I've just received this (something addressed to customers, imho) : <your name here> we're excited to publicly launch our latest search tool called "Fresh". This new search mode allows you to search exclusively our freshest and most undiscovered content, to find inspiring images that you (and others) probably haven't seen before.

With a million images added to our library each month, we have a constant supply of incredible new files posted by the minute. But up until now it wasn't always easy to find those new images, especially for popular search terms with millions of results. If this sounds familiar, we think you'll love Fresh.

To give it a shot, try your favorite search and click the "Fresh" mode button. You can switch back to Best Match at any time.

Excuse my English, I'm not a natural English Speaker.

I think this is only a trick that is set in this way: they're showing (and selling) only images that have zero sales when you select "fresh".
This could be good because we sell something we never sold. But this works once: then these images stop being "fresh".
I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing. Of course we'd better sell once more a file than less.

There is another and very bad question to me: canstock ignores their ticket system: I've opened a ticket some MONTHS ago and they are completely ignoring the problem that's preventing me to continue indexing and, so, selling more files. The only files that are selling are the old ones.

This is not a good sign: there are PRESENT problems and they don't work on them, looking to the "future"... If your car is broken it's not a so good idea to look how far you can go tomorrow instead of fixing it.

Quote from: zorba on May 05, 2017, 07:04

I can't find where to see sales, earnings, stats ... nothing. Is there almost SOMETHING updated to see? I work ... for money!!!!

If you can't be bothered to look over at the iS forum, at least take the time to look at the relevant threads on here.
Clue: ESP

If you don't like what you read here, take it up with iS (good luck with that!). No-one here can help you.

thanks Sue!

... It's much easier and reasonably fast to do in the portal as compared to the Fotolia UI in my personal opinion.

Mat

Hi Mat and thanks for being Mat!
If I could agree about the CSV and auto-keywording tool, I have to totally disagree about the general fotolia UI : that's a "worker" UI, where the Adobe Stock UI isn't. I've tried it but completely abandoned, worst of all about how MRs are managed.

There is a need for a very-simple system like the one in 123rf (you are a contributor, test it: it's very easy) or the one in Photodune: you simply upload MRs with the batch of files and the system attaches everything (envato) or you create a CSV with attachments and if there are duplicated MR's the system ignores them. If there aren't, the system stores them.

Very simple and automated!

This could be a GREAT improvement VS fotolia UI: upload files, mr, csv : go in the site and 1-CLICK-ATTACHMENT : done. THIS is improvement!

Thanks for listening!

Yuri is well know for not having his blogs proof read. hes also well known for not being the strongest in maths.

having that said, hes a self made millionaire so kudos to him.  he is doing well enough to own a 3000m2 studio in the middle of cape town and write off a million investment in a mobile photography agency which flopped.

fair play

Production – 7 (producers, runners and stylists)
RAW processing – 6
Retouching – 24
Advanced Retouching – 2 (3d, CgI)
Keywording and distribution – 6
Copyright and Legal – 1
Sales and support – 2 (peopleimages.com)
Video Retouching Department – 3
Cinematographers and focus pullers – 3
Kitchen staff – 3
HR and recruitment – 1
Photographers – 22
Interns – 10

these are the things that make me tough to keep on running :-D

I have to make & do all the stuff by myself! :-D

Luckily Arcurs doesn't upload in Shutterstock but ... what about his pupils? :-/

Since you uploaded them with DeepMeta, the easiest is to right-click the file (or ctrl-click on a Mac) in the list in DeepMeta and select "View on ESP site". (first screenshot).

That will take open your browser directly on the ESP page for that batch. Click the thumbnail of the image to be "revised", and you will see the "revision reason" at the right hand. I've included an example from one of my own test batches, to show how it looks. (second screenshot).

Then do whatever the revision text says, if possible.

A revision is like a kind of "probation" where you get a second chance before the file being rejected

PS. I'm currently working on showing this info right in DeepMeta itself and let you do it all there.
Still, it's not bad to learn your way around the ESP site, you'll need this from time to time.

thanks Franky! very helpful!

 So you are saying total sales go up with a reduced portfolio? In actual numbers not in proportion?

1) in proportion (they haven't deleted files so far)
2) yes I'm saying this, of course not reducing and stop, but reducing the files that your experience and numbers say are bad files compared to the EXCELLENT ONES you have, and CONTINUED working and uploading, but only the cream.

3) this is a THEORY, no one deleted a single file: the only case in which you could consider "deleted" a file is the third cited portfolio: the photographer self-censored himself in a different way, compared to the 001 and the 002, as I said. So he OMITTED TO UPLOAD, he didn't actually DELETE something that was previously online. I know that's not the same thing, but I never said something different.

