BM Discussion: Updated Jan 25th

About 300 ULd since the beginning of September here. None with more than 3 DLs. Very few with any DLs at all. It doesn't exactly encourage uploading, but on the other hand there could be a time in the future when files from this period find a place in the BM. Who knows?
I really, really hope that the BM as it is gets changed soon. I don't know what was done to it, but it seems to have pushed the "flame" images still further forward with if anything even fewer new and lower ranking files.
While the (one word) search itself looks fairly OK relevancy wise. I think that ultimately any BM that just gives the "big seller" results is going to do damage here long term. Contributors will stop uploading, and more importantly buyers will get bored with the same old.
(Edited on 2013-02-13 07:16:03 by Difydave)

(Edited on 2013-02-13 07:17:41 by Difydave)

I can only hope that this new BM is just a part of a some dynamic BM that changes every, lets say 15 days.


Example - for me, the second half of January had literally 4 times more downloads than the first 15 days. Originally I was thinking the reason was a long New Year's holiday, but now in February its the same. Horrible sales in the first 13 days, last year's files are nowhere to be seen (and sold), and I've been getting some sales of files from 2007 when I just started here.


So, the first half of the month pushes extremely old images and just uploaded images (which drop into abyss very soon), and the second half of the month is for 2009-2012.


 

I just have 1 download this month? i never had such a bad month - is this because of a bm change? Thats frustrating

Shift of culture: pre-September 2012, when one wanted to make more sales and get to the next level, one would invest and shoot and upload and repeat. In 2013, one just sits in a semi-conscious state of denial, holding on to new photos while waiting to see whether new material will just permanently be lost in a web of BM programming confusion, quietly hoping that past successes are enough to sustain RC levels. Sad state of affairs.

Why did you have one sale? There could be many factors responsible. It could be that you are overly reliant on too few files for regular sales and are therefore more at the mercy of any BM changes. That can be a common issue for contributors with smaller or newer portfolios. If you'd like some tips on how to improve, increase and diversify your portfolio to make you less susceptible to the whims of the BM, please feel free to open a thread asking for help in the Photography or Video forums.

Obviously the BM influences sales, but we are not discussing the sales aspect of it in this thread. We are trying to look more at the workings of the BM. Difydave's post above is a good example of how sales data can be useful with regards to analysing how the BM is working. That's a useful post. He's told us when he uploaded the files and the sales they have had since. That actually tells us something.

We appreciate that a lack of sales is likely to cause frustration but please, if you simply wish to register your thoughts on that, please find another thread to do it in.

Thanks.

Of my sales the past few days I have had older images and  some newer ones purchased.  Of the last 40 sales, 5 were uploaded since mid December. I continue to upload images and cannot see any logical reason not to. Sales are not like they used to be, but using Lightboxes and links to similar images does pay off in the long run. It surely exposes current uploads.

I continually upload and was selling newer images but in the past week it's been mostly images from 2007 and 2008.

Of the last 200 photos you've uploaded, and that's a great number to have uploaded in January and February btw,  good job, only 5 have sold once in the 1-7 weeks they've been up. That's it. Not exactly let's-go-out-and-party-in-the-streets prospects and certainly a much lower sales rate than we had on recent material in most of 2012.


Looking at whatever measures we have, which are sales (solid), our own searches (which are biased by a number of unknown factors but still seem to indicate a few trends) and views (we still don't know for sure what's going on there), photos that are brand new or hadn't reach a certain level of sales at the time of the last big BM overhaul in December have not been performing well at all since. The more time that passes, the least chance they'll have to make a comeback as newer files keep coming and will end up on top should new files be balanced in again. That is why some of us are holding their uploads to unleash them only after the better balance mix is launched, which I hope is real soon.

I think part of the problem here is that the only concrete numbers by which we have to judge our own individual businesses are our own individual sales numbers and nothing else. Your point is very well taken that there could be a variety of other factors that could influence sales activity for individual contributors besides BM. The problem, however, is that we don't have any form of reporting that puts our individual sales into a greater overall context of how others are doing in their sales.

I have always been very supportive of RCs for commissions but I don't think that they have been fully exploited for business activity reporting. RC's are a great number which distill quality and quantity down to a single bit of information that is better indicative of a person's business without being too revealing of competitive information. I think that it would be very helpful for all if the company could start to provide reporting that puts individual contributor activity into a context of all other contributor activity. By doing so, you are at least giving us the opportunity to judge whether a decline in business is a reflection of our own portfolio issues or issues that are external to our work.

Alright everyone. I'm going to close this up for now. You can expect another BM related thread in the next couple of days. It's been a good discussion with some very helpful in sight from a number of you. These types of discussions are always a mishmash of opinion and expectation. We hope to be able to take what we have pulled from this thread to review the current state of the BM with some added details from the Inspection Team.

We are casting a wide net so we hope we are managing to get all the right information in order to help us get things in a better place. Of course there is always a tendency for us to want to bring other closely linked issues into these discussions. We hope we can be more clear in the next thread as to what the intent of the thread is so we can finely tune and identify the concerns of the community.

Stay tuned. I will be back in here before Friday with a new thread and more information. Thank you for participating.

** NOTE: If you have something you would like to add but didn't get a chance to post please feel free to contact me via site mail.