4. Once the photographer approves, we upload & submit & attach model releases etc and we will manage all upload quotas
5. Pricing is on a per image basis w/ no minimums (ranges from $2-$10/image depending on which services are ordered). Customers are free to mix and match. E.g. no retouching or keywording, just uploading and submission.
6. Uploading for up to 10 sites is included and there are reduced rates for istock exclusives & partial sites.

Rejections due to keywording issues (or retouching issues) we handle at our cost. Our customers forward their rejections to us. We also handle resubmissions. If something is rejected due to focus, low commercial value etc, or for retouching that we didn't do, then that burden would fall on the photographer.

I'd be happy to email you a price sheet and to answer any other questions.

Rahul

23
Hi Sean,

I'll contact you directly, but retouching can start at RAW or can be limited to cleanup/logos/skin.

Rahul

24
Microstock Services / Re: Lookstat Giving it a try
« on: October 08, 2009, 19:02 »
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

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.




25
Lookstat is offering up more free trial memberships to their back end services.  Microstockgroup has an exclusive 25 trials to give away.  If you want to give Lookstat a try, now is your chance

What the Lookstat back office offers?
They can keyword, retouch, upload, and collect stats (or your pick of those items) on all your photos.  With the trial you get to try all these features for free on 25 images.

To grab your trial follow the link - first come first served.
 www.lookstat.com/backoffice/msg.html



Thanks for helping spread the word!

Rahul

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