LookStat – Official Blog

Luis Alvarez, who shoots for iStock & Getty, has a great post on his blog about how he uses LookStat collections to track his shoot ROI.

It was only just recently, about 3 weeks ago, that I had a deeper look into LookStat.com, and was surprised to finally discover a tool to help me improve measuring return on investment (ROI). In LookStat you can set up a collection of pictures (suitably the results of one photo session) and LookStat will tell you how much money those pictures have generated. You have different viewing options and charts, making it easy to understand.

Luis’s approach is to invest in research and quality. This in turn means that he’s careful about tracking his return. His top returning series is shown below:

We created the collections feature to allow photographers to do just this. Stay tuned for more on this coming soon!

Luis also has another post about his Getty & iStock earnings trends. This too is well worth a read and his final chart on iStock vs. Getty RPI is fascinating. It lines up well with our thoughts about the rapidly fading distinction between microstock & traditional stock photography.

You can check out Luis’ work at iStock and you he’s @velaphoto on twitter.

We have been working with Ron Chapple Studios and they were nice enough to share their thoughts on our services.

“We find the team at LookStat to be incredibly efficient, communicative, and responsive to our needs.  LookStat clearly cares about their clients.  Not only do they take care of your images, but they work hard to stay informed with the latest information about SEO, stock sites and metadata.  We highly recommend their services.”

Ron Chapple Studios
www.ronchapple.com

Ron & iofoto need no introduction and I would like to say a special thank you to Sara, the Senior Editor at the studio who is a blast to work with.

While doing some research into travel, I came across some data on the cities that were most visited by travelers to the USA from Overseas.

Top US Cities Visited by Overseas Travelers

Source: Statistic Abstract of the USA

Note the data above exclude visitors from Canada & Mexico.) I wasn’t surprised to see NYC at the top of the list, but I was surprised that Los Angeles was the second most visited city. Given the fact that Orlando is ranked in the top 6 as well, I’m guessing that Disney is the main driver of those visits.

The rest of the top 10 in order were:

7. Honolulu, HI
8. Washington DC
9. Chicago, IL
10. Boston, MA

2007 Visitors to the USA by Country of Origin

Source: Department of Homeland Security

The chart above shows visitors to the USA by country of origin. It includes both tourists and business travelers but excludes most short term visitors from Mexico & Canada.

Stock Photography Search Results

I decided to do a quick set of searches to see how many results there were for some of the top cities at a range of sites.

The thing that stands out the most is the massive drop off when it comes to images of Orlando, especially given that there were more visitors total (domestic & international) to Orlando (48.9 Million) than there were to NYC (47 million) in 2008. A quick check of downloads however suggests that there may not be as much demand for Orlando imagery.

Another thing I found surprising was the sheer number of Getty results. As it turns out, they include the location of the shoot in their keywords. This makes no sense to me. If I’m searching for ‘New York City’ I don’t really want a picture of a man taken in a studio in New York, I want something that evokes the city.

iStockphoto Search Results for ‘New York City’

Getty Images Search Results for New York City

Summary

• New York was visited by 8.2 million overseas travelers in 2008; about three times the number who visited the #2 destination which was Los Angeles. It’s also the destination that draws the most dollars from tourists at $30billion. (Source: NYC Go Stats)
• Orlando seems to be radically under-represented from a stock image perspective when you consider total travelers. Granted, most visitors are domestic but presumably they are still being shown images of the city when they make their travel choices. Studying downloads however suggests that people just aren’t licensing as many images – I’m not sure how to explain this but would welcome your thoughts in the comments.

There have been a few mentions of LookStat Back Office services and our new Guide to Microstock for RM & RF Photographers around the web and I’m excited to share them with you.

LookStat Back Office Services – Just Press Play – A review by Tyler Olson on the Microstock Group Blog

The back-end service of Lookstat is a great tool for anyone who likes shooting more than sitting in front of a computer or who doesn’t have a room full of people working for them.

Microstock photography is time intensive.  Shooting and editing in larger numbers, keywording those images, and perhaps most time consuming, uploading to the large number of microstock sites – all add up to a lot of time spent per file.  Time that could have been more productively spent shooting.

For those who take advantage of the Lookstat Back-end service however – all they need to do is shoot, ‘press play’, and watch their images appear on the microstock sites of their choice.  Edited, key-worded, uploaded and processed – ready for sale.

This Month in Microstock: LookStat’s Guide to Microstock for Traditional Stock Photographers – A mention on Microstock Diaries’ news roundup

Helping to demystify much of the misunderstandings of microstock in the traditional market, LookStat released a beautifully designed and free 35-page downloadable PDF guide to microstock for RM and RF Stock Photographers.

