MicrostockGroup

Wow, that's a difficult question. Do you mean with all agencies or only with one? And some of my images, I hope, will go on and on ... sales dropping off as they age but still selling.

This is a great question, and I hope you get some great replies.

As an illustrator, I can say that the pattern of sales of my images over time is somewhat as Pixart describes with photos.

I don't think of myself as an 'artitst' at all, but rather as being in business. I try think of my images as revenue producing assets. They will depreciate over time, but how much? And is there any formula to predict trends for the image types which you describe?

In illustrations, I can presume that trendy styles such as grunge or most abstract image styles will have short earning lifetimes. But how short? And will other styles of image have longer earning-lives, and if so how long? And what will the curve of depreciation look like?

I have a lot of questions. Do others stockers have answers?

I took IS+DT+FT+StockXpert.  Calculated current monthly earnings divided by number of images.  That's giving me US$6 a year, on average, per image.  Hopefully I've learnt to create more of the good selling ones and less of the crap ones, but using this number and considering that my older material (2 years old) is selling less, I would expect something like US$25.

Regards,
Adelaide

I don't think that any answer given by one person will at all apply to someone else. I have several illustrations that have netted over $1000 each. I also have several that have had only one or two downloads over the two years they've been in my portfolio. Does that mean that if I average those five or so files together and divide by 5 that I can tell someone they will average that income? Sure I can tell them that... but if they are foolish enough to believe it, they might come back later and be pretty angry. 

How long is a piece of string?

well i think you CAN do just that yes, but you need a sample size of something considerably larger than 5.  Perhaps 2-3000 images and your sample size starts getting somewhat reliable for your type of images.  Microstock is all about averages.  You can´t look at that one image that was unlucky and only earned $1.00 and was used on the cover of a magazine and say ´this just isn´t worth it´.  Neither can you look at the one image that has sold thousands of times and has earned $2000 and took 20 seconds to take and think you are going to be a millionaire in a year.
It is the average of the portfolio ( a decent sized portfolio that is) that you have to draw your conclusions from.

I have an image refused as not being stock and poor lighting (and nowadays I wouldn't have even tried submitting it) but macrostock sales have brought me in over $1000 for it in 12 months.  (most of my macro sales are 'not stock')

as to value in micros, I dont think I could put a figure for a few more years yet

well it sounds like your portfolio is producing quite nicely.  300 is not a shabby sample size either...  and it is all hypothetical anyways... i was not trying to be difficult.

I've had single images make several thousand dollars...its all luck of the draw I guess.  Some sell repeatedly like hotcakes, while others lay dormant. 

It really is so varied. I have a lot of images that earn about $5-15 a year, a decent number that earn me $40-50/year and then some that have earned me over $200/year and are still selling well a year or two after I uploaded them. (These are all microstock - in traditional stock some never sell and others get licensed for several hundred$ a year, no way to estimate at all).

At this point I think that just about all of my MS images have been licensed at least 1-5x, with a growing percentage (about 10%) being licensed several times a week. Some of my images have been licensed over 70 times in a year but only earn me about $35-40/year because they are all small DLs or subscriptions, while others will be downloaded about half as much but will have a number of ELs and single image sales add up to far more.

I've only been at this for a couple of years part time with a small portfolio, but it's a question I've been trying to answer by tracking my sales and trying to concentrate on the types of images that earn me the most. My understanding is that images have a 5 year average shelf life, but like some people here I find that my nature and nature/travel images sell consistently and after 2-3 years they keep selling at the same pace. So, those kinds of images I'd expect to earn me around $1,000 average (some probably a lot more than that, and some less) in their lifetime on the micros, and possibly more for those that are 16 MP and will be large enough to use for most applications even as megapixels keep growing. The web will never need very large photos and most of these end up in online travel magazines or in the magazines themselves, not on billboards. If they keep selling for 20 years, they can earn me even more, but who know how technology will change. If people want interactive photos 10 years from now, they'll  not be worth much as stock, but they'll still make nice prints, which earn me a lot more than stock per sale, but are far less frequent.

My top 5 or so grunge and blur backgrounds are making me about $75-100+/year each - though my top seller may end up earning me more this year - too early to tell; the less frequent sellers maybe earn me $20/year.  I assume a year or two from now that trend will be out and they will have few if any sales, so I'd expect that in their lifetime, averaging the good sellers and the rest together, assuming a lifespan of 3 years with diminishing sales over time, I'll maybe average $100 per image over its lifespan. They'll be useless when the trend dies, but they were fun experiments and the light blur sales have paid for my lensbaby already.

Looking at these trends helps me decide which types of images it's worthwhile to shoot, and looking at sales across all venues helps me determine whether things such as a trip will pay for itself and how long before I actually turn a profit on the trip. I also like shutterstock's catalog idea. That's a great way to see what I average for a particular type of shoot which is probably more instructive than what I average per image. 8-10 sales a year at $28 dollars is better than 70 sales @ 33 cents, so the photo in the number two slot for # of DLs may earn more than the # 1 slot, and may keep earning for longer.

Incredibly difficult to answer....some images earned thousands and I never expected them to be best sellers. Others just earn 10 bucks and I thought I was a genius after shooting . It depends to on the amount of "Similars" I upload from one shooting which distributes the success of an concept over more than one or two units...

Yes an interesting poll - but the top number is too low.  If it was done again with some higher ranges at the top end, I'd participate in the vote.

Yeah, when I got to the reply from TheMiz I looked at the date. Oh Boy 2008. Now there's a place to find an answer? Whoever has the MIZ account and is probably not adding anything new, I'd wonder how that's doing after 3-4 years? I'm also not expecting a direct answer. But it would be interesting as a real example?

RJMIZ on DT:  http://www.dreamstime.com/rjmiz_info
Joined: July 12, 2005
Rjmiz's account statistics:
Uploaded files:    1,109
Total sales:   13,840
Downloads per image:    12.48

Hypothetical 50c per download (hey I had to pick a number, pick any number...)  $6.50 per image after seven years. Come back in a year and see what the numbers are?