MicrostockGroup

Im just been around in microstock bizz for 3 months. I tried to get aproved to shutter 3 times...and 3 times rejected..thats just god...Im learning...

And I start to thinking...and reading on this forum and >>>0.25 dollar each DL... is it worth it?

How is that going to "impact" on my portfolio in the future, to be a member of SS?

It must be so hard work to getting paid / compare to your work...

And why do we sell our pictures for just 25 cents...*scratching my head*

Is it some oracle out in the cyberspace that have the answers...

/lena

ja leaf.. jag förstår ...gott nytt år till dig i Norge...!!

I understand but....in long term...how is this going to be for us ....designers must have built enormus stocks/banks of pics...
...and another stupid question I have ...how many of us photographers have 100 or 1000DL each day...now Im real curious...

just some questions from a farmer and photographer..../lena

1000 downloads a day - not very many people, perhaps none that AVERAGE this amount.  Yuri has however gone over 1000 downloads on certain days, but i don't know how often that happens.

100 downloads a day - quite common for people with portfolios between 1000-4000 images depending on what your images are like, and how recently you uploaded them.

but what the best statistics that give you actual numbers is again the poll results.  150 people voted that shutterstock is their best earner.  They wouldn't have said that if dreamstime, or fotolia earned them more.  You guys are obviously on the other sites, you can easily figure out what sort of earnings shutterstock would give you by looking how much dreamstime or fotolia give you.

for me, and many others dreamstime earns half of what shutterstock does in a month, same with fotolia.... that is to say, I earn on shutterstock what I earn on dreamstime and fotolia combined.

I have 5000+ images in my portfolio and I get usually 250-300 dls a day on SS, can be 350 on a good day. HOWEVER, for the last few months Fotolia and IS (where I have only half of my porfolio due to non-exclusive upload limit) have been approaching SS earnings. Dreamstime and SX are doing very well too.

I am also worried about subscribers building up their own photo banks for a ridiculous price. I don't know how many actually do that, but if it was me buying I'd definitely try to use up my subscription to the fullest....

I put a lot of effort in my work and spend big $$ on professional equipment. Yes subscription dls do add up, but I am seriously  thinking of stopping uploading to SS for now. Apart from the cheap payouts per image they seem to be very disrespectful to the photographers and sometimes outright insulting (see another thread about closing a contributor's account). They do not seem to care to retain top sellers and hard workers, thinking (I am guessing here) that their crowdsourcing model will work with thousands of small hobbyists submitting a few images a month, being happy to make their payout once in a while and to see their images for sale.  Maybe it will, but then it wouldn't be a place for me.
I do see other agencies growing and becoming more professional and consistent, working with their top contributors and top sellers. I was hoping that would happen with SS but nothing has changed there....  It just may happen that they will end up being left behind if they don't change their attitudes.

I'm finding the opposite, a year ago IS sold double the amount of SS and now it's gone the other way.  SS has caught up and overtaken IS by a larger amount every month.

I make half my money on Shutterstock  compared to all the other 15 site combined! Maybe its because Shutterstock is such a big part of the market that I target my images for Shutterstock buyers and thus I get a better return on the images.

www.nicemonkey.co.uk

I am new to SS, started on December 8th, and here are my stats:

Number of days: 21 (3 weeks)
Best day - 48 downloads (3 more above 40)
Total downloads: 375
Total images: 46

What I noticed at SS is that it is a good place for seasonal photos, as long as you upload tons of them. I started with 7 images (soccer, Christmas) and every couple of days uploaded 3-4. Now the downloads shifted to Valentine/birthday stuff.

Here is an approximate depiction of downloads per subject:

Wedding:             2 photos, 27 dls
Christmas:           7 photos, 122 dls
Soccer:                15 photos, 132 dls
Medical:               5 photos, 7 dls
Valentine/b-day:  14 photos, 97 dls
Misc: 2 photos,  you do the math here:-)

I have the same concerns as the others going long with this but until I get something better at other places I will keep feeding the beast.

I started on MS about one year ago (end of Oct 2006). In this year, SS has earned me more or less 1000$, DT and FT more or less 120 to 140$ each, IS and StockXpert nearly 60$ each (these two are low because IS is a pain to upload and i started on StockXpert only in July 2007). Alamy has earned me around 300$ in this same year.

So make your assumptions... Surely that i pay more attention to SS than anywhere else, my images go first there and sometimes only 2 or 3 months after are on other sites, but nevertheless even if i paid the same kind of attention it wouldn't matter that much in the long term.

As for market share being reduced by large collections and other subscriptions/competitors, we also have China starting to appear on this market (as buyers), aswell as a clear increase in European business. So, one hand will wash the other, ans as SS guys are not here to lose money, i'm confident that they will do what's best for them and us, adapting wherever necessary.

Well,

that maybe (i'm sure it is), but you can't compare those portfolios with mine and secondly their biggest seller is IS, which it's not just a case of dedication, but of uploading limit and patience to deal with that gruesome application. If you ask me, i'd say that if i had the same portfolio on IS than on SS, their earnings would be more or less the same, i guess. But this does not happen with FT and DT (which were the ones i was mainly referring to). They are doing fine and every month better, imo, but they cannot provide yet 100$ per month with my current portfolio. Surely i could have earned more 30 or even 50 bucks more with them in this year if i uploaded more and more often, but then that would be time taken out of feeding SS, so i don't know if it would be a good trade off.

Editing just to say that all of my images go through an upload process for every agency i'm in. All my pictures get the same chance in every agency, like i think most of us do, it's just that on SS i upload 10 or 20 or 30 per week or two weeks for example, on the other agencies except IS, I upload like 200 or 400 each two or three months or so. So what i really miss is they being there sooner, not they being there.

Regards

You can be surprised compared to IS for example the downloads come lot more shortly. Congratulation!

I am always wondering that I do have a lot of downloads on weekends - but only with shutterstock. On a weekday I may have an average of 40 dl's there but on sundays and saturdays it is still 20 or even more. While with every other site I can be happy to have 2 downloads during the whole weekend.

Seems that the shutterstock customers like to work on weekends - or they come from parts of the world where it is already monday or still friday?

Anyway, I keep wondering but don't complain ;-)