Who knows the stock market like the back of his hand? Who knows, will isolated happy smiling businessmen sell better than grunge backgrounds? Are there a huge need for beautiful wildlife shots? Or will photos of everyday items sell better? Will vectors or photo manipulations find their way onto the designers artboards? Whose words you'd need to pay more attention on Message Boards? Whose suggestions you can trust?

It's time to reveal THE WINNERS of our dear admins and reviewers Stock Rank Game Contest.

References:
Blog post 1: Admins and Reviewers Contest
Blog post 2: Admins and Reviewers Contest - 2nd Half

The contest begun a year ago on Aug 8th 2010 at 00:00 GMT. Today Aug 8th 2011, 00:00 GMT the points were count.

Winners were selected in two categories:
(1) Highest Percentage Gamers
It's the percentage which is written on the badges of users profiles. I'm not sure, how it is exactly calculated (DT knows the formula), but it takes in account correctly and wrongly guessed pictures during a game session.
These gamers know very well what's happening on the market and have good instincts. They can see more than is visible.
(2) Most Improved Gamers
The points of most improved and dedicated games were calculated based on monthly score of total points divided number of played games. The difference between the score of last month and first month were added to the total of months when at least one game was played and total of months with 0 games were subtracted from the final score. (Hmm... I'm not very good in explaining...) For those who reset their score during the Contest, the advancement score was reset as well.
These gamers are fast to learn the trade secrets, they are dedicated and willing to push yourself to become better and better in the business.

Like I mentioned in my blog post 2, I didn't count the final scores for the gamers who failed to play the Stock Rank Game within 3 consecutive months.

So, the final results of the Admins and Reviewers Contest are here:

Highest Percentage Gamers
Constantin 83,43%
Marius 78,71%
Andrei 77,80%

Most Improved Gamers
Sebastian 16.94
Constantin 12.91
Andrei 11.27

I would also like to mention all dedicated gamers who got great scores as well, but didn't fit to the TOP3. Here they are in the alphabetical order: Andreea, Catalina, Rui, Serban, Viorel.
Total games played during the Contest was 2231. The most dedicated player was Rui with 525 games. The highest score of average points per game was achieved on July 2011 by Constantin - 124.01 points.

CONGRATULATIONS to the winners!
PS: Constantin and Sebastian, please contact me via my homepage about how to get the awards.

It was a great fun to follow the scores and play along and learn again a lot about stock photography, the preference of buyers and ponder why certain images sell better than others.

So, if you are a stock photographer, how you can train yourself to become a better reviewer of your own photos?
Play the Stock Rank Game, it helps you to target your efforts.

You can play Stock Rank Game here: http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photography-rank