MicrostockGroup

Finally, here are the results of the survey covering the 2008 microstock industry.


http://microstockgroup.com/holdingbin/MicrostockSurvey.pdf

Of course, feel free.

I'm surprised to see Shutterstock with the most RPI. I thought Istock would be first. Maybe subs are working after all, but only on SS

Thanks it's true. I looked at the graph and got confused because IS and SS were green. That's the proof that my laptop LCD not equal my Samsung monitor

Not so sure about that. My RPI went up drastically on SS after On Demand and Extended took off, and that's quite recent.

That's because you've misread it  

IStock gave the highest RPI with 38.11% and then Shutterstock was 26.64%

What I don't understand though is that Shutterstock came out top for earnings in 2008!

Yeah, I will try to get some of those graphs out soon.  There is a VERY steep curve on stuff like that.  Very few people earning many $$ and the rest earning very little.  The same with number of images.  A few people have a lot and a lot of people have a few.

Yes the distribution will be very skewed and not Gaussian, so you can't rely on standard deviations and means as they are a parametrical statistics descriptive measures. The best nonparametric description (ic of non-normal, non-Gaussian [like skewed or bimodal]) distributions are the quartiles.

For instance, Q2 (Q stands for quartile)is the median: the value below and above which are half of the cases. In a distribution skewed to the left (many people with small incomes, few with high) the median will be lower than the mean but give a more realistic description. (Remember the statistician that drowned crossing a river with a mean depth of 2 feet).

Q1 is the value (here income) were 1/4 of the cases are lower, and 3/4 are higher, also called percentile25. Q3 is the value where 3/4 of the cases are lower, percentile75. Percentile50 is of course the median.

So for a realistic central tendency of the incomes, just look at percentile25/Q2/median, and for a "bulk" or spread measure, look at the interquartile range Q3-Q1 which gives the limits between where half of the incomes are.

Sorry to offend when I'm too exhaustive.

That's pure math and an inevitable consequence of the tight upload restriction on IS for non-exclusives. Ports on SS are probably much larger since SS has no upload limits (yet  ).



No, you're not. My

photography partner

(and main model) sneaked in here at MSG but he decided to stay under the radar till he can register without restriction at microstock. He's just lurking for now.

Off topic:

youtube

can be a free marketing tool even for photos.

AndresR

,

Arcurs

, etc... and of course the well-know, simply amazing and fantastic Vonkara videos:

here

and

here

. 

You're right. The Q values are totally mixed up. I don't know whether it's generated by the site or Leaf mislabeled the measures.

Cool, thanks Leaf.

Thanks also very much for putting the time into this!  It really is good information!

Mat

Great work, thank you for doing all that work, it is very interesting to see all those stats and I'm sure many people will find it quite useful, keep up the great work Leaf!

That is actually a really great idea. Especially today when self-branding is such an important topic.