Shutterstock Photographer Forum :: View topic - New Most Popular and New Marketing Program

imagist · Site Admin Joined: 21 Mar 2006 Posts: 246

Dear Submitters:

We hope things are going well for everyone so far this year. We have two exciting announcements to share with you:

(1) New Most Popular -- This week we will be releasing a new Most Popular sort order algorithm. Months of work and testing have gone into this project and we're confident that both you and our customers will see a huge improvement in the quality of our search results.

By taking a fresh look at the vast amount of data we have about our individual images, and about customer interaction with those images, we've been able to develop a more accurate and useful mapping between customer searches and the relevant images in our fast-growing library. Our goal is not only to increase the total number of downloads we serve; it‘s also to decrease the number of searches our customers perform before they download an image.

The length of time an image has been on our site and the total number of downloads for that image are still factors, but we now consider many other factors as well. We want to remind you that we do not consider your royalty level, country of residence, or any other submitter-level data in arranging our content search results.

We know you are wary of changes like this, but we also know, from extensive testing, that the new results are going to be viewed by our customers as a big improvement. They will translate into both happier customers and higher earnings for the submitters who provide downloaded content. Please do a few searches yourself and let us know what you think by emailing us at submit@shutterstock.com.

We look forward to feedback from you and our customers and we will continue to use that feedback to make improvements to our search tools, products, and websites.

(2) New Marketing Program -- Soon we will begin an exciting new marketing program where we'll offer a limited free trial to specially selected non-paying account holders. We are starting this program in the U.S. only.

Participants will be able to download up to 3 free small or medium size images per day for 7 days. This program is our latest effort to demonstrate that our library, search, and UI are far superior to those of our competitors.

We want to make it clear to you at the outset that our submitters will be paid for every download that occurs under this program, whether or not the customer ends up buying a subscription. In your download stats, the downloads will be reflected as 25-a-Day downloads.

We are paying the royalty ourselves, as a marketing expense, because we believe that once the person with the Free Trial has seen and used all of the benefits and features of being an active Shutterstock customer, they will agree Shutterstock is the best image source out there.

We're very excited about both of these developments and looking forward to a great summer and rest of 2009.

As always, thank you for allowing us to represent your content.

Best Regards,

Shutterstock

bichon · Joined: 19 Aug 2005 Posts: 11329 Location: Canada

sounds like a promising start.
I wonder if there has been discussions over the whole 'discounting' issue, as utilized by many major corporations.. For example you see rebates galore in the auto industry...
Seeing as the economy is still in Limbo, i think a discount would get people to invest here.
I have seen annual discounts on another site... and considering that people are trimming their budgets.. maybe the annual outlay is to much at this point.
now i'm only talking about a summer sale, say $1999 for a year...etc...etc...
but that's just my opinion based upon seeing what companies do in these rough times of lower spending habits.
Good luck to all of us !

kenk · Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Posts: 2935

It's like chicken soup.

It wouldn't hurt...

tianzhan · Joined: 13 Sep 2008 Posts: 140 Location: Lonely Planet

It's already started? That's why my DL increased drastically in last three days? and it's weekend, I was really excited...

Thank you, SS.

bichon · Joined: 19 Aug 2005 Posts: 11329 Location: Canada

kaycee · Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 11:43 am

we will wait and see what happens...
something new is better than nothing at all...
I tried already the search engine and it was showing new popular images insteed of the same old popular stuff...

xalanx · Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 5:17 pm

I'm very curious about the results.

gep · Joined: 17 May 2006 Posts: 656 Location: hurricane alley

all sounds good. in addition, i've noticed new ss ads apprearing in user-sensitive web banners, similar to what another micro site had done for several months. i'd still be interested to see some sort of factual download metrics for ss, so we can get a sense of how the overall business is doing. imho.

ellegant · Joined: 20 Aug 2006 Posts: 53

Will the algorithm change allow new images the chance to take off? I've not been on the site long so I don't have manyimages with over 10 DL's.

rinder99 · Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 9:39 pm

Lets Hope. My stuff is getting Buried faster than I can possibly submit it.

xalanx · Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 11:30 pm

medveh · Joined: 18 Nov 2005 Posts: 1829 Location: Transylvania

Sounds like a good endeavor, let's hope it will make a difference!

george green · Joined: 02 Feb 2005 Posts: 1207 Location: Lancashire.

The length of time an image has been on our site and the total number of downloads for that image are still factors, but we now consider many other factors as well.

Could you expand on these 'other factors' please.
I'm all im favour of change if it leads to better service for our customers and higher sales for us. That is why I particularly approve of the seven day free trial you are offering. Well done on this initiative.

sanka · Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 4:59 am

Thank You Lord!
let's hope things get back to normal

rinder99 · Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 10:09 am

Here's My biggest #1 gripe and always has been. I typed In Glamour and did a search. somewhere around PG 5/6 "Newist First" theres a ton Of Abstract Fractals, Illustrated Picture frames. This is what is killing it for me and I'll never understand How a reviewer or submitter can get away with this Spamming Of keywords. it buries the "Glamour" Images even faster. This crap HAS GOT TO STOP!!!!!!!!And it's this way in every category. Until they "Really" stop this. I think it wont matter how they change anything.

Reviewers!! heads Up. Stop Pixel Peeping and spend time on keywords. Kick it back to have it resummited. I do everyday.

I think this Is Job#1