Best Time to Upload and Get Popular on 500px

UPDATE 3: recently 500px changed the website and you cannot see the number of likes anymore…

UPDATE 2: Now i’m continuing the test, but this time with an another account and a new picture. I’ll now wait the whole 24 hours period of 500px and upload only once a day.

Test Uploads, Score of the Picture according to 500px Pulse and the absolute Views/Likes/Favorites 
Date/Time 8 am 10 am 12 am 2 pm 4 pm 6 pm 8 pm 10 pm 12 pm 2 am
Monday  88.2
166/-/22
 88.9
170/27/4
88
199/27/9
 90.5
197/32/8
 85.1
33/19/3
Tuesday 88.3
213/22/10
90.6
219/31/7
63,9
42/5/2
Wednesday 91.3
363/34/9
89.7
146/25/11
56,6
12/4/1
Thursday  87.7
393/23/6
 87.1
123/21/8
iP  93.0
530/43/11
Friday
Saturday
Sunday 60.1
28/5/1
 85.0
97/18/4

UPDATE: I just stopped this test, because I realized, that the users rating is influencing the tests. When I was uploading normally my pictures before, the first Like was worth about 27 Pulse, the second something around 15 and so on. Whit my test is was upload 5-6 times per day the same picture. At the last day, a Like was worth 10 Pulse! With this, my test will deliver really bad results and completely destroy me repetition on 500px. I decided to slow down this test and upload the picture not so often anymore. Maybe I will use the whole 24 hours span of 500px to get the real rating.

I’m not completely sure how the algorithm works, but according to my findings, a click on Like is not worth 27 Pulse at all time and all users. Below, the rating of three pictures can be seen. (Sorry for German… 🙂 ) All of them have the same Likes and Favorites, but different Rating. All of them are from the “New” section at the same 10 minutes. And all of them had no comments. The first one is mine.  It seems that the view to like ratio does not influence the rating that much, since the third picture hat more views but a higher score. Whats left over, is the users rating. Correct me if i’m wrong!

Rating

Since some time I’m participate on 500px.com, to share my photos and get some feedback on the composition and processing etc. My choice felt to 500px.com because I don’t want to create an Yahoo account, I simply didn’t thought about Tumblr and I hate the iPhone majority on Instagram (yes, I have a rooted Android :P). Anyway, 500px offers with the rating system an interesting way of measure the, let’s say, “Beauty” of your pictures, compositions and processing. Also you can have the pictures still with a CC license (maybe the others have this as well, donno…). After I uploaded some photos I got exited. I was spending nights with watching other photos, like them and post some comments. On the other side my pictures get a relatively good rank and some nice comments. But, for high quality critics, go somewhere else. I had some nice rating over 90 and 95 also. 500px has a nice rating system called Pulse. If you want to sell pictures, a high rating, Pulse, is recommended.

Still my best one: The Battle of the Nations Monument in Leipzig.

When the days got longer, I had some time at the golden hour and blue hour to take some pictures.  I also had a new lens and I was still exited with my new 6D. I started photographing at 5 pm and ended at 9 pm or later. After that processing the pictures was not in my mood and I left that for the next day. So i stood up, made some processing and uploaded the pictures, let’s say, between 9:00 and 9:30 (CET) in the morning, three, four days in a row. I was really surprised that the rating where just around 70-80, sometimes less. Could it be that I’m, not like I thought a little bit good, really bad at photographing?

Photograph DC Tower Vienna by Thomas on 500pxBut I was going curious. I noticed also that the count of viewers where not that high like before. OK, no views, no likes, no rating. Even the best pictures of 500px have normally a 1-to-10 rating for “likes” to views and even less with “favorite“. So I made a simply test with one of my pictures. The photo on the right is the DC Tower in Vienna. Not the greatest picture, I know but a 80 worth for sure. The first time i uploaded this picture at around 9-10 AM CET, the pulse stood still after some hours, at around 70. The second time, I uploaded at 8 PM CET. And voilà, the pulse reached 90.7. Also the views where going from some under 100 to over 400. So there are clearly some good and bad times for uploading photos to 500px.

I decided to make a test with one of my newest pictures from Vienna. Also not a very good picture, but clearly worth a 80 or 85. I will upload this picture the next weeks to different time and will not interact with 500px at all, only to see the rating and the views after 2 hours and the upload to a different time again. I started today again at 9:30 AM CET. I’ll try to update this post recently to the latest results as soon as possible.

 

Test Uploads, Score of the Picture according to 500px Pulse and the absolute views
Date/Time 8 am 10 am 12 am 2 pm 4 pm 6 pm 8 pm 10 pm 12 pm 2 am
Monday 67.0
Tuesday  84.9 86.9
Wednesday 82.1  75.9 50.2  85.2 56.4 56,6/26
Thursday 65.6/34 68,6/24  69.8/35  58,5/21
Friday  39.6/8 iP
Saturday
Sunday

 

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11 Comments

  1. Very interesting test. Could you post also the views number?

  2. I would like to share some personal experience in 500px. This is my first article and if it goes well, meaning it is useful of other 500px users and myself, I will continue to post more.
    First some personal stats. I joined 500px in September 2014, as of today I have 152,434 Affection 1,302,160 Views 2,793 Followers. My best post is “Dear reader” , 98.1 Highest Pulse, 5841 Views, 722 Likes, 353 Faves, 98 Comments. My luckiest post is “Severe winter” Views 63009, Likes 343,Faves 137 . was faved by 500px ISO. I still cannot understand how it’s possible to have so many views and have no increase in likes and faves. In general I consider my stats not bad, but not perfect as I want it to be.
    But let’s talk about posting images in 500px. Is the pulse important? I would say yes. Since higher pulse higher visibility, more followers. Here some personal tips which I experienced and it works for me:
    1. Timing – posting images during the time when your followers are most active it important. Why? because as you have probably noticed far the timing goes towards the end of 24h slower the pulse. It is always better to have good jump from the beginning. Weekends suck for me for sure, I even tested it. I Posted the same image on the weekend and later on Monday, impressive difference.
    2. Quality – I am not going to talk much about the quality of the image, since it is too obvious, However I have some question for 500px Prime team, who asked me to remove my artistic touch on some abstract images. Guys, without artistic touch there is no abstract image.
    3. Like, Fave and Comment(LFC) – When you post the image I recommend you go to the Flow and start going the profiles of your followers: you can find their name on the left bottom of the images in the Flow. And Like, Fave and what is important Comment on their images. Your followers are online at that point of time since you can see them in the Flow actioning on other images. When you LFC them, you support them, and you have chances that they will be back to support you. Thus you may have a good pulse jump from the beginning,
    4. Meaningful Comments – Meaningful comments are good, because they may lead to conversation, which basically means your image will appear in the flow of followers more often. And also it is great for learning photography via sharing ideas, it creates relationship.

    I will pose at this point and see if this type of article is useful.
    Feel free to tell me that my observations are wrong or ask me questions.
    Promise continue my observations and share with you. Thank all and good luck !

  3. great advice. the one thing I think works more than anything is start with an interesting shot. Timing, cropping, all that are important too. But if you don’t have a good base to start from you aren’t going to get too far.

    https://500px.com/ToddShyres

  4. thanks for info abut it. Is it all in CET?

  5. Interesting article, would be great to do a comparison at the same time on each day of the week; I seem to receive best results if I upload around 6-8pm GMT Friday and Saturday

    • Hey I did this some time ago when you still could see the likes on each picture. Now 500px changed this and you cannot see the likes anymore. Maybe I’ll repeat the test again with the new information.

  6. This table is absolutely worthless without knowing what timezone this in.

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