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We’ve had a great response to our uploading and keywording offer so we are extending it and opening up to all new takers. If you ask us, we will keyword & upload 25 images for you to up to 10 sites at no charge, with no strings. Just create an account at LookStat or fill out our contact form to request more information. We’re confident that once you get a feel for the quality of service we deliver you’ll want to continue. Regardless, we would appreciate your feedback and input.
The conventional wisdom is that photographers should shoot both horizontal and vertical formats and that square images do better because they stand out in search results (see screenshot below.)
The reasoning here is that square images take up more pixels in a thumbnail grid and therefore stand out. While this may be true, it’s instructive to look at the volume and earnings per image data to see what this really means.
Relative Image Volume in 2008
As you can see, photographers are getting good at rotating the camera while shooting. There are equal numbers of horizontal and vertical images being submitted. Square images lag behind, but that’s to be expected since it takes a little extra effort on the part of the photographer to frame and crop the shot.
Royalties Per Image in 2008
The sales data tell a very clear story – horizontal images earned 2x per image what the other formats did. While square images may take up more pixel area on a row of thumbnail results, they are not driving revenue to the same degree.
As food for thought, it’s interesting to note that all computer screens are in horizontal format and given the rise of online vs. print advertising, maybe these data aren’t that surprising after all. Also, given that most of us are pressed for time, microstock buyers may just not be willing to invest the time needed to crop a square image to their liking.
The bottom line, I still think it makes sense to give buyers a choice but you have to pay attention to the numbers to really see what’s going on.
LookStat collections makes it easy to do this sort of analysis on your microstock sales stats.
We just released a new feature for microstock analytics that we think has great potential. The feature is called ‘Collections’ and it allows you to create arbitrary collections of images and then track the sales of those collections.
You can access the feature by clicking on the ‘Collections’ link visible in the left column of the screen when you log in to your LookStat account. As you create collections, they will become visible in the left column, as you can see in the screenshot below. Images can exist in more than one collection, so you can create collections for shoots, models, concepts etc.
We’re really excited about the potential of the feature and would love your input as we build on this initial release. Thanks for your continued support and please let us know what you think!
We did an analysis of 2008 data for images with the keyword ‘cat’ vs. ‘dog’ to see how they did overall. It doesn’t matter what metric you look at, it’s not even close – dogs rule!
Image Volume
There were twice as many images tagged with the keyword ‘dog’ as opposed to ‘cat’ in our system. This is interesting when you consider that according to the American Vetinerary Medical Association, cats outnumbered dogs in the USA in 2007 (81 million cats vs. 72 million dogs.)
Royalties per Image
In addition to there being more images of dogs, they also earned more per image and were downloaded more frequently. Royalties earned per image for dog images were twice those earned by cat images.
Images of dogs also had 30% more downloads per image than those of cats.
Total Earnings
This translates to dogs earning over 4x more than cats in 2008.
I’m confident that dog-lovers everywhere knew that their beloved pets would come out ahead, but it’s nice to see it in the data. Let me know your thoughts and whether you see similar things in your portfolios. Also, if you’re interested in specific keywords, let us know in the comments and we’ll see what we can do.
(Full Disclosure: I am a dog owner, but since Casey has a cat at home, we are a pet-neutral company.)
LookStat was featured on Selling Stock on Wednesday in a detailed article by Jim Pickerell that focused on our new Back Office services and how we can simplify the microstock keywording, uploading and submission process.
We’re really excited to have been covered in the article and I think Jim’s opening paragraph summed things up well:
The microstock submission process is an issue that frustrates many photographers. Lookstat simplifies this process for those more interested in spending their time taking pictures than sitting in front of a computer.
We can eliminate the friction associated with keywording, uploading & submission so photographers can get back to doing what they do best, which is creating great images. Please contact us if you want to learn more about how we can help.
Selling Stock is a subscription-based online newsletter and you can learn more about it here. Thanks for the mention Jim!
Also, a huge thank you to our customers who were quoted and those who worked behind the scenes to make this article happen. We are grateful to have your support.
I know it’s not yet Thanksgiving, but it’s never too early to start thinking about Christmas.
Top Keywords
I used the Google Adwords Keyword Suggestion tool to come up with a list of keywords related to ‘christmas’ and associated search volume. I’ve listed the Top 25 in the table below. Not all of them translate directly to microstock but I think there are some good image ideas in the list.
Global Searches for Christmas
In addition to using the adwords tool, I also plotted search results for ‘christmas’ on Google Trends. The chart below shows global search volume by week for the term ‘christmas’ in 2008. The vertical axis shows the volume relative to the average for the time period.
Top Cities & Countries
The graphs below show the Top 10 Countries and Top 10 Cities. 4 of the top 10 cities are in the UK and the Top country for searches is the Philippines. These data are also from Google Trends. I had expected results to be more in line with population for the top countries & cities so the lists were surprising.
I hope you found these useful. Please let me know if you’re starting to see any movement in your Christmas related imagery.
We analyzed our aggregate microstock sales data from July 1 to Sep 30 of this year and saw some interesting trends in the Earnings/Download number.
$/DL Average Trending Up
This chart shows a 7 day moving average for both total earnings and downloads (values obscured) across all of LookStat. The interesting thing to me was the fact that Earnings/DL was drifting up. I had expected this to be relatively flat but it was interesting to see it rise quite a bit over the course of the summer. (I think this is probably a good thing.)
Earnings/DL – Peaks & Valleys
Our experience suggests that sales peak mid-week and have a bottom on weekends, which seems logical. What was interesting though, is that the earnings/download drops on the weekend as well.
This suggests that not only are there fewer buyers on the weekend, but those that are active are purchasing smaller images. This makes sense when you consider the fact that buyers on the weekends are likely buying for blogs and the web versus those during the week who are probably buying for clients or on corporate accounts. Also, Saturday makes sense as a minimum since that is a weekend day in any time zone.
I’d love to hear your experiences and thoughts.
Trinette & Chris have been some of our earliest customers for LookStat Back Office and we’re grateful for their support and input as we have developed our offering.
“When we first started in micro we did all of our own keywording and uploading. To say it was a logistical nightmare is a gross understatement. We were buried in the details and didn’t have time to shoot as much as we wanted. Lookstat took over all of our keywording and uploading in February of this year and it was a total game changer for us. We got our life back and can now focus our energy on making images. The project management and customer service at Lookstat is outstanding as well. They have added a huge value to our business and our workflow. As a photographer, I can’t imagine being able to work in the micro market without them.”
Not only are they awesome photographers but they are also terrific people and we love working with them.
We are offering to keyword and upload 25 images for the first 25 photographers to fill out our contact form in response to this offer as a way of letting you try out our Back Office Services.
There is no obligation to continue using our services after this initial set. We’re doing this because we’re proud of the quality of service we deliver and we’re confident that once you try us out, you’ll seriously consider using us again in the future.
What You Get
Get Started By Filling out this contact form >>
PS: There really is no catch and no credit card/paypal info required. We hope you’ll continue afterwards, but it is fine if you don’t.