Quote from: YadaYadaYada on August 06, 2013, 22:09

Quote from: CD123 on August 06, 2013, 15:40

Quote from: ShadySue on August 06, 2013, 15:34

Quote from: EmberMike on August 06, 2013, 11:22

Maybe it's summer slowdown, and the US is being particularly liberal with vacation time this year. I've never been a big believer in summer slowdown but it's kind of hard to ignore when the numbers are pretty convincing.

True, but given all the doom and gloom at iS, and now reported at SS, I nearly fell of my chair when I heard on the Beeb that the UK economy is recovering.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23584843

Think it's a worldwide rumor being spread by all countries. Seems like everyone, bar the man in the street, is seeing this wondrous recovery....

In it's 3rd year if you watch holiday shopping interview, rumors is right.

Don't agree. It is after the balancing out of the 10% of the people who is spending 500% more and 90% spending 20% less that creates the impression of a recovery.... 

PS The rumors is definitely not right, they ARE right, but actually they is wrong 

I think this Beatles lyric sums up the UK economy quite nicely,
"I've got to admit it's getting better
(Better)
A little better all the time
(It couldn't get no worse)"

Quote from: sharpshot on August 08, 2013, 01:58

I think this Beatles lyric sums up the UK economy quite nicely,
"I've got to admit it's getting better
(Better)
A little better all the time
(It couldn't get no worse)"

Thought you gonna give us: "I've got to get a message to you, hold on, hold on..." 

Or "Help, I need somebody...."

Very poor sales going on 
Seems it will be WME for me. 

Same here. It's vacation time in the US, so no big surprise.

But hey, there's my new SYS site to keep things moving forward!

When did they change Best Match? I seem to be affected by it.

All in all, sales for August are pretty bad. I hope things pick up in September again.

Sales are down at SS - half the month gone and not nearly the halfway mark to payout. But the sad thing is - it's bad across the whole board for me - and SS is not even the worst in their performance... .

do you mean you haven't reached 37.5$?

Quote from: Mellimage on August 15, 2013, 06:58

Sales are down at SS - half the month gone and not nearly the halfway mark to payout. But the sad thing is - it's bad across the whole board for me - and SS is not even the worst in their performance... .

do you mean you haven't reached 37.5$?

That's what I am saying - and yes I have a 600+ image port.

Sales at SS appear to be steady for me. I'm projected to be 7% up on August 2012 (this is my 9th year at SS).

What does concern me is the volume of new images being accepted at SS of late. They are currently claiming "175K new stock images added this week" and a few days ago it was 183K (the highest I've ever seen). Where are all these new images coming from? SS must have doubled their reviewing capacity to cope with such an influx which suggests that they expect this volume of new content to be sustained.

I have always thought they want to exceed Alamy and be able to say they have the largest library of stock images in existence.

They are gaining on Alamy with about 30k images per week. But Alamy has 10m more images.

Here's something weird I've noticed...

I used to consider 11:00 am EST my sort of "mid day" in microstock. By 11am, I had a pretty good idea of where the day was headed for me and could predict to a reasonable degree of accuracy the dollar amount I should expect to be at by the end of the day by simply doubling where I was at by 11 o'clock.

Lately that hasn't been the case. My mid-day is more like 9 or 10am, and I think because I'm not getting the kind of sales volume I used to get from the western world. Just before the start of the business day in the US, my numbers look pretty good. But things slow down from there.

Maybe it's summer slowdown, and the US is being particularly liberal with vacation time this year. I've never been a big believer in summer slowdown but it's kind of hard to ignore when the numbers are pretty convincing.

I call it the new SS download governor

Quote from: gbalex on August 15, 2013, 10:11

Down -49% over August of 2012.

How can you be down over a year in the future?

2012

There are two ways to measure performance from what I've seen-

1. If you have a decent size portfolio -  over 5K images than comparing the particular month of one year to the next year is a good way to monitor the performance

2. If your portfolio is small but growing (newbies like myself) than comparing month by month within that year makes more sense

We want to compare Apples to Apples and Oranges to Oranges. I see (ok, read) folks saying things like- " My sales are up 5000% from last year at this same time!" Yeah, and your portfolio was 100 images last year and this year is it over 1,000 images.  You are comparing an Apple with an Orange in my eyes...

T

"I do not think you can only do year to year comparisons if you have a port over 5k images. I've been with SS for 6 years now - and have a small port - which is very slow growing.  Why should i not compare the performance of my port to the performance it had last august - or even August 2 years ago. And if I see that compared to last year, despite some growth of my port, my dls and $$ are down, then this is saying something too, right?"

Slow growing is a different variable thus you would be comparing an apple with an apple in my eyes for a year to year comparison. As long as your portfolio is growing say 25% or more a per year.  Also if your portfolio grow say 50% wouldn't you expect a 50% increase in revenue? Tons of variables to consider. Basically,  a base line needs to be established to make a good judgement on performance.

I don't think its ever worth worrying about sales in August.  Lots of people take time off this time of year.  There always seems to be a thread about low sales this time of year.  Hopefully in a few weeks, sales will be "Here, There and Everywhere"

Had a huge day Tuesday. Yesterday had 4. Today one so far. Really bad. Had better sales over the past weekend then I did the past two days. Too much search tweaking in my opinion.

Just to add, I reached a payout on the 7th this month and then the bottom dropped out. Not good.