Interesting.  About a year ago I deleted a bunch of pics and vids that had been uploaded when I first started and with Shutterstock, but felt weren't quality enough to sell after learning the industry a little better.  My sales immediately dropped for over a month, but then really started to pick up pretty good.  Maybe it's time for a little spring cleaning...

"The galleries with "only the best" performed DOUBLE than the one containing the best and the rest, in proportion." what does "in proportion" mean. Its absolute income that counts

So... best images sell better... fine. 

So you have 2 accounts selling the same "best" images?!

Hallo!
I have some friends that sell very, very well. They worked as one photographer using 1 account.
When they started to sell for 5000$ a month they started to have problems with our country taxes so they decided to split, open one account per person and level up the whole of their portfolio.

They had the opportunity to try some "what if" experiment: they left every kind of sh*t in the main portfolio and started to upload ONLY the cream in the new accounts or to return and delete what they considered "not perfect".

The galleries with "only the best" performed DOUBLE than the one containing the best and the rest, in proportion.

So if you were thinking "is it a good idea to delete all my cr*p and leave only the best images?" ... well: yes, it is.

Why?

I don't know: I guess it's because of the way the customer see your portfolio: they see a good image, but not useful to their needs: they open your portfolio and see ONLY THE BEST, without cr*p: this probably is impressive and sells! :-)

I'm not able to do this NOW: but when I'll double my portfolio I'll do this for sure: this may halve the time for the customers to find what they want without seeing all my so-so experiments!

My 2 cents, for you guys

So you have the same images in two different accounts??
Sure that you will sell more.
Why don't you try to open 126 accounts under different names but with the same images???

Hallo!
I have some friends that sell very, very well. They worked as one photographer using 1 account.
When they started to sell for 5000$ a month they started to have problems with our country taxes so they decided to split, open one account per person and level up the whole of their portfolio.

They had the opportunity to try some "what if" experiment: they left every kind of sh*t in the main portfolio and started to upload ONLY the cream in the new accounts or to return and delete what they considered "not perfect".

The galleries with "only the best" performed DOUBLE than the one containing the best and the rest, in proportion.

So if you were thinking "is it a good idea to delete all my cr*p and leave only the best images?" ... well: yes, it is.

Why?

I don't know: I guess it's because of the way the customer see your portfolio: they see a good image, but not useful to their needs: they open your portfolio and see ONLY THE BEST, without cr*p: this probably is impressive and sells! :-)

I'm not able to do this NOW: but when I'll double my portfolio I'll do this for sure: this may halve the time for the customers to find what they want without seeing all my so-so experiments!

My 2 cents, for you guys

Not sure about deleting, but I believe in self-curating the uploads.

Uploading dozens of similars, with minor color or crop variations will definitely harm the sales by spreading them over too many choices, instead of allowing "the best" to climb the popularity ranks.

"The galleries with "only the best" performed DOUBLE than the one containing the best and the rest, in proportion." what does "in proportion" mean. Its absolute income that counts

er... not when you try a model.

They had a user, suppose USER001, this is up and working: it has, NOW, 40000 files.
In the meanwhile they opened USER002 and USER003.

002 and 003 have 10000 pics each.

Obviously you can't do an absolute comparison. But you could do this in proportion.

And in proportion, USER001 that in absolute income is performing well, in proportion is not performing as good as 002 and 003 do.

That means "in proportion": that when user002 and 003 will have the same amount of files, they will perform BETTER than 001.

So... best images sell better... fine. 

I understand that this sounds pretty obvious, but I mean that a portfolio with "only the cream" will sell better than the same portfolio with other files not-so-good in addition, for example the same good photos and the same amount of photos of a lower quality (commercial interest).

Double portfolio doesn't mean double sales. So, if you were thinking to delete some cr*p and someone else is telling "oh I have had a file there for 10 years and tomorrow I sold it!!" ...

... er... ok, you sold it. But HOW MUCH did you sell the whole portfolio ?

This is what they observed: the whole portfolio performed better when there is no lower quality photo inside.

So you have 2 accounts selling the same "best" images?!

I'm not talking about myself: I'm able to work and upload only the non-crap. I try simply to do my best, but I talk with colleagues and they perform VERY well.

