LookStat – Official Blog

‘Happy Care’ – smiling medical professionals and reassured patients – is the most common theme for medical microstock images. They were described perfectly in a comment from the last post on medical image formats and I’m including that here for reference:

“Happy Care” all the way, doctors need to appear warm, friendly, in control yet prepared to come down to the level of the patient and reassure them that everything is going to be alright. No one wants a Christina from Grey’s Anatomy. If only all Docs were Stock Docs!

– Neustock Images

Dominant Themes in Top 60 Medical Microstock Images (Top 20 from IS, DT, FT)

The data above are sorted according to number of images.

Points to Note:

• Happy Care Images are the most common theme in the Top 60 images and account for 35% of the images and over 40% of the downloads. They outperform the averages on all metrics being tracked.
• The ‘Stethoscope’ is the second most common theme and it is typically a medical still-life concept.

Medical Team – Strong Performer (Beware Small Sample Size)

While I would be wary of drawing conclusions from small sample sizes (anything with less than 5 images is a little suspect) the performance of the ‘Team’ concept was somewhat surprising. These are images of just medical professionals like the one below:

A quick TinEye search shows the image in use at a variety of healthcare services websites and sites like the American Institute of Healthcare Professionals.

Conclusions

• Happy Care is the dominant theme (and from our prior post, horizontal formats rule)
• Still life is a viable category for medical images
• There appear to be two conceptual arcs for medical imagery – one is imagery focused at patients (e.g. Happy Care) and the other is imagery focused on reaching medical professionals (e.g. healthcare services, healthcare technology.) For some reason, this wasn’t top of mind but it makes perfect sense.

We recently looked at the relationship between image format & views and downloads for Active Seniors. We’re continuing this sort of analysis across major image categories and our next series of posts will be on the top 60 medical images (Top 20 at istock, Dreamstime & Fotolia.)

Orientation vs. Views/Downloads/Conversion

Points to Note:

• Horizontal images continue to outperform the average (also true for active seniors)
• Square images have the highest views per image and perform only slightly worse than the horizontal from a downloads per image perspective
• Vertical images continue to under-perform the set average (also true for active seniors)

PS: The concept in the image above, which we’re calling ‘Happy Care’ (smiling, competent professionals & happy, relaxed patients) is by far the most popular medical theme. More stats on this in posts to come.

Performance ratios such as Sell Through Rate, RPI and earnings per download can provide valuable insights into what is happening with your portfolio. One of the new functions enabled by LookStat’s upgraded stats service is the ability to compare trends over different time periods.

To illustrate this, we looked at Summer 2009 vs. Summer 2008 for the portfolio below. In this case, we used June 1 – Sep 30 as the definition of ‘Summer’.

The best way to currently compare time periods is to log in to your LookStat account, open it in 2 tabs and then use the date control in the header bar to enter the date range you’re focused on.

Summer 2008

The above is a screenshot of a daily plot of sales at iStock from June 1 – September 30, 2008. You can see the slow uploading of images (28 at the start of the period to 88 at the end of summer) and you can also see the summary metrics for the time period in question. The other thing you can see is the three best-performing images over that time period.

Summer 2009

The above screenshot is the same period as the prior chart in 2009. You can see that no images have been uploaded to the account for a year. 2 of the top 3 images are the same. The second one, the pumpkin shot, didn’t start selling until the Fall of 2008 and so didn’t break the top 3 in 2008. (As an aside, sales for the pumpkin shot actually climbed over time.)

Performance Metrics

The summary bar below the chart contains core metrics and ratios that give you a snapshot view of overall performance during the period in question. I compared the metrics for Summer 2008 & Summer 2009 in excel and you can see them side by side below.

In this case, increased pricing ($/DL) and slightly improved sell-through rate couldn’t compensate for a 40% drop in RPI. The biggest factor behind the declining performance of this portfolio is lack of uploading. No new images were added over the course of the year.

Analyzing your Own Stats

The example above is for a small, inactive portfolio and doesn’t reflect the market as a whole. I was actually surprised that even with no activity for a year, sales declined by less than 30%. I expect that most of you seeing success with microstock will find that all your key metrics are green.

Ideally, you should be increasing the overall performance ratios of your images. So, for example, if you are adding images but seeing a decline in sell-through-rate, it could mean that you are not shooting enough saleable images, or you are uploading too many similars together. Analyzing your key metrics over time can help you identify opportunities to increase earnings.

The ultimate goal is to combine shooting what you love, with shooting what makes you the most money. We want to make it easy for you to do that.

I decided to analyze the orientation of the Top 60 images from the Active Seniors searches that I’ve been writing about and the results of that analysis are in the table below:

Key Points

• Horizontal images are the most numerous & best performing, on all metrics – conversion (dls/views), views per image and downloads per image.
• No square images in the top-sellers, in spite of the notion that square thumbnails do better.
• You are leaving money on the table if you don’t shoot horizontal and vertical formats

This isn’t really all that surprising. When we last analyzed the impact of shooting horizontal vs. vertical vs. square across millions of transactions, we came to the same conclusion – Revenue per image for Horizontal shots was twice that of other formats. Our reasoning was that as usage shifted online & microstock is purchased for online uses, horizontal image formats work best.

