I stopped uploading to SS about 2 years ago. I started with them back in 2005. Since I stopped uploading, my sales are basically 40-50% of what they were while I was still uploading. I left Fotolia totally a couple of years back, and when Adobe bought them, I uploaded my portfolio again. The sales from that have made up for the drop in sales from SS. Photography is not my main source of income, but it certainly helps with the monthly bills.

Those are the only two agencies I submit to now. I have bailed on the others for various reasons, mostly for the bad treatment of contributors and other shenanigans.

If you read the threads regarding what stats people keep track of you will see that most people on here don't really pay a lot of attention to accurately tracking the sales details of their portfolio so expect a lot guess work and speaking from the gut rather than facts (just a warning regarding some of the replies you will get).

Cathy is correct, you will see a continuous (initially sharp) decline in sales from any uploaded image, after the initial surge. The stockperformer people have written about it a few times. Typically the graph looks like a smoother version of this: http://blog.microstockgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/typical-microstock-revenue-1024x516.jpg

For seasonal images the trend is the same but will of course look like a diminishing pattern of seasonal peaks.

After a few years you will be earning an absolutely minute amount compared to your portfolio's peak, but still a residual income of some kind. Anyone with a substantial portfolio who says different either hasn't used software that analyses their sales properly or hasn't been in the game long enough to see the trend.

If you read the threads regarding what stats people keep track of you will see that most people on here don't really pay a lot of attention to accurately tracking the sales details of their portfolio so expect a lot guess work and speaking from the gut rather than facts (just a warning regarding some of the replies you will get).

Cathy is correct, you will see a continuous (initially sharp) decline in sales from any uploaded image, after the initial surge. The stockperformer people have written about it a few times. Typically the graph looks like a smoother version of this: http://blog.microstockgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/typical-microstock-revenue-1024x516.jpg

For seasonal images the trend is the same but will of course look like a diminishing pattern of seasonal peaks.

After a few years you will be earning an absolutely minute amount compared to your portfolio's peak, but still a residual income of some kind. Anyone with a substantial portfolio who says different either hasn't used software that analyses their sales properly or hasn't been in the game long enough to see the trend.

While you are probably right I have noticed of late that some long forgotten pics have had a new or even first lease of life. I don't think the future is as certain as you think and no amount of analysing the past changes that

I uploaded substantially less this year because of other assignments (microstock is not my main source of income). Some older illustrations are still selling like crazy while others are completely dead. So it depends on the quality, commercial value and timelessness of a file.

Overall, my yearly revenue is still steady (even growing a little bit) but I expect it to decrease over the years if I would completely stop uploading.

few of us have steady enough sales with enough volume to draw any meaningful conclusions

that said, I uploaded nothing in Dec and my jan sales were BME

I stopped uploading to dream & bs more than a year ago with no effect on sales (still low & not worth more uploads)

as always, there are too many variables from portfolio to portfolio to make any prediction from others' results

I stopped uploading to everyone including isuck about a year ago.

For those agencies there's been no change to sales but they were rubbish anyway

As for Shutterstock it doesn't seem to matter if I upload or not the sales are still staggering around like a drunk man in a high wind.

Only Alamy has repaid uploading with a 100% increase in sales in the last year.

Sammy, I  notice the same.  Haven't uploaded in a year or so and there have been declines, but not worse than the declines I was seeing when I did upload regularly.

Are you saying you HAVE been uploading to Alamy but nowhere else?  If so, then you have seen big increases at Alamy?  If you don't mind answering,  are you uploading RM or RF?

Interesting discussion.

As one of the chapters in my upcoming book, I've run a simulation of projected revenues of a complete newbie consistently submitting for 3 years to the largest 7 Microstock Agencies as RF and 2 agencies as RM (premium images only exclusively).
 
Major assumptions here including a "quality" portfolio within a "niche". He/she isn't shooting flowers and pets.

�   Year 1: $1 RPI/year, uploading 50 images/month
�   Year 2: $2 RPI/year, uploading 75 images/month
�   Year 3: $3 RPI/year, uploading 100 images/month

In this scenario, the contributor stops submitting in Years 4 and Years 5 after building up a portfolio of 2700 images.

Total Revenue after Year 5 and end of simulation: $20,668

RPI depreciation of 25% a year (2.08% a month). Perhaps this is too low as an average?

Lots of unknowns / assumptions here but something to think about.

Brasilnut

I like your work but your analysis is very wrong. Why do you have RPI increasing every year? The depreciation should be much higher and the drop off much faster.

These charts are much closer to the reality: http://blog.microstockgroup.com/the-tyranny-of-the-microstock-lifecycle/

I've put together a case-study of a contributor who's a bit clueless at the beginning, but after a year the quality of his images improves considerably. So, if I'm not mistaken, it should reflect in a higher RPI. Should I keep the RPI at about $2/year?

I am afraid you are mistaken (like "Justanotherphotographer" already said)

rpi can change over time for a lot of reason, all more related to the general market than any specific photographer. I don't know if you should keep the rpi at $2 but the reason you stated (improvement in image quality) is very insignificant for rpi.

What are you basing this on?

Many assumptions on an average, yet talented person starting out.

I would have liked to use me as an example but I think my case is a bit peculiar as I don't shoot "typical stock" and don't submit to so many agencies.

I'm curious whether if someone starts shooting more intelligently in a niche if that would increase his/her RPI, independent of image quality improvement. 

It is very tricky because I would call RPI the the result of the calculation rather than starting with RPI then applying a depreciation. You can either decrease the RPI every year or keep it constant then apply a depreciation, it amounts to the same thing. Basically an overall decrease in RPI year on year.

I haven't run the numbers but 30-40% rings true to me if you don't adjust the RPI beforehand, the result being that after a few years you hit a "wall" where your 30%-40% depreciation per year of existing content outstrips your ability to increase your portfolio size in proportion.

Forget about RPI increasing with quality of images. The overall quality in the marketplace is also increasing constantly due to competition. Failure to improve would decrease RPI further, improvement only keeps you inline with the rest of the competition.

Ok, thanks for all your inputs.

I've updated the results over a 7 year period with constant RPI of $2/year during constant submission and once submissions stop, a depreciation of 40%/year or 3.33%/month. Total income after 7 years is just over $17,000.

Can someone give a rough estimate regarding the percentage of total income earned by an image or batch in regards to time.

I've simulated one image earning $2 RPI/year with a depreciation of 40%/year from the second month. In reality its value should peak on 4-6th month but I've just used an average RPI to keep it simple.

Therefore, in its full life cycle it would earn $4.32 after 6 years and very little after that (1 cent a month).

 

Let's say you upload 1000 images in a month and then stop uploading. How much time will need to pass before you earn 80% of all the total income those images will earn in their lifetime? Or how about 50%?

Using the same logic of $2 RPI/year with a depreciation of 40%/year from the second month when you stop uploading, it would reach:

- 50% of $4,320 (lifetime earning) on the 18th month; 
- 80% of $4,320 (lifetime earning) on the 40th month.

Of course the above depends on 1000 factors but something interesting to consider.

I appreciate the fun in estimates but at the end of the day, it's just completely useless. No one sells the exact same images with the same keywords and results will always be very, very different for each individual.

However, if you're making less than $3 per image per year, you're doing something seriously wrong and need to come up with some changes. That could be OK for ONE site, but in total $5 should absolutely be minimum if you're thinking about this stuff seriously.