MicrostockGroup

I have only been at this for about 3-4 months.  I have uploaded about 400+ photos to all of the big 6 and canstockphoto.   My accepted portfolios run the range from a low at Istockphoto of 63 images up to a high of 316 at stock expert.  I have not gotten a payout yet but my total earnings is about $85.  I am now making about $1-2 /per day.  My goal is to get this up to about $10-20/day to feed my photo gear habit.

One of the stats I am tracking is how much do I make on average at each site per photo in my portfolio at that site.  There is a very significant difference with Shutterstock WAY ahead of the others ( I have 175 photos accepted there).

So is this typical? Does it indicate some typcial Shutterstock customer and my style ( If I have a style) images?

Anyhow I thought it was surprising and thought I would see what you all think about this.
 

What you are referring to is called Revenue per Image (RPI). This varies a great deal in this industry, but I think a broad line can be made between amateurs/hobbyists, who typically earn something in the $1-1.50 per image per month range, and pros, who earn $2+ per image per month. Looking at your chart, and assuming that the y-axis measures $ per photo per month, it appears your RPI is about $0.47 ($0.22 + .09 + .06 + .04 + .03 + .02 + .01), which means your income is well below average for the size of your portfolio. It's even worse if the y-axis measures total $ over a 3-4 month period.

Here in my RPI from IS and SS portfolios during my 15 months at microstock from a blog post
 A Reverse Look at Microstock Sales from My iStock and Shutterstock Portfolios:

As an amateur, I don't even make 1/3 of that.

If I could make $1 to 1.5 per image on average every month I would be content. But as is ,no way.

if you look at Jonathon's Paca presentation his figures for a days shoot

rm - 20 images return $1000 each (20k)
rf - 50 images return $400 each (20k)
micro - 200 images return $80+? each (16+k)

the RPI is wildly different but the return for the shoot is similar.

Hi, sorry if I wasnt clear I think I was trying the same thing as you've said.  Total revenue for a days shoot is about the same but the RPI is very different because of different number of images (and markets).  personally I get somewhere less than $10 / image / year (I just used rough figures so dont really know), but then I just do what I'm in the mood to do

Read carefully, those numbers were per month, not per year ;P (or is it me that read you badly and you did 600$+/month over the last 12 months?)

I started microstock in January as a hobbyist, and have been submitting to seven sites since March.    My portfolio size ranged for 130 to 226 images at the end of May.  In May my RPI for one month was $1.27 up from $1.07 in April.

Nobody is "always" exclusive since you have to get to bronze level first. But I guess your question is aiming on something different... I have sold my first image license in 2002 when one of the first mid market RF agencies went online. Didn't upload to Micro until end of 2006, tried a few sites at that time but quickly discovered that uploading to many sites is too time-consuming for me and I appreciated the way of feedback I got from iStock's contributors and inspectors (yeah, even when I wasn't exclusive their "weird and unjustified" rejections taught me a lot...   ).

My RPI wasn't that high before I was exclusive, though I don't see a high correlation. Just the fact that I learned a lot in the time before and after I turned exclusive. And I don't think I'm even close to the end of that road.