They have THREE portfolios, obviously not with the same photos (they know too well what this could cause). They work a lot and divided the shootings distributing them between these portfolios: one of these porfolios is older, so, naturally this has lots more of images. But in proportion it contains lots of not-perfect images.

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

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

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

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. 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.

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.

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.

Quote from: Pauws99 on March 17, 2017, 02:16

"The galleries with "only the best" performed DOUBLE than the one containing the best and the rest, in proportion." what does "in proportion" mean. Its absolute income that counts

er... not when you try a model.

They had a user, suppose USER001, this is up and working: it has, NOW, 40000 files.
In the meanwhile they opened USER002 and USER003.

002 and 003 have 10000 pics each.

Obviously you can't do an absolute comparison. But you could do this in proportion.

And in proportion, USER001 that in absolute income is performing well, in proportion is not performing as good as 002 and 003 do.

That means "in proportion": that when user002 and 003 will have the same amount of files, they will perform BETTER than 001.

So by slashing a portfolio your total sales go down but your RPI goes up great but your total income goes down how is that better?

Looks like a great vanity project: deleting a lot of pictures to artificially improve your RPI.
You start. Then I won't follow.
If enough people will follow you I'm sure my sales will improve.

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?

Quote from: niktol on March 17, 2017, 11:38

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.

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.

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.

I have some friends that sell very, very well. They worked as one photographer using 1 account.
When they started to sell for 5000$ a month they started to have problems with our country taxes so they decided to split, open one account per person and level up the whole of their portfolio.

How did they have problem with the taxes? To me it reads like they didn't report income, and 5000$ per month was too much to hide.

They had the opportunity to try some "what if" experiment: they left every kind of sh*t in the main portfolio and started to upload ONLY the cream in the new accounts or to return and delete what they considered "not perfect".

The galleries with "only the best" performed DOUBLE than the one containing the best and the rest, in proportion.

So if you were thinking "is it a good idea to delete all my cr*p and leave only the best images?" ... well: yes, it is.

Why?

I don't know: I guess it's because of the way the customer see your portfolio: they see a good image, but not useful to their needs: they open your portfolio and see ONLY THE BEST, without cr*p: this probably is impressive and sells! :-)

I'm not able to do this NOW: but when I'll double my portfolio I'll do this for sure: this may halve the time for the customers to find what they want without seeing all my so-so experiments!

Nice bedtime story.

You sound like you're from eastern europe btw, am I right?

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.

Quote from: Pauws99 on March 18, 2017, 01:52

Quote from: zorba on March 17, 2017, 20:39

Quote from: Pauws99 on March 17, 2017, 02:16

"The galleries with "only the best" performed DOUBLE than the one containing the best and the rest, in proportion." what does "in proportion" mean. Its absolute income that counts

er... not when you try a model.

They had a user, suppose USER001, this is up and working: it has, NOW, 40000 files.
In the meanwhile they opened USER002 and USER003.

002 and 003 have 10000 pics each.

Obviously you can't do an absolute comparison. But you could do this in proportion.

And in proportion, USER001 that in absolute income is performing well, in proportion is not performing as good as 002 and 003 do.

That means "in proportion": that when user002 and 003 will have the same amount of files, they will perform BETTER than 001.

So by slashing a portfolio your total sales go down but your RPI goes up great but your total income goes down how is that better?

Of course I'm not very good at English, but you prefer to consider it a logic problem. I see.
No one , never, said slashing a portfolio makes total sales going down: this is another very important point.

Where did I write that total sales goes down?

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

Completely impossible comparison.

If there indeed are no duplicates, and the good images are deleted from the "bad" portfolio and uploaded to new portfolios they are all new and will be treated very differently by the search engine.

The only interesting result would be if only the bad images were deleted (not re-uploaded) and the overall revenue increased.

I never said that these images will be re-uploaded.
But that point about the way the search engine treats images is interesting: let me understand this with another question:

do you think that if I delete AND REUPLOAD my "never sold" images, I can change something about their future sales? :-/

Quote from: Microstockphoto on March 17, 2017, 02:12

there's so much wrong in the OP, don't even know where to start. worst advice ever.,

+ but I'd also agree they should do this, if they would also delete all files that compete with mine. 

