MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => Shutterstock.com => Topic started by: Ivan12 on June 16, 2013, 08:49
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Drop in Traffic Rank of the Shutterstock (using alexa.com)
Old chart:
(http://i47.fastpic.ru/big/2013/0616/bb/62fe0e53bbed6f4c7007ff589d06f8bb.jpg)
New chart with falling:
(http://i48.fastpic.ru/big/2013/0616/b5/16c945c83e3563caf81309dfac708ab5.png)
The last time this level was in 2010. You can see it on the old chart.
What do you think why is this happening?
Maybe it will comment on the Shutterstock representatives?
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Join the speculation here:
http://www.microstockgroup.com/general-stock-discussion/alexa-falling-traffic-on-all-sites-reasons/msg323448/?topicseen#new (http://www.microstockgroup.com/general-stock-discussion/alexa-falling-traffic-on-all-sites-reasons/msg323448/?topicseen#new)
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Consider this. Yuri had about 3-4000 dls per day at some point. Lets say those were all subs.
Average 3500/25=140 different buyers per day. Yuri left Shutterstock, taking his portfolio which attracted 4200 buyers, probably a lot more, per month.
That and the changes in the Google search which cuts off traffic to the site.
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Wont most of the Yuri buyers be satisfied with the many Yuri clones that were encouraged to join SS by Yuri?
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That's right, it's definitely the Yuri effect. From late February onwards buyers were fleeing SS in droves fearing that on May 16 he would reveal that he was switching to Getty.
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Don't think Yuri is the only reason... otherwise istock's graph should increase at least a little bit. In fact traffic of all major micro sites are following same falling trend
(http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?w=400&h=220&o=f&c=1&y=t&b=ffffff&n=666666&r=2y&u=istockphoto.com&&u=shutterstock.com&u=fotolia.com&u=123rf.com&u=dreamstime.com&)
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I didnt say he is the only reason. Its just something to consider. I didnt say it was fact either.
I am not affected by any of the doom and gloom anyway. At least not noticeable
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Same chart posted on SS late last night and probably related to Yuri leaving.
Look at when the drop started, right when Yuri left.
When Yuri left the traffic at SS left as well and probably why people with the Yuri type ports are complaining of piss poor sales and those without the Yuri style ports are hooting and hollering Yay!
Charts and graphs don't ☺
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Don't think Yuri is the only reason... otherwise istock's graph should increase at least a little bit. In fact traffic of all major micro sites are following same falling trend
([url]http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?w=400&h=220&o=f&c=1&y=t&b=ffffff&n=666666&r=2y&u=istockphoto.com&&u=shutterstock.com&u=fotolia.com&u=123rf.com&u=dreamstime.com&[/url])
Well in that case its the Google imperium that causes the drop. GL is almost going bust over it.
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in the next hours somebody (don't know who) will say RM is the new sh!t (again) ;D
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It's far more likely to be Google than Yuri. I'm sure most buyers have more than one account and wouldn't leave SS just because they can no longer get images from 1 contributor.
The chart shows that all the sites have lost traffic, hopefully they will find a way to get most of it back soon.
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It certainly seems to coincide with the google changes. Wonder what all these buyers are doing? Grabbing images illegally off google and using them for free?
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My sales are improving even with no uploads for almost 1.5 months now, except for 123rf.
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It certainly seems to coincide with the google changes. Wonder what all these buyers are doing? Grabbing images illegally off google and using them for free?
Not all traffic converts in buyers. Maybe the windowshopper's traffic is dropping, the actual buyers still need to go to the site to purchase.
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Same chart posted on SS late last night and probably related to Yuri leaving.
Look at when the drop started, right when Yuri left.
When Yuri left the traffic at SS left as well and probably why people with the Yuri type ports are complaining of piss poor sales and those without the Yuri style ports are hooting and hollering Yay!
Charts and graphs don't ☺
Duh! Even if the numbers quoted by Yuri's father were accurate and consistent Yuri would only account for a little more than 1% of downloads on SS.
Most of SS customers are subscribers to monthly, quarterly or annual plans. Even if they did decide to go elsewhere due to lack of Yuri's portfolio (unlikely) there would be a lag of some months before that effect showed up in statistics __ if indeed it ever did. Being as SS have been growing at the rate of about 30% a supposed 'Yuri drop' of 1% would be easily absorbed within a couple of weeks natural growth.
