“It is true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.” – Napoleon Hill
Although Napoleon Hill wasn’t talking about microstock, his advice remains relevant. If you focus on helping image buyers succeed, you’ll make more money in microstock.
One way you can do this is by studying how images are used in ads. A recently launched site, Moat.com, let’s you do just that. (Moat also intends to provide engagement analytics, but you’ll have to wait, and pay for that service.)
I searched for some major advertisers on Moat and found a range of ads that are worth examining.
From right to left, we have Netflix, Pfizer, Aetna, and Lifelock. Netflix is demonstrating their service, while the others are selling peace of mind.
Some Observations:
- Images are horizontal, and subjects are off-center in 3 out of 4 ads to leave room for copy.
- Models are looking directly at the camera in 2 out of 3 of the ‘peace of mind’ ads. Eye contact does suggest trust, so this makes sense.
- Netflix’s models are pointing at the ad, and the ad is directly above the ‘Click Here’ button. (This makes sense since we read from left to right in English.)
- Models in portrait style shots are looking at the camera, but their shoulders are at an angle. (I don’t know if this is significant, but I think it’s interesting.)
This isn’t a statistical analysis, but I think studying how buyers pair images with concepts will tune you in to their needs. In turn, this will help you plan your shoots and produce more salable images.
Other Examples:
To save you time, here are links to some of the brands I searched for:
NB: Product retailers use their own products, but I think it’s still instructive. Service providers seem to use more stock imagery.
The Hispanic and Asian population in the USA grew over 43% from 2000-2010. You can use LookStat collections to explore the impact of this growth on your microstock sales. For example, if you wanted to analyze Hispanic vs. Asian models in business and lifestyle shoots, you would proceed as follows:
1. Create a collection
2. Search for the following terms & add all results.
- HAVING KEYWORDS: business%, hispanic%
- NOT HAVING KEYWORDS: african%, caucasian, asian%, indian%, divers%, mixed%
3. Repeat steps 1 & 2 for Asian models by using the following terms:
- HAVING KEYWORDS: business%, asian%
- NOT HAVING KEYWORDS: african%, caucasian, hispanic%, indian%, divers%, mixed%
4. Analyze the Results:
- LookStat updates collection stats hourly. After that, you can compare the performance of each set of models.
- Pay attention to RPI and Price per download numbers since the collections will likely be of different sizes.
5. Notes:
- The ‘%’ sign symbol is a wild-card character that adds all variations & endings
- Because we’re trying to isolate each group, I’ve added exclusion keywords so each set only contains the relevant models.
Sign up for free today and start using LookStat to make casting decisions that make you more money.
Do you know whether casting a male or a female model for your next shoot will make you more money?
You can easily answer this question with LookStat collections. By analyzing collections for women and men you’ll make the most profitable decision. The steps to do this are:
1. Create a Collection for Women Only:
- Click ‘Create Collections’ in the left menu bar.
- Name the collection. In this case, I’ve called it ‘women_only’.
- Expand the time range to include all your images (I normally set the ‘From’ year to ’2000′) and then enter the keywords shown below to isolate images with women only.
Having Keywords: “female” ; Not Having Keywords: “men, man, male, father, husband, grandfather, grandson, son, boy”.
- To analyze a specific category, just add the relevant term to the ‘Having’ field. For example – “female, business” will limit the search to business images with only women in them.
2. Create a Collection for Men Only:
- Repeat the steps in #1 above but use the following keywords when you create the collection:
Having: “male” ; Not Having: “women, woman, female, mother, wife, grandmother, granddaughter, daughter, girl”
3. Analyze the Results:
- LookStat will recalculate statistics for your new calculations in an hour.
- View each collection and compare their RPI, STR (sell through rate) and overall earnings.
Sign up for free today and start using LookStat to make casting decisions that make you more money.
P.S. If you try this for your own images, please share your results in the comments. Do men or women generate a higher RPI for you?
LookStat metrics and collections makes it incredibly easy to compare how well different concepts perform in your portfolio. For this post, I compared images shot indoors versus images shot outdoors in an account that we are allowed to share publicly. The LookStat Index displayed below is a rating for the entire set.
About the New LookStat Index (LSI)
- LSI Calculation: Earnings per Download x Sell Through Rate x RPI
- LSI provides a complete score for a group of images by capturing:
- Pricing (Earnings per Download)
- Royalties (RPI)
- Overall Portfolio Quality (Sell Through Rate)
- A more detailed post on the LSI will be coming soon.
Indoors vs. Outdoors
Points to Note:
- The Outdoor images have a 31% higher LSI than the Indoor images.
- Indoor images had a better Sell Through Rate, but fell behind on earnings per download and RPI.
- LSI values above are low – they can be up to 100 times higher for higher quality collections.
- LookStat computes these metrics automatically – doing it by hand for 2,000+ images is practically impossible.
Sign up for LookStat and start calculating your own LSI today. Tracking this over time will give you a clear picture of your progression in microstock and LookStat does this automatically for you.