February Microstock News – A mention of our guide at Microstock Insider

lookstat published a useful microstock guide, written as an introduction to microstock for RF (macro) and RM photographers. It includes some statistics, advice and checklists that are still useful for microstock photographers who already know the ropes.

Thanks to all the folks above for the kind words!

We have been working hard over the past few weeks on a free 35-page guide for RM & RF stock photographers who are interested in microstock. Microstock is a growing part of the stock photography market and it’s important to stay informed about it, especially in light of the convergence taking place between micro & RF.

The guide provides an overview of what microstock is and how to get started. It also contains profiles of the top sites, details on their application process, and a submission checklist which covers the latest requirements for creating accounts and uploading and submitting images.

We wrote this to answer a lot of the questions we hear about microstock, especially from established stock photographers interested in adding another revenue stream to their portfolios. I hope you’ll find it a useful and helpful reference.

I know a some of you will know most of this information cold, but hopefully you know someone else that would find it useful. Please help me spread the word about this by tweeting about the guide or sharing it on Facebook.

Thank you for your help and support. As always your comments and feedback are greatly appreciated.

I’ll be covering cycling in more detail in a couple of weeks but I came across some interesting stats that are worth sharing.

Share of Units Sold by Type

Source: National Bicycle Dealers Association (NBDA)

As you can clearly see from the chart above, mountain bikes were the single largest category of bicycles sold by specialty bike stores in 2008. In addition, the comfort & hybrid classes can be thought of as less aggressive mountain bikes. This is worth keeping in mind as you think about stock shoots in this category. Youth cycling is also a large category and should be explored.

Specialty Bicycle Retailers Generate Most of the Dollars

According to the NBDA statistics, specialty bicycle stores account for only 17% of units, but 50% of dollars generated in the industry. They also account for almost all the services & parts revenues. If you’re planning a retail oriented shoot in this category, specialty stores are the way to go.

Why People Ride

Source: National Bicycle Dealers Association (NBDA)

Although the data above are from a 2006 survey of why adults ride, changes are not likely to be major. It’s clear that recreation is the primary reason people ride and that lines up well with the fact that mountain & comfort bikes make up the major portion of bike sales. (Note: the data add up to more than 100% because people ride for more than one reason.)

What About Commuting?

According to the League of Amercian Bicyclists analysis of 2008 Census data, 0.55% of Americans use a bicycle as their primary means of getting to work. Although this represents significant growth from it’s levels in prior years, it’s a tiny fraction of the total. They have published an online spreadsheet ranking cities by % of bicycle commuters – Portland, Minneapolis & Seattle are the top 3 US cities.

Implications for Shoot Planning

• Mountain bikes and comfort bikes are the dominant category of bike sold
• Recreation is the main reason that people ride
• Bicycling commuting in the USA is a tiny portion of the total, even though it is growing.
• Watch those logos! Bicycle frames, components and tires are almost completely covered in logos. I recommend dealing with this on the bike with tape & paint rather than spending days of Photoshop time cleaning things up in post-production.

One point to note is that I expect the picture to be significantly different in Europe where there is a strong road biking tradition and many more people commute by bike.

Upcoming Posts

Future posts on cycling will focus on recreation and will go into demographics & stock photography trends.

Walking for exercise was the most popular activity in terms of number of participants and was in the top ten when it came to year over year growth on our list of top leisure activities. Given an aging population, and a tough economy, it’s not surprising that walking is a popular leisure activity. To provide some context, in 2008, there were 96.6 million people who participated in ‘walking’ compared to ‘golf’ which had 25.5 million participants. Also, the number of walkers in 2008 was 11% higher than it was in 2007 which saw 89.9 million participants.

This will be a two part series. In this post, I’m going to look at:

• Demographic & Gender Trends for Walking in the USA
• Footwear Spending by Category
• Walking Shoe Purchasers by Age & Gender
• Top Search Keywords

The second post will focus on stock photography related to ‘walking’ and will link back to this one.

Participation by Gender

Source: NSGA, Statistical Abstract of the USA

Participation by Age

Source: NSGA, Statistical Abstract of the USA

Walking as a means of exercise clearly skews older (49% of participants 45 or older) and female (62.5% female). This data is also supported by the footwear spending data as you’ll see below.

Footwear Spending by Type of Shoe

Walking shoes accounted for 33% of the $12.5 billion dollars spent on footwear in 2007 (data for 2008 were projected to be similar and 2009 data are not available yet but if anything, I’d expect this to be more pronounced.)

