So, how are your Adobe sales going? I'm seeling like crazy last few months. With 270€ (and the highest sale was €14 for video) february was by far my BME there.

At the same time, I made 35$ at SS in february, lol, $0.10 sale after $0.10 sale, it's just pathetic. Out of cca. 20 video sales this year, the highest was $2,25$, most of the rest were like $0.25. Disgusting really

Funny that you ask about it today of all days. AS has been running pretty consistently for me for years. The amount of downloads was rather below average in the last two or three weeks. But just today I have over $70 there. The absolute exception! But for me, AS has been the best agency for quite some time. Shutterstock was a disaster in February. It's still a while until Level 5, but even then, when it gets there, I'm not expecting anything more there.

My adobe sales are growing consistently.

Quote from: rushay on March 03, 2023, 03:15
My adobe sales are growing consistently.

Same here.

Same. Even February was short month it was the best month so far, a little better than January. I hope it is not just short term success, however it motivates to create more for Adobe.

Adobe is the only agency that has been growing sales for me.  They are still not where SS was during its heyday but hopefully will get there.  SS has dropped like a rock and will soon be at DT levels if it keeps up.  Adobe is the only one worth submitting to any longer.

Now and then SS produces a SO or EL that brings them up and makes the totals look good. RPD beyond some singles and odd sales, is pretty terrible. But to be fair, if we are only talking dollars, bottom line, not how I got to the totals?

Adobe is roughly 33% better, total earned, so far this year.

RPD and RPI are even more irrelevant for myself as I have different images allowed and accepted on AS vs SS. The number of identical images might be in the low hundreds. Hard to say anything or make any helpful predictions for anyone else. And no video on either.

BME  Nearly double SS sales

Periodically I take a look at my Adobe sales in more detail (i.e. more than just what the monthly total is when I request a payment!) and recently I thought I noticed a big increase in the proportion of licenses that were tagged "custom" versus "subscription". I also noticed a Maine beach image has been selling more than it historically has, but that's only of interest to me

With no useful contributor statistics at Adobe Stock I had to improvise a bit with Google Sheets and cut and paste, but was able to get a few insights that I think are generally applicable. It's a mix of good news and less good news.

The good news is that my sales (downloads and $$) are both substantially up in the last six months. My portfolio increase was modest in that time so I think it really is growth. January & February 2023 were up 41% ($$) and 45% (downloads) over Jan+Feb 2022. (Those two months in 2022 were up about 5% ($$) and 30% (DLs) over 2021)

The less good news is that the download numbers are growing faster than the $$. It's great that more images are getting downloaded, but it's hard to keep that sort of growth up over time. Which leads to the other part of the less good news - the revenue per download is dropping. 74¢ so far this year vs 77¢ in 2022, 92¢ in 2021 and 95¢ in 2020.

When I look at the number of sales marked as subscription versus custom, the proportion of custom downloads is growing over the last several years, but the revenue per download for custom sales is lower than for subscription. The section growing the fastest is producing lower royalty sales.

I compared Jan 1 - Mar 6 sales from 2020 through 2023, separating out the two groups, custom and subscription (if it were less cumbersome to get data from Adobe Stock, a longer period would be ideal).

Subscription sales are still more numerous than custom, but year to date in 2023, subscription downloads are 1.32x  custom downloads.

The same 2+ months in 2022, subscriptions were 3.45 times custom; in 2021, 12.24 times custom and in 2020, 21.69 times custom downloads.

I assume the change relates to the Pro Edition for Creative Cloud for Teams and Enterprises and  Creative Cloud Express. Both plans produce items tagged "custom" in royalty reports.

Looking at my revenue per download for custom versus subscription downloads (again for the Jan 1-Mar 6 period) in 2022 it was 87¢ for custom and 74¢ for subscription; for 2023 it was 69¢ for custom and 78¢ for subscription. It's good news that the subscription revenue is up, but the custom was down by more.

If you look at the download volume for 2023 so far compared to the same period in 2022, subscription downloads are up 7% where custom downloads are up 182% (and I really mean way more than doubled). Subscription revenues are up 13%, which is good, but custom revenues are up over 120%.

You might wonder why I'd be bothered as both are increasing - isn't it just doom-and-gloom to see any bad news there? We'll have to see how things develop (and as I've said many times, my crystal ball is broken) but the relentless royalty erosion for us - the suppliers - means earning a fair return on our portfolios will just get harder as eventually there just won't be enough buyers to pump up the volume enough to make up for the lower royalties per download.

As always, YMMV

Thanks for sharing that analysis.

The other thing to remember is inflation - so even if things are steady they are really going down. It seems everything costs more except for stock. I know this isn't entirely true, but not so very far off either.

In the last 12 months with over 20k images online and around 2000 downloads per month each at SS and AS:

Adobestock + 500% (mostly 0.38€ or 0.99€ and >3.3EUR)
SS - 80% (actually only subscription sales, 0.10$ or 0.14$ commission and number of downloads -40% in the last months too).

Have to say, i dont upload to SS anymore since mid of last year, subscription sales of 0.10$ as regular commission is far too low.
long live AS, SS can go offline

Quote from: biibii on March 07, 2023, 18:27
Have to say, i dont upload to SS anymore since mid of last year, subscription sales of 0.10$ as regular commission is far too low.
long live AS, SS can go offline

I stopped uploading to SS when they cut the subs rate to 10 cents back in June of 2020 and have no plans to resume - just not worth the minimal effort required to upload images even though they are already processed and keyworded.  AS, DT, Alamy and Canva are about the only ones I bother with nowadays.