With Yuri's portfolio gone the existing subscribers would simply choose other business and lifestyle clones of his work (of which there are millions). Therefore, if anything, people with 'Yuri-style ports' should be experiencing a significant boost to their sales.
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a little more than 1%
Almost 2%. Significant enough
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a little more than 1%
Almost 2%. Significant enough
I'm sure like most contributors, Yuri made nearly all his money from a small percentage of his portfolio. Those very popular images would be the ones the clones were doing as well. So it's probably much less than 1% that SS is now missing.
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Did Yuri really quit SS three months before going pseudoexclusive at iS? I didn't know that. I thought it all happened at the same time. Seems a foolish waste of earnings on his part.
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Did Yuri really quit SS three months before going pseudoexclusive at iS? I didn't know that. I thought it all happened at the same time. Seems a foolish waste of earnings on his part.
He hadn't uploaded any photos at iStock since 29th March (most recent Urilux file, with an audio from 4/4)
The first photo file in his Yuri_Arcurs port is dated 21st May (though there are several videos from April).
Maybe he was focussing on PeopleImages in the intervening 8 weeks, or spending all his time in negotiations (though surely he has uploading elves).
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Did Yuri really quit SS three months before going pseudoexclusive at iS? I didn't know that. I thought it all happened at the same time. Seems a foolish waste of earnings on his part.
He hadn't uploaded any photos at iStock since 29th March (most recent Urilux file, with an audio from 4/4)
The first photo file in his Yuri_Arcurs port is dated 21st May (though there are several videos from April).
Maybe he was focussing on PeopleImages in the intervening 8 weeks, or spending all his time in negotiations (though surely he has uploading elves).
But if he was still at all the other micros until late May then clearly he has little or nothing to do with the change in the recorded traffic which started to drop at the end of February.
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I think Yuri is quite irrelevant when it comes to such an extend of traffic numbers. People have just this Yuri fetish and tend to focus on People more than on numbers. I guess most buyers don`t even notice his disappearance.
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I think its a combination of things that need to be considered, thats why I mentioned his departure. But since the drop is across the board, it has to be related to the new way Google is displaying images on their own page now.
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This can't have anything to with Yuri leaving. SS Alexa ranking is about 500 now, and it was 1000 in 2010, so it's still up...
I'm guessing Google was overvaluing microstock results - images for sale used to flood the image results, probably because they were properly described and easy to classify, and agencies were gaming the systems a little bit. Now images that come up are not all watermarked - so agency results have been depreciated, perhaps overly so. There may be course corrections to come, but they were clearly overvalued before.
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This can't have anything to with Yuri leaving. SS Alexa ranking is about 500 now, and it was 1000 in 2010, so it's still up...
I'm guessing Google was overvaluing microstock results - images for sale used to flood the image results, probably because they were properly described and easy to classify, and agencies were gaming the systems a little bit. Now images that come up are not all watermarked - so agency results have been depreciated, perhaps overly so. There may be course corrections to come, but they were clearly overvalued before.
Very good and objective evaluation...might be (part of?) the truth....
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It's far more likely to be Google than Yuri. I'm sure most buyers have more than one account and wouldn't leave SS just because they can no longer get images from 1 contributor.
The chart shows that all the sites have lost traffic, hopefully they will find a way to get most of it back soon.
All sites have lost traffic because alexa changed the way it collects and google changed the way it views. Not because traffic dropped.
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Traffic is dropping because I started selling direct.
Sorry everyone.
;)
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(http://s5.postimg.org/7ffkmepk7/microstock_alexa_june_2013.jpg) (http://postimage.org/)
June 14, 2013 (http://postimage.org/app.php)
Oh wait, just went up again. :)
Funny how they all have dips and peaks around the same spots.
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Funny how they all have dips and peaks around the same spots.
Dips - we call them weekends. ;)
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The overall trend is down. You dont judge performance on a dip or a spike
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Then you just did what you said not to do Ron? Must be the end of the Microstock world? Oh wait, it's just June, like every June.
(http://s5.postimg.org/64cvb209z/daily_reach_big4.jpg) (http://postimage.org/)
Doom and Gloom Index - Six months (http://postimage.org/)
And yes, weekends suck, and Summer is here. Views and sales are going down. This is not news.
