I�m wondering about the best timing for holiday uploads.
I upload a small amount of vectors and since early buyers are fewer than those buying closer to the holiday, I worry that if I upload too soon, my images might get buried before the peak season.

What�s your strategy?

steady drip starting 6-9 months before.

you might get most of the actual downloads in the holiday season, but the decisions are often made several months in advance.

there are some last minute buyers, but anything you expect to have over 100 dl or over 1000 should be uploaded many, many months earlier

if you are new to holiday images, it can also take several seasons before you get regular buyers. there is a lot of competition and on some agencies it took me at least 3 seasons, before holiday images became regular and good sellers.

All of the above are true, especially if someone believes that they have to play the system, to somehow overcome competition.

The steady drip is the best answer.

Your other points, while good, just prove that we can't predict. Last minute buyers, don't care if we uploaded in July or December. If it's the Winter holidays, or calendars, October is too late. And the last point is also true. Sometimes it takes a couple of years for an image to "suddenly" catch fire. There are just far too many variables, out of our control, to spend time over analyzing and trying to find something that can make a difference, that everyone else or natural uploads aren't already doing. I get Christmas downloads in August.

Steady Drip, stay in the game. Holding back images, for the perfect time, is a guarantee that they can't be seen and can't be sold. We would have to guess the date that the buyer for the image, wanted it for a project, and that is totally unpredictable.

Overall I agree with you all. My concern was that if I upload too early and no one�s really looking yet, the image might get buried and won�t show up later when people are searching since the algorithm would have deemed it useless.
Maybe I�m overthinking it. I usually end up posting too late, so I�m just curious what everyone else does.

when i worked in retail many years ago they did all their holiday prep in july

Overall I agree with you all. My concern was that if I upload too early and no one�s really looking yet, the image might get buried and won�t show up later when people are searching since the algorithm would have deemed it useless.
Maybe I�m overthinking it. I usually end up posting too late, so I�m just curious what everyone else does.

That's true.

I used to specialise in holidays with over 6k photos and 2k videos of holiday stock, which made up a big chunk of my downloads, see SS income attached. I am only showing you this because everyone used to say back on the old SS forum the same thing as here: drip feed, upload early, etc, etc. But I didn't do any of those things. In fact, just the opposite.

Because I used to cover most of the holidays throughout the year, I was always running behind schedule to get them up early. But, surprisingly, that worked in my favor. Between Halloween and Easter is the most popular holiday period of the year, and the busiest. And the months that had the most downloads. Sometimes I would only get them up within a few weeks before the holiday - but they hit the main target audience just at the time of the most downloads and buyer interest.

Things that I found:

1. A large chunk of holiday buyers would often come in only for holiday stock and purchase them during the month of a particular holiday. They were only seasonal buyers, and did not buy large packs. Therefore, you received higher commissions from Single Downloads (SODs) and small pack buyers.

2. Focus on all the holidays that most people forget. That's where you will get the most downloads.

3. Only do Christmas if you can find a popular niche within Christmas that doesn't have a lot of competition. I once wrote here on the forum how this can still be achieved. Most contributors follow what's already on the database, you need to look beyond that.

4. And yes, according to a lot of algorithms, a large number of downloads on a newly uploaded image will propel it higher than the others, so that's where timing is important - and yes, closer to the holiday. A 1,000 buyers looking for holiday images at the same time has a lot more weight than a few dozen scattered across the rest of the year.

5. I recommend 1 to 3 months before the holiday works best for the algorithm. The main exception to this, I found, was New Year. Best to get those up by at least October.

6. You need high impact or very colorful images with good dynamic range to stand out on crowded search pages.


And its not just true for SS but for most microstock agencies. People used to wonder why I used to get so many downloads, but this is the reason why. What started off as a mistake ended up working in my favor.

There might be millions of files, but very few come from experienced producers that specialize in holiday content. That is why you keep reading of people saying they uploaded 800 holiday files and had zero sales or less than 5.

There is a lot to learn about various holidays and very different groups.

Country specific

for adults or for children

for corporate conservative events or for creative small business

modest background with lots of copy space or in your face loud and dramatic

for the season sales

for a specific business group - christmas for surfers, easter for hospitals, halloween for a bakery, thanksgiving for dog stylists...

etc...

There really are a lot of details, plus yearly new trends.

In the old days I used to go to a very large trade show in Frankfurt in Germany.  Called christmasworld, always in January.

Gigantic place where shops start ordering holiday decoration for the next year.

And there is always a yearly trend - rock gothic black xmas decor with shiny crystals, all natural minimalist cotton/hemp with rustic farmstyle elements, fairytale winter wonderland classic, current movie specials barbieland christmas, supermanchristmas, game of thrones christmas...

Obviously you cannot include superman or the mouse, but you can go for an overall vibe and feel that is trendy

Most people who do holidays, just sort the search by downloads and copy the first 3 pages

But there is so much more.

And every holiday event has gigantic subgenres you can explore.

Even easter is more than bunnies and eggs.

The regular greeting card buyers know these trends. And if they look at your port they immediately see if you specialize in holiday content or just do copies of copies...