Double your portfolio = double your income?

Yes or no?

Double your portfolio = double your income?

Yes or no?

Possibly, if you have 1 image, and you upload another similar quality different subject.  More likely not.

For myself , I have never found this to be true. Usually market forces like increasing dilution hinder doubling income. It's more like double portfolio increase income by 50%. When you look at these these things you have to assume some constants otherwise it's meaningless. You can say stuff like it all depends how good your images are which is of course true but it make this analysis useless.

It all depends on how good you are at producing dissimilar images. It is when you reach a point when your images are getting too similar that numbers don't matter anymore. For some people. it is after producing 10 images, some others 1000, some others 10000 and a few lucky gifted ones have unlimted imagination. Denis

For myself , I have never found this to be true. Usually market forces like increasing dilution hinder doubling income. It's more like double portfolio increase income by 50%.

^^ +1

Quote from: PowerDroid on June 16, 2010, 09:45

If you're doing things right, broadening your range of topics, learning from your mistakes, gradually sharpening your skills, then every additional image should increase your return. 

Don't forget other peoples' additional images decrease your return at the same time.

Good point.  All I can share is my own experience.  I just checked my spreadsheet, and it shows that when my port was half the size it is now, I was making less than half the money I'm making now (looking at the 14-day rolling average and not a particular day).  I'm only a year and a half into ms so far, so at some point I'll probably join the ranks of the other vets here who say that you hit a wall at some point.  I just haven't hit it yet, and I hope I don't for some time.

If I deleted all the crap images I submitted in the first two years and all the zero sales images from that period I would have seen a doubling of my sales with doubling my total portfolio.

I'm only a year and a half into ms so far, so at some point I'll probably join the ranks of the other vets here who say that you hit a wall at some point.  I just haven't hit it yet, and I hope I don't for some time.

It takes 4-5 years to 'hit the wall'. It's virtually inevitable if you upload with some regularity.

Year 1: Something is always more than nothing.

Year 2: You should double your port and be on a steep learning curve so your income should be rising fast.

Year 3: You'll still add 50% to your port and be benefiting from your increased knowledge.

Year 4: Only 33% increase in port over the year and by now some of your older best-selling images will have been bettered by others. There's less new stuff to learn and help you.

Year 5: Only 25% increase in port. The agency collections are now growing at about the same rate as your port and, with older images dying at about the rate you can produce new ones, your sales will probably stagnate. You've hit the wall.

^^ Excellent summation Gostwyck! 

Quote from: gejam on June 16, 2010, 07:11

Double your portfolio = double your income?
Yes or no?

Possibly, if you have 1 image, and you upload another similar quality different subject.  More likely not.

Hm, not sure if I understand sjlocke.
But from my own portfolio, I say first you look for the type or category that sell well for me. Then I increase that topic or category.  Not similar but same category.  But some time even similars be successful too.
I think depend on site.

But I take sjlocke meaning if you have one good seller of a man with a big fish. You do not want to upload 10 more man with big fish from the same shoot with only slight difference ,ie. camera placement is an inch different, .

Exception is Dreamstime, your oldest pictures still outsell your new. So you stop giving new pictures and sit on backside to let old porfolio sell 

Lately, this has pretty much become my philosophy for all the sites! 

But I take sjlocke meaning if you have one good seller of a man with a big fish. You do not want to upload 10 more man with big fish from the same shoot with only slight difference ,ie. camera placement is an inch different, .

No, more like, if you have 1000 images, by the time you upload 1000 more, the first will have dropped in sales, so you didn't double your money at all.

It takes 4-5 years to 'hit the wall'. It's virtually inevitable if you upload with some regularity.

Year 1: Something is always more than nothing.

Year 2: You should double your port and be on a steep learning curve so your income should be rising fast.

Year 3: You'll still add 50% to your port and be benefiting from your increased knowledge.

Year 4: Only 33% increase in port over the year and by now some of your older best-selling images will have been bettered by others. There's less new stuff to learn and help you.

Year 5: Only 25% increase in port. The agency collections are now growing at about the same rate as your port and, with older images dying at about the rate you can produce new ones, your sales will probably stagnate. You've hit the wall.

Very good summary. I'm just over four years into microstock, and I've hit the wall pretty hard. I'm at the point now that I can't seem to grow my income at all, no matter what I do. Very discouraging.

My portfolio is about 3000 photos, but I've got 3 months to shoot now, so I hope to create a good bunch of new quality photos, although I do realise it is alot of work. Plus they might feet in to the summer slowdown so I might not see a huge rise in my income.

Interesting.  Jonathan, it sounds like you shoot and upload in big batches and then have some periods of relatively little activity.  Is that correct?

If so, I wonder how that would stack up against someone who shoots and uploads consistently about the same amount of images every week or month.  

Most of us have seen that we can sit on our laurels for at least a few months with relatively little drop in sales.  I wonder if flooding the market with a thousand or so images after a relative dry spell would be likely to produce a big bump in sales, where just uploading the same images at a rate of 30-50/week would go unnoticed by buyers.

Shooting subject matter at a certain time isn't going to influence when it's needed.  Sure on some of the sub sites, designers might download a file just because it's there.  But for the most part, I think if they need "an elephant perfoming in a circus in spring", they're not going to download something else because someone uploaded a lot at one time.

Shooting subject matter at a certain time isn't going to influence when it's needed.  Sure on some of the sub sites, designers might download a file just because it's there.  But for the most part, I think if they need "an elephant perfoming in a circus in spring", they're not going to download something else because someone uploaded a lot at one time.

You are right, timing is probably irrelevant for a niche subject like an elephant performing in the circus

However I was thinking more along the lines of popular subjects (business, medical, etc.) that are searched for and bought in large numbers every day. 

A lot of buyers do "browse recent" or search by age, not to mention that at times the default search engines at various sites have been known to favor newer files.   In such cases I would imagine that having hundreds or thousands of images recently uploaded could attract a lot of sales. 

Again, I don' know for sure.  That's why I am hoping someone who actually has tried doing it that way would want to comment. 

Just one great picture can double or even triple your sales...

[...] I would imagine that having hundreds or thousands of images recently uploaded could attract a lot of sales. 
Again, I don' know for sure.  That's why I am hoping someone who actually has tried doing it that way would want to comment. 

I consistently see a significant - and lasting - increase in sales when I upload a few hundred pictures in a few weeks following a trip.
Last summer I travelled to Germany (Duesseldorf - Koeln - Berlin - Dessau) and after an year those pictures are still selling well.
It's quite nice to know that I can repay my holidays in 3-4 months and then start earning, makes me wanna travel all the time.

But I never tried to upload such pictures few at a time, so I can't compare with an alternative scenario.