The overall trend is down. You dont judge performance on a dip or a spike
I Blame Dave! ;) Glad he finally came forward to confess.
Traffic is dropping because I started selling direct.
Sorry everyone.
;)
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I have no idea what you are trying to do, but I didnt say its the end of microstock. I NEVER have said anything like that ever. Also your new image, you are trying to pass a 5 month downwards trend as a dip? Keep trying.
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Lets see, you said:
The overall trend is down. You dont judge performance on a dip or a spike
Then you argue that an annual dip isn't a valid point and it's some trend. Because you say it is? Look at your sales for the last four years and see what all your June and July look like.
Yes I said must be the end of the Microstock world as a sarcastic comment the constant doom and gloom and finding things wrong. Read it as a question, not as a quote. Get it now?
I have no idea what you are trying to do, but I didnt say its the end of microstock. I NEVER have said anything like that ever. Also your new image, you are trying to pass a 5 month downwards trend as a dip? Keep trying.
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Yes I get it now. You changed the length of period to prove me wrong.
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In my case traffic rank does not equate to sales which makes me inclined to ignore it. I've had my best three months at SS since starting out in 2010 - possibly because I started uploading again in February after almost a year off. Although it could be the change in content and style. Who knows? If I wrote on the SS forum about having great sales no doubt someone would chip in and say I was one of the lucky ones benefiting from the algorithm shift. Am I? Well prove it.
This is is a funny business. The sparsity of data generally leaves me (us) none the wiser because we try to extrapolate on snippets of external information. I have no idea how sales are going overall at SS or what sells and when, excepting the claims from the very small percentage of contributors here and on the SS forums. The endless speculation without empirical data to back it up is, for me personally, a waste of energy and has revealed nothing useful IMO. I just plug on with the basic level data I get from the agencies and the data I collect myself and use it to try and repeat success, keep looking for content gaps and niches and stop doing what doesn't sell or has been done to death. It's a simple revolving analysis loop that has served me well but I'd like to have more.
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^^ Good Post.
I really liked the part about "empirical" data. 8)
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positive sales data is in short supply because when you offer real numbers, you can expect legions of plagiarizers following your port so that they can reproduce your best selling images.
;) Expect to see hordes of small children sporting super hero gear in the near future.
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I have no idea what you are trying to do, but I didnt say its the end of microstock. I NEVER have said anything like that ever. Also your new image, you are trying to pass a 5 month downwards trend as a dip? Keep trying.
It is a definite and irreversible trend. Come back and see in a few years.
Although stock image usage might increase in absolute terms, the increase in the demand won't even come close to the increase in supply. In addition, many graphics designers and image users who are on subscription plans are building up their own image libraries. 750 images per month add up to 9,000 images in a year, or 90,000 in 10 years. Once they have 10 handshake images, 10 girls with the phone, and 10 Pisa towers, they can get off the subscription, and live happily aver after with their accumulated loot.
.
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The overall trend is down. You dont judge performance on a dip or a spike
How does the first 6 mo for 2013 compare to your 2012 or your 2011 records for first 6 mo?
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In addition, many graphics designers and image users who are on subscription plans are building up their own image libraries. 750 images per month add up to 9,000 images in a year, or 90,000 in 10 years. Once they have 10 handshake images, 10 girls with the phone, and 10 Pisa towers, they can get off the subscription, and live happily aver after with their accumulated loot.
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In absolute terms they would be using the images illegally if they don't continue the subscription, but since this does not seem to be policed you are probably right, they will continue to use the images.
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The overall trend is down. You dont judge performance on a dip or a spike
How does the first 6 mo for 2013 compare to your 2012 or your 2011 records for first 6 mo?
I dont have those records, April 2012 is my first full month and increasing ever since. June 2013 is pushing for BME, barely but still.
Thing is, what I am saying about dips and spikes is true. You measure the trend, and its doing down for the last 5 months.
trend
/trend/
Noun
A general direction in which something is developing or changing.
I dont need to be a microstocker to know that stuff. I am a L6S green belt, doing fine reading graphs and charts.
Having said that, I am not saying the sales on SS are down. I am just saying that what ever is shown on that graph has a downward trend. How that affects anything, I have no clue. My port is not as affected as others are reporting.