I am really pleased with Adobe. 6 months ago I had around 1200 files and hardly any uploads in 10 years. Income down to 10-20 dollars.

I added around 600 mixed files including 260 files of gen ai content since August 22.

Feb 22 - 13 dollars

Feb 23 - 190 dollars with now 1885 files

The entire portfolio has woken up. A few nice video sales for 28 dollars each. A lot of content getting their first sales ever.

Enough sales in the first few weeks to hopefully get another bonus code next year.

I still have days with no sales, but it is very motivating to upload to Adobe.

Adobe announced their Q1 2023 results today - the stock market was happy with them. You can read press release, earnings call and some other investor materials here:

https://www.adobe.com/investor-relations.html

Adobe Stock is such a small part of their overall business, and results aren't separately detailed, but there was a mention of growth in Adobe Stock (in the earnings call) without any numbers or percentages:

"Acceleration in our Adobe Stock business, driven by the demand for high quality imaging, vector, video and 3D content;" and later "Momentum in high-growth businesses such as Substance and Stock, where we had a tremendous quarter generating new business..."

Nice to see we are a high growth business, albeit a "cloud service" rather than an app.

Not sure if there were no questions in the earnings call or just that Adobe didn't include them in the earnings call details they posted (and I couldn't find them anywhere else online when I searched just now). I'll modify the post if I find anything later.

I thing the increases many of us have seen in sales activity at Adobe Stock are the result of the "momentum" and "acceleration" mentioned above.

There are sales, I think it's because I put my video in a free library. Advertising works.

Quote from: stoker2014 on March 16, 2023, 11:27
There are sales, I think it's because I put my video in a free library. Advertising works.

Yes. There are sales. I did not put any videos in any free library.

Conclusion?

Quote from: Her Ugliness on March 16, 2023, 11:57

Quote from: stoker2014 on March 16, 2023, 11:27
There are sales, I think it's because I put my video in a free library. Advertising works.

Yes. There are sales. I did not put any videos in any free library.

Conclusion?

Not Advertising works

I have a very slow week at Adobe Stock , only me ?

Quote from: Her Ugliness on March 16, 2023, 11:57

Quote from: stoker2014 on March 16, 2023, 11:27
There are sales, I think it's because I put my video in a free library. Advertising works.

Yes. There are sales. I did not put any videos in any free library.
Conclusion?

I write for myself and draw my own conclusions. I am not responsible for what you write, as well as for the veracity of your information.

Quote from: stoker2014 on March 16, 2023, 11:27
There are sales, I think it's because I put my video in a free library. Advertising works.

I really don't understand how advertising in stock photography should have any effect.

Customers don't look for artists and then wildly buy useless images just because the portfolio looks so nice.
The customers are looking for specific themes or images for a specific purpose or project and you can assume that the artist behind the buyers absolutely no matter.
Or where do I have there my thinking error?

Quote from: Souf10 on March 16, 2023, 13:27
I have a very slow week at Adobe Stock , only me ?

Do not worry, all months is bad so far

Quote from: RalfLiebhold on March 16, 2023, 16:40

Quote from: stoker2014 on March 16, 2023, 11:27
There are sales, I think it's because I put my video in a free library. Advertising works.

I really don't understand how advertising in stock photography should have any effect.

Customers don't look for artists and then wildly buy useless images just because the portfolio looks so nice.
The customers are looking for specific themes or images for a specific purpose or project and you can assume that the artist behind the buyers absolutely no matter.
Or where do I have there my thinking error?

If one of my photos start selling then it sells more. That can be the search algorithm within one agency but doesn't explain increased sales at other agencies. So one client uses it and then other clients must see it so they intent to use the asset as well at the agency they do business with. And no it's not the same client shopping around. They come from different countries. So, in effect, the first client(s) advertise my photo to other clients. Or do you think agencies have an algorithm that looks at popularity at other agencies. Could be but I doubt it. I think that is where your thinking error is.

Quote from: SVH on March 16, 2023, 18:57

If one of my photos start selling then it sells more. That can be the search algorithm within one agency but doesn't explain increased sales at other agencies.

So my explanation is different. I do not advertise my portfolio or my pictures. Nevertheless, I have numerous bestsellers with various agencies. From my point of view, this is because I have apparently met the taste of customers across agencies.

For the thesis that advertising for stock photography should bring something, no one here has yet provided proof - all just personal hypotheses and a question of faith.

Quote from: RalfLiebhold on March 16, 2023, 19:21
For the thesis that advertising for stock photography should bring something, no one here has yet provided proof - all just personal hypotheses and a question of faith.

Agree. Advertising bring absolutely nothing to single controbutor.
But in general terms adv can drive more new clients to a specific agency and, in general terms, can give a growth of sales (for everyone).

Quote from: stoker2014 on March 16, 2023, 15:56

Quote from: Her Ugliness on March 16, 2023, 11:57

Quote from: stoker2014 on March 16, 2023, 11:27
There are sales, I think it's because I put my video in a free library. Advertising works.

Yes. There are sales. I did not put any videos in any free library.
Conclusion?

I write for myself and draw my own conclusions. I am not responsible for what you write, as well as for the veracity of your information.

Are you responsible for what you write or your own veracity of your information? I have many sales and I have nothing in any free library.