I say we reasoned about this, thinking this opens the way to think that deleting cr*p could be a not-so-bad idea, instead of what we thought before. That's all, not a new Faith or new God. Only a theory based on some new evidences. And of course, these could be not "evidences" but feelings, I perfectly understand this.

But how many times did you see this topic talked about and no one observed a single thing about it?

Quote from: JimP on March 18, 2017, 14:33

How do people have same images on multiple portfolios and use different names. Isn't that something that would get us banned for life?

My understanding is that each portfolio is in the name of a different team member. Or something along this line. Portfolios don't overlap, so the validity of comparison between "good" and "bad" pics is very questionable. However, I am not 100% sure, I have a hard time understanding what exactly is going on.

you're 100% right.

They had a 1st portfolio working together. But when earning started becoming huge, they had problems about taxes: one photographer had to transfer money to the others and the local tax office made them crazy about this.

So they started another portfolio, but of course they have always worked together, and made up this only to separate incomes for the taxes. They worked and then uploaded in one portfolio or in the other, then they created this third port.

They treated these 3 ports in a slight different way, as I said.

But you're completely right! :-)

The problem with this reasoning is that in the series of facts you are not following all the facts, but just the ones that are consistent with their -let me be honest - flawed hypothesis. No shame in that, many people are making that mistake when there are too many variables and they don't know what they are.  There are simpler explanations of what they observe. They have some empirically discovered way to do things, it works, I get it, but accurate interpretations obviously isn't their strong side. There are just so many things that are wrong with this idea, I wouldn't even know where to begin.

Don't worry too much about bad pics, just try and produce more of the good ones.

This is my way of working: as I said, I can't take the liberty to try this theory.
But this is a good place for words: it's a forum, so is sad not to read your explanations about logics and a simple explanation about the wrong things.
I agree with your intro: but instead of leaving, it would be good to have some right ideas.

Quote from: Pauws99 on March 18, 2017, 01:43

This seems a very complicated way of saying good images sell better than bad ones....I'll go along with that theory. The rest is deeply flawed logic.

Indeed. As the weaker images are selling, just in lower numbers, what would the point be in deleting them?

In increasing the total sales, are saying these friends of mine: they observed a general INCREASE in the total sales of the port in which they made a severe selection (not selling some images that in other portfolios they would have uploaded, talking in quality terms).

If you are selling 2 images like this:

image A, perfect: 50 sales per day
image B, good quality: 1 sale per week

and you "know" (of course I know this is only a theory and a feeling of someone like you and me) that if you DELETE your B image, your A image will sell 1/3 more ... it's clear, isn't it?

Repetita Juvant: I'm not telling this is The Only Thruth.

Where would you draw the line though? If you have 1000 images and you get rid of 500, why not get rid of 999 and just keep your best one? Would sales of your one image increase enough to cover whatever sales you got on the other 999? I'd be very surprised!

So even if this deleting some of your portfolio theory did work, there would have to be some kind of sweet spot of what percentage of your portfolio to delete, which is going to vary considerably depending on the person and the portfolio. One persons worst 50% could be better than another persons best 50%.

But still, this all relies on sales of your remaining 50% to increase enough to compensate for the loss of the 50% that you've deleted, and I can't see that happening. Maybe a slight amount, if people look at your portfolio, see loads of great images and decide to start following you, or bookmark your page or something... but like others have said, people are usually looking for just one specific image or video... they're rarely browsing through portfolio after portfolio.

Of course there is no clue in erasing 999 files if your experience tells you that there are 500 good files and 500 so-so; obviously it's your choice and it's a choice IF YOU HAVE THIS DOUBT: if you don't have it, this is not a post about something you never thought about. But you know there is a lot of other people with this exact question in mind about old bad files, don't you?

Of course I'm not telling "hey people, delete!!!!!", I'm not telling this. I'm talking to the ones that 1) were thinking about this 2) wanted some information about this

Talking about me: my portfolio is too little and with mixed quality ... I'll keep trying to get better quality, and one day I think I'm going to erase something. But not at the moment.

And I see: if you "feel" that people come only using search, you're perfectly right.

Is there no overlap of images between ports - so you are just saying a port with good images outperforms a port with bad images?

No overlap.
And no, I'm obviously not saying this thing, because there was no clue in saying this.

I'm saying that a portfolio with 100% perfect images (for your standard, if you're experienced) outperforms the DOUBLE amount of files with the same amount of same quality of images. This means that HALF the amount is not perfect. Just so so, or bad, even if it passed an agency QC. But when you start you think that everything you do have to pass a QC... then you get better and you think "mh... this is not so good... but I worked and it's neither a duplicate nor a slight different POV ... it's work and I spent time, effort and some money for this: let's upload it anyway".