Walking shoe Purchasers by Gender & Age

Digging into the walking shoe purchasers show that the same trends apply as the overall participation in walking. 45-64 is the biggest age group and the percentage of female users is identical to the percentage of female walkers.

Search Trends for Walking & Walking Shoes

The chart below shows data from Google Insights for ‘exercise walking’ and ‘walking shoes’ from 2008 to 2010.

There isn’t much seasonality, but ‘walking shoes’ are searched for 5 times more often than ‘exercise walking.’ This surprised me initially, but intuitively it makes sense that people would be searching for ‘walking shoes’ as opposed to for ‘exercise walking.’ The same caveats as those in our comments on running shoes apply – be careful of trademarked designs & logos.

Top Searches Related to ‘Exercise Walking’

Conclusions

• Walking for exercise is the top leisure activity in the USA in terms of participation with close to 100 million people taking part in 2008!
• Demographically speaking, the participants skew older & female; the top age segment is 45-64 years old.
• Walking shoes represent the top footwear category in the USA and the demographics (not surprisingly) map closely with walkers.
• ‘Walking shoes’ should be part of your keywording strategy since they are a high volume search query
• Top related keywords are: “exercise, weight loss, calories, walking shoes”

I think the demographic trends around walking are fairly clear. This lines up well with general demand for imagery around ‘active seniors’ and this is something I’ll dive into in more detail in the second part of this post. Stay tuned and comments and feedback are always appreciated!

We have been working with Aurélie and Morgan on their keywording and uploading for some time now. We love working with them and they were kind enough to share their perspective on using LookStat Back Office services.

“We finally have time to shoot again! And, we’re always amazed by the creativity and accuracy of Lookstat’s keywording and uploading. You will never do it better yourself or for a better price, especially when you consider the time it would have taken you away from your camera.”

Aurélie and Morgan David de Lossy
www.amdlphotography.com

They are fantastic, fun people and this comes through in their images. You should visit their website to see some great examples of their work.

Spend Your Time Shooting, not keywording & uploading

Freeing up our customers to spend their time shooting and creating great images is precisely why we created our Back Office services. To learn more about how we can get you more time to shoot, please contact us and we’ll get back to you immediately.

Soccer was fourth on our top leisure activities list. I have written about soccer before, but this post focuses on:

• Gender and Demographic Trends for Soccer in the USA
• Why 2010 is going to be a big year for Soccer Stock
• Top Search Keywords
• Stock Photography Search Results

2007 Participation by Gender

Source: Statistical Abstract of the USA

2007 Participation by Age Group

Source: Statistical Abstract of the USA

As you can see from the charts above, soccer in the USA is primarily a youth sport – 60% of participants are under 18 and the single largest age group is under 11. While it does skew more male than female, the difference is fairly small. Almost 40% of participants are female.

I decided to check out boys vs. girls vs. youth soccer to get a feel for the gender lines at that level and the results are interesting:

‘Girls soccer’ is searched for more often than ‘boys soccer’ by a factor of 2 and appears to be gaining in popularity. Definitely something to keep in mind when planning shoots & keywording.

Why 2010 is going to be a big Soccer Year? Two words – ‘World Cup’

The chart above shows Google Insights data for Soccer from 2004 to the present day. As you can see, there is a massive spike in a World Cup year. The tournament takes place every 4 years and the 2010 FIFA World Cup is being held in South Africa this year. The tournament runs from June 11 – July 11.

Top Search Keywords

The biggest surprise in the above list was the fact that ’soccer pro’ was the top term (after ’soccer’ by itself of course.) It’s not something that I would have intuitively thought to have as part of a keywording strategy. (One other tidbit: searches for indoor soccer peak in the winter.)

Stock Photography Search Results:

Initially, I was a little surprised to see Fotolia with the most results (normally it’s Shutterstock) but given that Fotolia is based in Europe, with traffic patterns to match, this makes perfect sense. This also explains Dreamstime’s large soccer collection as well.

Links to Search Results from Other sites:

• Corbis
• Dreamstime
• Flickr
• Fotolia
• Getty
• iStockphoto
• Shutterstock

Conclusions

• 2010 should be a good year for soccer stock, driven by the World Cup. You should find ways to incorporate this into your shoots & metadata.
• World Cup related images are already beginning to pop up in stock photography search results.
• In the USA, youth soccer and specifically girls soccer are important (Ellen mentioned this on my last soccer post.)
• This is an obvious point, but make sure you have soccer & football in your keywords.
• Searches for indoor, youth & boys and girls soccer all peak in the October/November time frame

Another point to keep in mind, soccer & sport in general aren’t always used literally. Concepts of competition, victory, power are all important advertising themes that athletics can illustrate.