MicrostockGroup

This question was also asked in the 2010 survey
http://blog.microstockgroup.com/2010-microstock-industry-survey-first-look/

iStock and Shutterstock seemed to take the cake, Fotolia was not that far behind.

Sorry that was RPI, not RPD

Measuring RPD is pointless unless you are also taking volume into account. Alamy might have an excellent RPD with one sale per month but it won't do much for overall earnings.

sorry, yeah, I misread the question.  The survey asked Return per image, not return per download.  In which case my answer would probably be Veer

Ahh.  Thanks for clarifying

Veer, RPD $4.26 (Thanks to many extended licences)

It's the only way we could see the result, which could be interesting.
If an exclusive put answered 'iStock', that wouldn't be a balanced vote.

To those saying RPD is not important and that overall sales are important....you are missing a huge piece of statistics that can help us increase our income, this is extremely important information that can be very useful to the microstock community as a whole in deciding where to direct buyers. Some of us get asked from time to time what is the best site to buy from.  If we all directed those buyers to the highest paying site we would start to see a shift of increased sales at those top paying sites. Just because a site makes the most overall earnings does not mean that is where I want to send my clients. We need to start joining together as a whole community and direct people to the places and sites that have the fairest RPD and then we will see those sites become the the highest earners. It is the ONLY piece of information we have as a community to help us decide where to direct clients. Fairly recently in another thread we sort of concluded (this survey may say something different) that Dreamstime and Canstock averaged the top two for RPD (not counting alamy).  If clients switched from the high earners (Shutterstock and IS) to dreamstime and Canstock we would see almost double earnings.  Obviously not in the best interest of IS exclusives, but seeing as only 14% of people are exclusive, it would be in the best interest of the majority to act together in pushing those few chances of referrals we get to Dreamstime and CS.  If thousands of contributors start doing this it could start to make a little impact that would hopefully snowball as those buyers refer their friends and coworkers.  We really need to stand up and act together on this issue and put our support behind those sites that continue to give the most fair payment for each download of our work.  It seems like a microstock union is just not happening at this time, but that does not mean we can't work together in the only way we have available.

My site has one of the best RPDs, so everybody should band together and recommend that.   In all seriousness though, everyone's stats are different. As a vector artist, IS still has a better RPD than CanStockPhoto and Dreamstime. Also you have to factor in portfolio size too. You want to recommend sites that have a large amount of your content. I don't think you're going to get a consensus from everyone, but it doesn't hurt to think about what is best for your business. On a personal note, I've decided to purchase any images I need from direct artist sites or CanStockPhoto. I don't purchase much though.

Fair comment but in truth Shutterstock alone has never cut commissions or reduced ToS for contributors. Together with BigStock they are now generating over 40% of my stock income with IS trailing at 29%. Month on month the gap is just getting ever wider too. Seems to me that the good guys are winning in the end and all the greedy *insult removed* are getting their comeuppance. Oringer just keeps on doing the right thing and it's working for him. Istock, in their obnoxious greed, have apparently thrown away a seemingly unassailable position __ to the one guy that always played it straight. You don't need to be cynical, just give credit where it's due and support those sites that actually deserve your support.

Don't forget: Canstockphoto doesn't have a high RPD, only its distributors (Fotosearch) has. So don't guide potential buyers directly to Canstockphoto....

for me monthly earnings on canstock quadrupled in 2009, they then doubled again in 2010, so my earnings there are roughly 8-8.5x what they were in 2008. Now roughly a third of DT or FT who have both fallen in earnings (in line with commission cuts).
However in 2010 I added a large number of vectors which bring in $5.00 per sale so skew both earnings and rpd.
I have always liked Canstock but I dont promote them due to the $0.25 subscription

Yeah, I added that because there are a LOT of abbreviations that most people know but anyone new would have a very hard time reading what was actually said.  Most of the top sites are included except istock (IS) because their abbreviation also spells a word