Playing with surveys, this one allows some features that the BB doesn't. Please test it and comment here on the format and ease is getting through it? Thanks.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PFH3MLQ

Ten questions about Microstock. Nothing personal, no registration. It doesn't track who you are, so I don't know. (if it does, I'll kill it!)

The last question only allows becoming exclusive, leaving exclusive, staying independent. It doesn't allow for staying exclusive or 'open-minded'/'considering my options'.

Alamy is second biggest earner. Don't understand why it is left off the survey or is not included in the poll to the right of this page.

I agree.  Maybe Alamy is not considered a 'Traditional' MS company more like a hybridized company since they offer RM licenses...

Tom

Yes correct. Alamy is NOT microstock. The limit is ten questions on a free account. Also I'm learning how it works, so all the comments are appreciated.

Now to go back and see if I can edit that Exclusive question. 

When it snows I can do an Alamy survey by itself. LOL I do like the site and it has RM and RF and Editorial and all kinds of other things, that make it different from MicroStock.

Its also not geared towards people that started this year.

Its also not geared towards people that started this year.

And another good point made for something I didn't consider.

Sue I don't get your comment now? What would you like it to say? "I don't know?" well what's the use of a survey if people just answer "I'm undecided"  The idea is to make the best answer decision, not avoid answering?

10. Do You plan to become and Exclusive or Drop Exclusive on some agency in the near future?
Going Exclusive Somewhere
Dropping Exclusive contract
Staying Independent
Staying Exclusive where I am

What should I add now, after I included, no change? (which I should have had in the first place)

Oh and the reason for coming here... 100 people have taken the survey now. Thanks, that's more than I thought would try it.

>>>>How much did it cost you to make the Income in the previous question?

tough question - i expense some of my travel for tax purposes; what about time spent on mictostock?  and it's difficult to break out expenses for lasst years sales since there's no easy way to tell which photos sold last year, so expenses may have been incurred last year or one of previous years

>>>>Based on Income only, what are your top agencies?

wont allow leaving out an agency -- so if i just have 3 agencies, it looks like i've ranked all 12

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i've used SM in the past and taken many by other sites.  i'd definitely recommend it

not sure if they have an option where you can make the results public or if you just have to report that

hubpages also has a free survey option which lets people look at the results whether they've voted or not

None of the options on #9 fit, but it wouldn't let me not answer, so I put the most implausible one - I'm exclusive. You can subtract that from the final.

Also the ranking thing should let you put an X for sites you aren't on.  - do you want income rank for this year or for all time (for example Stockexpert still beats out some of those sites for me in all time income).

Multiple choice surveys are hard to do - as the answers are often more nuanced or things that aren't listed at all.

Yes I agree on the ranking. No option for "X" or ignores. I would have preferred that.

Oh Question #9 (I had to look) Yes, it's a bad one and there are probably three that would fit my attitude. You can see what I was trying to get at and there's no way it's all inclusive. I suppose I should have just said, pick the one that's closest to your opinion.

For anyone reading who doesn't want to got jump back and forth, the idea for the question was, do people upload based on the site tendencies and sales, or send everything everywhere? Of course an exclusive can send everything to one place and I don't know why there would be another option unless it gets into, RF goes to the exclusive site and RM goes to other places, which throws another whole side issue in to complicate things.

I blame the Exclusives for making this a bigger problem. (yes that's a joke...) 

By the way, I just discovered that I disabled 25 files on IS way back when I was removing things that didn't sell. Now I wish I had left them. I don't think they would take any of them with the newer standards. I used to send different files to SS and IS by the way. Not because of what sold, but because of what got approved. It's still the same. Things that IS refuses, SS will often take. And files that SS refuses, IS often takes?

IS takes more natural looking images and SS wants brighter exposures. SS refuses anything with shade or shadows (well almost anything) IS tends to be a little more forgiving, but has a nasty streak for "blown out highlights" in some all white areas, on files that sell well on SS.

I used to upload SS rejects to BS and they got accepted. I guess it won't ruin anything by admitting that now, since they appear to have merged the staff and the same standards actually do apply.

And the last anomaly of all this is, when I have a shot that's big enough and send it to Alamy, it's often something that neither IS nor SS will even consider. Sharp and clear, doesn't matter what's in it. And yes I intentionally avoided including Alamy in the quiz because = It's Not Microstock!

Quote from: cthoman on November 27, 2012, 12:11

Yeah, kind of tricky to fill out. I tried to answer them the best I could. The ranking thing was tough. I'm not on a lot of those agencies, and I wanted to use Other for 1 and 3.

You should have able to select more than one "Other" or "0".
Now you have agencies with a rank that I don't submit to.

Correct, no way to alter the survey. If I included a name, their survey ranks it. Their software, not anything I could control.

Best alternative would be throw out the question. And yes I agree, no matter what agencies people like or don't, if you can't just ignore or rank them lower, what's the use.

The point of not including OTHER and Other and another other, was it was only concerned with the general top agencies that the most people find to be the top ten. It's a matter of relevance, not voting for all possible outcomes.

As you may have guessed, it wasn't much in the way of intelligence, I took the top nine on the right. 

In the end, probably a misguided attempt since the way the survey works, makes it flawed.