LookStat – Official Blog

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.

As part of an ongoing series of posts about active seniors (see part 1 & part 2), I took at look at what the models were doing in the best selling images. The table below shows the Top 60 images (Top 20 @ iStock, Fotolia & Dreamstime) categorized by what people are doing in the photos.

The most common activity by far is hugging. It’s interesting that images of seniors hugging perform slightly worse than average from a downloads per image perspective. Also, I realize that hugging is a loose interpretation of activity, but I’m the messenger here. 14 of 17 images were couples hugging; (2 were friends and 1 was of grandparent/grandson.) Love must get stronger with age

There are a number of new metrics in the LookStat Analytics upgrade and I wanted to define them and point out how they can help you identify areas of opportunity in your portfolios. When you combine these with LookStat Collections, you can really start to get in and pull things apart to discover insights that will save you money and help you plan more profitable shoots. More on this coming soon. First, I wanted to define some of the metrics that you’ll see.

Revenue Per Image (RPI)

Why it Matters:

Allows you to calculate the earning power of an individual image or group of images. When you combine this with collections, allows you to compare shoots and concepts in an apples to apples fashion. For example, if you have a business shoot & a lifestyle shoot with slightly different image counts, the RPI of the shoot allows you to see which of them earns more per image and you can then use this information to compute your return on investment for the shoot.

How We Calculate It:

This is calculated on a daily and a monthly basis. The monthly calculation is Earnings for the Month/Images Online at the end of the month. This is then averaged over the timeframe being viewed. So, if you are viewing ‘This Year’ than the average monthly RPI refers to your monthly RPI average for 2010.

The daily RPI number is calculated as follows: Day’s earnings/Images Online that day. This too is averaged over the timeframe being viewed. Our view is that the daily number is the most accurate because it takes into account any uploading variations during the month. For example, if you uploading 1 image per day for 29 days and then uploading 500 on the 30th day, the montly RPI would skew very low which the average daily number would be more accurate. We are looking for feedback on this so I’d love to get your thoughts.

Sell Through Rate (STR)

Why It Matters:

Sell through rate allows you to see the overall commercial viability of your portfolio or your collection. If you have 100% sell through rate, that means every single one of your images has had at least one sale. This means that you didn’t shoot, retouch, keyword, upload & submit any images that no one bought. This is a good thing. If you find that certain shoots in your portfolio have low sell through rates, you are investing time and money in images that don’t interest buyers. Naturally, sell through rate is time dependent – for example, if you upload a 100 image shoot, it may take some time before all of those images see the light of day. Tracking STR after 90 days across different shoots for example is a good way to compare how they are doing relative to each other.

How We Calculate It:

We compute a daily STR (number of unique images that sold/images online that day) and a ‘Period STR’ which is the same calculation for the time period that you are viewing. Ideally, both numbers trend towards 100%. It’s normal for your daily value to be much lower than when you view All-time STR, for example. We’ll be working on some benchmarking data so you can start to see how

Trailing 30 Day Moving Average (T30)

Why It Matters:

This is the monthly trend and it smooths out the daily and weekly fluctuations associated with the normal weekly cycle of sales. When you overlay this on a chart showing weekly earnings, for example, you can see the general trend and how periodic peaks and valleys are affecting it. In the chart below, the orange line is the T30 earnings while the red line is the weekly earnings.

How We Calculate It:

As the name suggests, it is a moving average of the last 30 days. Our system also calculates the moving average of the last 7 days but we don’t currently display this. We felt the T30 line showed a better trend but we’re open to changing this. Please let us know what you think.

Getting Access

We’re expanding our beta program steadily and we’d love to have you try it. Please contact us for access. I’d love your feedback!

One of the factors I looked at when analyzing 60 best selling images for ‘active seniors’ was whether the subjects were looking at the camera, or elsewhere (e.g. at each other, out at the ocean etc.)

I was pretty blown away by this result – 72% more downloads per image when subjects were looking at the camera? The average for the set was 777.1 so the ‘looking at camera’ group performed well above the mean. This was also true for conversion rate (downloads/views) – Looking at Camera: 11.16% conversion; Looking Elsewhere – 9.24% conversion.

The Eyes Have It

According to this eye tracking study, viewers look at people’s eyes and they look where people are looking. As a result, I’m fairly sure that images of people looking at the camera are more engaging in search results and lead to higher click through and ultimately more downloads. This may also work in ads whereby people find eyes more engaging and arresting and therefore stop to look.

A Potential Problem

As you can see from the screen shot above (which is from the above-linked study), people look where the models are looking. If the model is looking at your text, more people read your text. As a result, the problem is the following:

• Model Looking at Camera -> Arresting ad, people look at it BUT they don’t read about your brand.
• Model Looking Sideways -> Less arresting ad BUT those who look will likely read your ad copy.

We may be caught in a little trap where buyers purchase images that engage them, produce ads that grab attention but make the customer look at the model, not at the product being advertised.

Conclusions

• Looking at the Camera images had more downloads per image and better conversion than images where people were looking elsewhere.

• It’s possible that even though these images are more engaging, they may lead to less effective ads.

• I think this is only something that can be answered by A/B testing, but I’d love to hear what you think. Also, if you create collections to explore this in your own data, I’d love to know what you find. I’ll be looking at this factor as I analyze more categories for future posts.

• Microstock photographers should shoot both.

• Maybe the ideal ad has two people – one looking at the camera to engage the viewer and another to look at the copy to get the viewer to read it   What do you think?