Are you using LookStat collections to see these trends in your sales? What are you seeing?

As I mentioned in my earlier post, couples were the most popular theme for active senior images. I was interested in the setting for the images (indoors vs. outdoors) and decided to analyze the impact on downloads and downloads per image.

I found the difference is very interesting. Even though there are over three times as many pictures of active seniors in outdoor settings vs. indoor settings, the downloads per image are significantly higher. Indoor shots perform 28% better in terms of downloads per image.

The average for all couple shots is 781.3 downloads per image, so indoors are doing better there too. I think it would be worth adding some indoor compositions to your portfolio if you’re shooting active seniors.

Jonathan Ross has been a long time supporter and customer at LookStat and I’m delighted to be able to congratulate him and his network of top notch photographers on the launch of a new RM/RF stock Agency, Spaces Images. The collection is initially available at Corbis.

The collection is focused on images of human environments (interiors, locations etc) that have nobody in them. There are some fantastic shots in the collection and it’s well worth your time to check them out. Jonathan’s long experience in RM/RF helped him discover an opportunity for shots without people in them and he created Spaces to take advantage of it.

LookStat’s Role

We provided a Back Office platform that allowed Jonathan & his contributors to focus on creating the images and shaping the collection while we handled keywording, property releases, metadata, image conversion and distribution. We simplified the submission process for contributors and greatly reduced infrastructure & technology costs for Spaces.

It’s a pleasure working with Jonathan & the team of contributors at Spaces and we’re looking forward to the success and growth of the collection in the days to come.

If you are interested in how our comprehensive Back Office solution can help you, please contact us for more information.

Congrats on having your image plastered on the home page of iStock this week, Steve!

Steve (who is a Diamond Exclusive at iStock) also has a great post on his blog about working with us. Thanks for the plug, Steve. We’re excited to be working with you too.

Well, I’ve got a great accountant & I hire a good stylist as I need one. So I wised up & starting sending my images to LookStat – they add all the metadata, keywords & descriptions. LookStat handles the releases & then uploads the images & releases to my agency, istockphoto. If you use more than one agency they can upload to multiple agencies as well.

It’s so easy, I shoot, adjust my images then send the images to LooksStat via ftp. Done.

I don’t think we could have said it better ourselves – thanks Steve!

If you’d like to see what it’s like to only have to focus on creating your images, please  contact us for a free trial.

In the Top 60 images (by downloads) of Active Seniors, at Dreamstime, Fotolia & iStock, the most common theme is ‘couples’ – men and women holding hands. I decided to break down the images of couples by setting and the results are below.

Couples in parks account for just under half the number of images of couples but represent 63.5% of the downloads. It’s interesting that even though Parks were the most common setting, they still perform above average for the set. (As an aside, even though ‘home’ & ‘dock’ have extremely high download per image ratios, given that there was only one image in each setting, it’s important to not read too much into those numbers. More data is required.)

Analytics is a big part of helping contributors operate more profitably and we’re making improvements rapidly (contact us to try out the latest upgrades). We have much more we want to do and new features that you’ll see in very short order. However, to keep investing in analytics and improving the service, we need to start charging for it. Our proposed pricing plan is shown below.

Proposed Pricing Plan for LookStat Analytics

Free, as in Free
We always plan to offer a free service and it is a huge step forward from the service that most of you access as LookStat today. The free plan gives you all the metrics that we have added to the system like RPI, Sell-through-rate, images added, downloads, and image level data. You’ll also be able to compare your shoots and collections to see how you are doing and which parts of your portfolio are the most profitable. Your stats will be uploaded less frequently but any improvements we make to core features and any new sites we add will be available to all users, free or paid.

If you have more than 5 collections but choose the free version of the service, we won’t eliminate anything. You’ll still be able to view and explore any collections you have created. For those of you that stick with the free version, you’ll see a much more powerful stats system than the one you’ve grown accustomed to.

Paid Plans
The paid plans increase the number of collections you can have, and give you more ways to slice and dice your data. If you’re a full-time microstock contributor, knowing what’s working and what isn’t and where things are going is critical. Understanding the RPI of one shoot versus another or which models earn the most in your business images versus lifestyle images can make a major difference in earnings.

Users of Pro & Max plans will be able to enter the cost for a collection and then track its ROI and how quickly it becomes profitable. The Pro & Max plans also add custom time periods so you can view how a collection performed in the Summer vs. the Winter, for example. Data update frequency goes up to once daily for Pro and twice daily for Max plan users.

Users who choose the most expensive plan get unlimited access to all features and also get customized insight and analysis. They will also be the first to get access to major new functionality such as benchmarking or keyword sales analysis.

If microstock is a major source of income for you, we think you’ll find that the Max and Pro plans will unlock a lot of value and will be a big help in profitable shoot planning.

We Need Your Input

Our users have always been a huge part of shaping what we do and I’d love your reaction to our proposed pricing. If you haven’t already done so, please contact us to get access to the beta. There is no charge for anything at the moment and you’ll still be able to access any collections you create once we make the transition. I’ll be posting next week about transition plans and how we plan to roll out the new services to everyone. In the meantime, please don’t be shy – tell me what you think.