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

I can't understand: I know that I don't write so well.
But I never wrote that they have THE SAME IMAGES on multiple portfolio. I repeat explaining that they have DIFFERENT images. They use the same locations to shoot, the same models, the same light equipment.
But that's all.

You can shoot in New York with a model. I can shoot in NY with the same model. This will produce DIFFERENT images.

I hope this makes more clear the idea.

[cut / edit]

1) How did they have problem with the taxes? To me it reads like they didn't report income, and 5000$ per month was too much to hide.

2) Nice bedtime story.

3) You sound like you're from eastern europe btw, am I right?

3) yes.
2) there is really no point in offending people in forums, nor to lie. so... what do you mean? :-/

1) the problem was this:

they are N people, working, but for the agency they are only 1 people, say "John".
John received the money from iStock, Shutterstock, Dreamstime, 123rf and so on. They send the money AND the taxes documents.
John divided the money in N and paid all the friends.
When friends have to explain to tax offices what happened, you have to understand that here we have problems even explaining what a digital file is, instead of a printed photograph. Explaining these money exchanges sounds suspicious. So they said: ok, let's create another portfolio. But the first portfolio had a very strong "power" because of long-time existence, exposure and big amout of pictures, so they continued working on each of the portfolios.

The second portfolio performed well more quickly than the first one: they had more experience.
And the rest is explained in the other posts

HTH

Quote from: Pauws99 on March 19, 2017, 03:26

 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?

I'm completely lost now........

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.

For me the big question is:
An image is good because it sells better, or an image sells better because it is good?

Maybe search algorithm is influenced by something like a portfolio "quality-density factor"; thats means that if you have 10,000 life sales and you only have 200 images your "quality-density factor" is 10,000/200 = 50... so hi; but if you have 1,000 life sales and 20,000 images then you "quality-density factor" is 1,000/20,000 = 0.05, very low...

It is just a theory (of course) that fits good with the original thread...

Maybe search algorithm is influenced by something like a portfolio "quality-density factor"; thats means that if you have 10,000 life sales and you only have 200 images your "quality-density factor" is 10,000/200 = 50... so hi; but if you have 1,000 life sales and 20,000 images then you "quality-density factor" is 1,000/20,000 = 0.05, very low...

It is just a theory (of course) that fits good with the original thread...

I think it would only have a profound effect if all search engines from different agencies implemented this type of ranking which is unlikely. And then there are search engines that have nothing to do with agencies. Their ranking is a different story.

That would also polarize portfolios very fast, and large agencies don't seem to benefit from that, judging by their constant lowering of admission threshold. But hey, ultimately, we don't know for sure...

Everyone understands what he's saying, they just don't understand how he's arrived at that conclusion. If there was an account with 1000 images, and 500 of them were deleted, and the remaining 500 made more than the 1000... then it would all be a bit clearer. It would be conclusive evidence that it is at least possible that the same thing could work for others.

That's not what's happened though, and that's what's confusing the issue. The 'however many' images were split into five accounts... let's say it was 1000 files total, and 200 files each (for the ease of math). What he's saying is that some of the people decided not to upload their full 200 images, and they're making more than they were when they had 200 images as part of the larger, original portfolio. He's also saying that some portfolios are making more than others.

I'm curious if the earnings were split equally before as well... or if it was broken down by files that belonged to the individual photographer? If it was broken down to files taken by the individuals, then that would make the evidence more compelling, as you knew exactly who was selling what before, and you know exactly who is selling what now. If it was just split between everyone, then some earnings are bound to go up, even if they upload less content.

Deleting files that didnt sell was one of my strategies during the later part of 2016 and it did seem to work but only for a while. Imagination probably! however I deleted some 250 files only a few weeks back and suddenly the daily take seemed to skyrocket but only to find out it was due to a possible search change which have now reverted back to the same stale search.
Many years ago there used to be small tricks one could do but today its like drawing blood out of a stone. Micro-stock is not what it used to be there are no short-cuts or free lunches just a matter of hanging on to the bitter end that by the sound of it is just around the corner.
I'm afraid it seems to be a passtime for our Russian and Ukraine friends nowadays.

My opinion: Image offline is an image, that can't sell. I've had EL on BS for an image, that didn't sell more then 5 times on all agencies. I had 60$ SOD on SS for an image, that also didn't sell more than 5 times on all agencies combined. So deleting any image is stupid.