LookStat – Official Blog

Dave Naffziger has a nice post about LookStat on his blog.

If you are a photographer, you’ll submit your images to multiple sites: the sites are non-exclusive, it costs nothing to submit a photo and it increases your chance of selling the photo (which can be sold multiple times). But tracking the performance of your photos is very challenging – you need to download data files from multiple sites, normalize them and then somehow link the photo-by-photo performance data from the different sites.

Rahul and Casey Zednick just launched LookStat, a must use application for serious microstock photographers. Not only do they aggregate the data from multiple sites, but they also do the very hard work of normalizing your data. That means that you can see how much a single photo is making across all sites.

We have a lot of work ahead of us before we attain essential status, but I’m confident that with input from our beta users and the microstock community, we’ll find a way to get there.

Thanks a ton for the mention Dave.

Just a couple more quick thoughts on security and around the issue of trust & login credentials. We know this is a critical issue and our hope is that by being open & accessible we can start to build some of the trust we need.

In practical terms, we work very hard on the security of the site and its pages and in addition, we encrypt all of the data stored in our databases. When a user enters data, it is instantly encrypted and stored in the database. This data is only ever accessed by the system in an automated fashion without human intervention. This is similar to how sites that aggregate banking and credit card information handle account security. Also, no one other than you has access to your LookStat password. If it’s lost, there is no way to look it up, it will need to be reset.

We want to be successful by building great tools and systems for contributors and we’re here to answer any questions or work to address any concerns you might have.

We take the security of our users’ data very seriously and work hard to protect it from unauthorized use. Security isn’t just an issue for our users, it’s one that matters a great deal to us as well. We use LookStat for monitoring our own portfolio performance.

From a technical standpoint, we take the following precautions with to ensure the safety of your data:

• We encrypt every single page on our site

• We encrypt everything we store in our database at all times

• You are the only person with access to your LookStat password. If you lose it, we have to reset it

• We house all our servers in secure datacenters and protect them with multiple security measures like firewalls and intrusion detection systems

• We make sure that all employees, contractors and officers sign confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements so they are accountable for any breach and misuse of data

We’ve studied sites like Mint & Yodlee that access banking and credit card data for individuals and have adopted similar security practices. No digital mechanisms are ever 100% secure, but we’re very confident that the systems we have in place are at least as secure (if not more so) than desktop applications & widgets that manage login data and sites on the web today.

Our goal with LookStat is to provide a secure service to photographers and illustrators and to benefit from the value we deliver to our customers. We know that trust is important and we intend to be completely transparent about who we are, where we are based and what our intentions are. If you have any questions or concerns, please let us know and we will respond to them as quickly as possible.

We’re pleased to announce the beta of LookStat – a web service from Orange Line Media that will allow you to make more money online with your digital photography and illustrations by allowing you to:

1. Track your portfolio
2. Analyze your performance
3. Automate your workflow

We started exploring microstock earlier this year and as technologists began developing tools to help us manage our own microstock portfolios. As we got further down the path, we realized that the tools we were developing might be useful for other contributors as well.

The service is very much in beta form at the moment but we’re confident that with some input from our users, the service will evolve rapidly.

The first feature we’re launching is performance tracking. We want to make it easy for you to monitor the performance of your images across multiple sites from a single location. Once you create an account with LookStat, we obtain your sales history, match your images across sites and present you with a complete history of your performance. We’re launching the beta with support for Dreamstime & Shutterstock and plan to add support for iStockphoto, Fotolia & 123rf in short order.

Sample Screenshot

Sample Screenshot Showing Dreamstime Data

One important difference between LookStat and other tools for tracking earnings – we look at your entire history. Once you start using the service, we build a complete picture of your earnings from the beginning of your microstock career. On top of this, we update your data periodically, so you can always see how you’re doing, from anywhere on the web.

We hope you’ll give the service a try and let us know what you think. I know some issues that will be top of mind are security and privacy. We take those very seriously and you can review our FAQ and privacy policy at the site.

We are confident that our security standards meet or exceed those of existing sites & software. All our site pages are encrypted and we have no access to your LookStat password. All data stored on our servers is encrypted and secure. Both Casey & I will be writing a lot more on this in the near future.

In addition, you should know that we’re eating our own dog food, as it were. We use the service to monitor and track the performance of our own portfolio. Our goal is to create a service that delights our customers (microstock contributors) and helps them take advantage of the growth of this market segment.