MicrostockGroup

Well thanks to DanP for getting the ball rolling on this. 

RPI stands for 'Return per Image' and is a monthly calculation

There seemed to be a lot of interested for having a RPI sort of rating for the various stock sites.  It works to have polls in threads, but it doesn't work very well to try and compare things over time and have a nice overview of all the sites.

I have now implemented a RPI tool on the site, you will find it to the lower right.  Same as the other polls, you can enter your numbers once per month.   Hopefully this will give us a good idea of which sites give us the best return per image and how things change over time.

If you don't know how to calculate a Return Per Image value it is

Monthly earnings / Images Online

So if I have 1000 images online and earned $1000 from shutterstock in may..
my may RPI for shutterstock would be
$1000 / 1000 Images = 1

If i had 2500 images and earned $500
$500 / 2500 images = .20

An RPI # is generally somewhere between 0 and 2
If you have a VERY productive portfolio you might have an RPI above 2

yeah, may numbers.  Perhaps i should have it say 'prev month' ....

It is changed now.

And yes, i know i am missing some icons.  I will get that fixed when i get back from malta.  I mostly wanted to at least get the voting working before I left.  The stats are being recorded properly, so I will fine tunes things about displaying the results in a week.

Can we cast votes for June yet?

I hadn't tried yet.  Just wanted to be sure.   

I voted, then results came up, but when I came to site again the column appeared again.

ok, i'll see if i can fix that tommorow

So where do you enter the RPI. I can't find it.

Yes, but... now how can one vote?

Regards,
Adelaide

Good job Leaf.  I really like the RPI stats.  Now that a lot of people have voted, the 30d numbers look very reasonable and I think they tell a better story than the ratings.  Great idea adding in the up/down change, and the 90d moving average. 

Cross referencing RPI changes with site analytics might be very interesting.

it tells you how profitable a site its.  How much a site is giving you for each image each month.  A quite valuable number for comparing sites to eachother.

Of course you can just look at the total amount you receive from each site, but that doesn't take into account how many images you have online.  If site A gives $100 each month and you only have 100 images there (RPI OF $1.00), and site B gives $500/month and you have 5000 images there (RPI of $.10), if you only look at the total you would be tempted to spend more time at site B when in actuality you should spend more time on site A.

I thought the same as UncleGene. All of the stock sites that I do my calcualtions for, have been offered all of my images. The fact that they refused some of them is relevant and affects the profit returned from that site. My spreadsheets calculate on total images offered, which is why I have not entered my figures.

As your and the agency's collection grows, older stuff gets pushed aside and newer stuff makes the majority of your income. RPI would have more value if you only counted your top 200 images every month. Then you’d at least have a measurable stat.

By measuring your lowest images as well, you’re saying “well, I made 10 cents per image this month and 11 cents last month so my RPI is down” - so? Last month you had 650 images and made $71.50 This month you had 900 images and made $90. Your RPI is down but income is up and those new images seemed to help increase your income $28.50 or 11.4 cents per image. Basically, the older images hold you down as their usefulness fades over time.  RPI is a stat that *should* most of the time go down. 

Also, if you have one super fantastic image and 10 nothing images vs a folio of 1000 super fantastic images and 10000 nothings, it's the same RPI.  I guess I'll just continue to not get it. lol

Another point I want to make on RPI...

Use the information as it was intended to be used for.  It is for comparing earnings power per agency, not necessarily tracking your own growth.  As Mantonino correctly points out, older images dying off should cause one's RPI to move lower over time all things being equal. 

Looking to the right, I can make an educated decision about whether or not contributing to a certain agency is worth my while.  According to our voters, 123RF currently has 8x the earnings power of Snapvillage.  While mileage will vary for each contributor, this is pretty important information.  I find 123RF to be more than worth my while.  But 1/8 their earnings would not interest me, so for now I hold off. 

If I didn't currently contribute to StockXpert and noticed I could earn at least 2x my 123RF earnings if I did, it would get me interested in a hurry.

Most importantly it cuts through the noise.  Every board has a few posters who post early sales at new/small microstock sites.  Heck we even have a few people saying they have sales at Yaymicro, which barely registers on Alexa.  But once you sample a lot of people, the true earnings power of each site begins to emerge while the message board hype fades.  Call me a wacko, but I like it.