Well: I'm saying that finally you'd better not upload it, or, of you have to, come back 5 years after and delete it, when you doubled your portfolio with better quality images.

Or are you saying a port with 1000 good images and 1000 bad images has less sales than a port with only those same 1000 good images? All uploaded at the same time or uploaded at different times?

It's not possible to do the exact comparison, because the first portfolio (001) is old.
The second (002) and the third (003) aren't: they are pretty new, say a couple of years. In this period of time they shoot to upload in these three different portfolio in this way: they used the same LOCATIONS, the same MODELS and they are a group of photographers.

They NEVER uploaded the same images: this isn't fair and this is dangerous (account closing) if you made a living of microstock.

But you can understand: the only thing that has REALLY changed is the "selection" of "what level of goodness to upload".
Portfolio 001: everything, we're on average good guys and do everything good, we have tons of images and also the old ones cr*p sometimes sells something.
Portfolio 002: the new files, we've got better than some years ago, let's upload everything we shot becase we don't shoot cr*p anymore since years ago.
Portfolio 003: the news files, but hey, wait, this is not perfect. Is good, but not perfect. Don't upload it.

About this third portfolio they often argue because there is lots of effort behind every shooting session. But they did this to stop having taxes problems and they decided that in 3 years every portfolio will be owned by a single person, not only officially, but in reality.

This means that the photographer managing the portfolio 003 is taking a risk not uploading every-good image: they are VERY good. But they are able to shot BETTER than the good things (for my level of quality) : so this man decided to be more selective.

This means cutting the bad files in the past? No, this doesn't MEAN this as a cause-effect scientific process, but this could HELP to make this kind of decision: these friends reasoned about this and I'm trying to talk with you all about this because this is the classic kind of question that sometimes someone asks about, and no one has information or experiments about it.

I have had the chance to see this: these friends don't want to participate in forums or share publicly something: they talk with me and never hide.

Are you saying that per image sales are higher or total number of sales?

er... this is an average, but in this case if per-image average is better, total numer of sales have to be better
of course, as I said, IN PROPORTION.

If there was a direct proportionality and an exact comparison, of course this would mean that you can do what you want.
Instead made this proportion, you could observe that one way of working SEEMS to perform well.

as far as I know, OP = Original Post - the one that started the thread.

Thanks!
aw that's me  

I am guessing for most of us it is rare for buyers to actually even look at our ports, so what matters is the search result for our images.

This is a good point to reason about! In fact this is the ONLY point to reason about. And what I'm saying (for what I've seen, and this is NOT my work: if I worked well as they do I think I'll never delete a single image!!!   ) is that ... well, it seems that this isn't true: it seems that when you work well someone opens your port because they saw a good quality with a theme they were not interested in, to look if you have something interesting: another friend of mine - graphic designer - have some links of authors because he knows that sometimes he could start to be inspired by images and not to search something he has in mind before.

At one time SS seemed to treat every image separately for search - unlike say DT which took the artist into account. Perhaps that is no longer the case, which would be a shame.

I only hope to have given a new perspective and new datas to think about, not only theories without nothing.

As far as I am concerned everybody should delete 60-80% of their weakest images! It will improve my sales.

Whether it will improve your sales? There are too many variables involved to predict anything.

Correlation is not causation.

On the other hand, if I get up from the bed with my right leg and the day name doesn't contain any "U" or "R", it seems to increase my sales on that day quite significantly!
Correlation or causation?

Man, I'm not saying this is "The Sacred Truth".
Just something I could see with my eyes in portfolios that are far better than mine.
I don't want to say who they are, but consider the same quality of "pressmanster" in Shutterstock: I'm absolutely not at THAT level of quality: I can't afford to not upload my "worst" shoots. They are "ok" for me.

But the ones of these friends I'm talking about are at that quality level: they can afford to delete everything that sells bad. Because they observed that this SEEMS to cause a worst performance of the remaining portfolio.

I think that it's an interesting thing to know, rather than omit it. You choose: but now you have some facts.

Don't really know what that strategy achieves. We are not paying for storage. I've had pics that were dormant for a couple of years, then bam, sold for a few hundred. The inner machinations of buyers' minds are an enigma.

I agree that there is not a "only Truth".
They observed a long-time running very good portfolio and then placed side by side other 2 portfolios and continued running the first. But changing strategies. This strategy seemed to work well, enhancing the whole portfolio performance.

Men, I'm not here to say "you all are wrong": this is only a series of facts that I had the chance to see. This is neither a rule, nor a religion: only a thing I'm telling to the ones  that have considered to delete what they itself consider as not-good files "but it's free".
Maybe the cost is not an expense, but an handicap in selling.