I'll tell you.

Because previously I had it set that whatever was at the top of the poll would set the standard at 100 and the rest of the results would be something relative to that.  If iStock was at 50 that meant that people were reporting their income at iStock was 50% of what they were making on Shutterstock.

That all worked fine except for one thing.  We never knew if Shutterstock was going up or down, just what the other sites were doing in relation to Shutterstock (or whoever was at the top).

Now I've set the top value at an arbitrary constant amount so that Shutterstock isn't at 100.  The ratio's would still apply.. if Shutterstock is at 90 and iStock is at 45 then people are on average earning 2x more on Shutterstock but we can also see if Shutterstock is going up or down over time.  This is a bit easier to visualize on the graph.

So what does the poll tell us?
Everyone is obviously going to see different performance from different sites but when averaged out, the polls give a nice pointer to the direction sites are headed, and over time we can see some interesting changes.

Got it.  Any chance that exclusives will have a place on the rankings?

Great idea, leaf, that indeed gives a good idea on how SS is performing.

Why not use real dollars not imaginary numbers based on an imaginary standard?

Quote from: leaf on September 04, 2012, 02:01

Quote from: traveler1116 on September 03, 2012, 17:19

Got it.  Any chance that exclusives will have a place on the rankings?

Yeah, i should figure out how to include them.  I have them sifted off in the results but haven't displayed their results anywhere

Why not compare total incomes from photo sales for exclusives to non-exclusives. It may mean creating a separate question or two, and having higher maximums than in the current poll, but isn't that what everyone is really interested in?

I don't think there are enough answers to get a good result for a comparison like that.  I do sort exclusive vs non-exclusive answers though and will display the exclusive answers sometime soon.  As soon as I figure the best way to do it. 

OK fair enough. Can you post somewhere the index number you use, and then I can still see the rough dollar numbers by calculations on my own.

What does 100 mean? $100, $1000, $10?

It's easy to see that SS is double IS for the Indys, and FT is 30%, DT 22% of that lead value, nice round numbers. But maybe the index number in dollars would be of value?

Yes making it so SS moves up and down, makes sense. Hey can you do something like the Dow Jones and show the whole market total going up and down? We'd finally know what month is really best and which are the worst. 

Quote from: leaf on September 05, 2012, 01:22

Quote from: RacePhoto on September 05, 2012, 00:52

Why not use real dollars not imaginary numbers based on an imaginary standard?

because then people would think that the actual dollar amount means something.  The actual dollar amount doesn't mean anything because people have to round their answers down quite a bit, you can't answer as high as you want (if you make $5000 on a site for example), and there aren't enough people answering to make a dollar amount statistically significant.    The only thing we can really know from the results is where sites lay in relation to each other and how they rank in relation to previous months and a ranking from 0-100 works quite well for this.

Yeah, the magical number is 500 for whatever that's worth... so the average photographer on MSG is saying he is making just under $500 on SS
A Dow Jones type overall market rise fall would be useful I agree.  I'll think about how to make it work.

Isn't it better and easier to calculate the relative ratio with percentages...?

Isn't it better and easier to calculate the relative ratio with percentages...?

percentage of what?

Quote from: leaf on September 07, 2012, 06:43

Quote from: borg on September 06, 2012, 18:00

Isn't it better and easier to calculate the relative ratio with percentages...?

percentage of what?

Of whole sum of earnings...
I sum up my total earnings of all agencies... (SS+IS+ DT+ etc.)
Then I divide amount of every agency with complete microstock earnings (example: SS earnings / total earings=0.32, which means that SS is 32% of my total monthly earnings)...

So, sum of all percentages should be 100%

Then you can track two relative movements every month for each agency (percentage part of each agency and monthly changes (also in %))...

So, you can find average earnings for each agency (with constant votes) from polls and then make the same thing..
If you want absolute values, you have to show us average earnings in $ for each agency after polls voting...

That is an interesting thought but I don't think it would be as accurate as it sounds.
Lots of new photographers can't get into Shutterstock for example.  For them, they are earning say 50% on iStock, 30 on Dreamstime and 20% of Fotolia (just for arguments sake)  They will put in their numbers but put in nothing for Shutterstock.  Shutterstock will have a lower overall percentage 'market share' even though the photographers who do submit there are earning a respectively large part of their income there.
I feel the way the polls work now show what happens when you actually have images on site X.  There are problems with every strategy.  I guess either way the results or order would probably be quite similar, the numbers would just be slightly different.

Yeah, the magical number is 500 for whatever that's worth... so the average photographer on MSG is saying he is making just under $500 on SS
A Dow Jones type overall market rise fall would be useful I agree.  I'll think about how to make it work.

I'm impressed (as always) by the group here and the returns they get for their investment and hard work. Here I thought it was $100 all these months. WOW!

So IS is about $250 which is also very good. And down there (over there, down there) BS @ 8 is $40 a month. Cool and thanks for the magic number.

Leaf,

I understand why you made the change and find the new way of looking data very helpful, but found the old way, (top company at 100) to be much easier to comprehend because the base was 100 so the math was simple enough I could do it in my head.   

Would it be possible for you to give us a toggle so we could switch between the two views? 

that might create more confusion that it would solve but perhaps a mouse over with a % would be a solution?

I don't know if you've given any thought to this, but as I answered the poll for this month, it occurred to me that I couldn't be very accurate with some of the lower earning sites because of the way we're instructed to answer.

It says you must select the number where you have at least that amount, not the number closest to the amount you earned.

As an example, in September on PhotoDune I earned just shy of the $50 payout. I had to answer $20 as that was the next lower choice, but I was within $4 of $50, so really answering $50 would have given a much better picture of where PD stood. I answered $20 for BigStock too - they were about $30 for the month. So for the poll, the two sites look equivalent, but they really aren't (although if BigStock continues to be un-dead, things may turn around in a month or two!)