Finally, here are the results of the survey covering the 2008 microstock industry.


http://microstockgroup.com/holdingbin/MicrostockSurvey.pdf

Of course, feel free.

I'm surprised to see Shutterstock with the most RPI. I thought Istock would be first. Maybe subs are working after all, but only on SS

Thanks it's true. I looked at the graph and got confused because IS and SS were green. That's the proof that my laptop LCD not equal my Samsung monitor

I'm surprised to see Shutterstock with the most RPI. I thought Istock would be first. Maybe subs are working after all, but only on SS

Not so sure about that. My RPI went up drastically on SS after On Demand and Extended took off, and that's quite recent.

I'm surprised to see Shutterstock with the most RPI. I thought Istock would be first. Maybe subs are working after all, but only on SS

That's because you've misread it  

IStock gave the highest RPI with 38.11% and then Shutterstock was 26.64%

What I don't understand though is that Shutterstock came out top for earnings in 2008!

This is some good information.  I would like to see more details in the earnings department.  The way I'm reading those results is that the top earner made $120,000 and the bottom made $10.  Kudo's to the bottom guy for being honest by the way.  That is a huge spread between top and bottom.  I understand that the average of everyone was around 10K but where were the bulk of the annual incomes?  Just a couple of 6 figure answer could skew that average quite a bit.  Any way to get a break down of for example..how many were below 5K, between 5K and 10K, 10K to 15K, 15-25,25-50, 50 to 100 and more than 100. 

I'm very curious about this as most people keep their actual numbers pretty tight lipped.

Thanks,

Mat

Yeah, I will try to get some of those graphs out soon.  There is a VERY steep curve on stuff like that.  Very few people earning many $$ and the rest earning very little.  The same with number of images.  A few people have a lot and a lot of people have a few.

The way I'm reading those results is that the top earner made $120,000 and the bottom made $10.  Kudo's to the bottom guy for being honest by the way.  That is a huge spread between top and bottom.  I understand that the average of everyone was around 10K but where were the bulk of the annual incomes?

Yes the distribution will be very skewed and not Gaussian, so you can't rely on standard deviations and means as they are a parametrical statistics descriptive measures. The best nonparametric description (ic of non-normal, non-Gaussian [like skewed or bimodal]) distributions are the quartiles.

For instance, Q2 (Q stands for quartile)is the median: the value below and above which are half of the cases. In a distribution skewed to the left (many people with small incomes, few with high) the median will be lower than the mean but give a more realistic description. (Remember the statistician that drowned crossing a river with a mean depth of 2 feet).

Q1 is the value (here income) were 1/4 of the cases are lower, and 3/4 are higher, also called percentile25. Q3 is the value where 3/4 of the cases are lower, percentile75. Percentile50 is of course the median.

So for a realistic central tendency of the incomes, just look at percentile25/Q2/median, and for a "bulk" or spread measure, look at the interquartile range Q3-Q1 which gives the limits between where half of the incomes are.

Sorry to offend when I'm too exhaustive.

What I don't understand though is that Shutterstock came out top for earnings in 2008!

That's pure math and an inevitable consequence of the tight upload restriction on IS for non-exclusives. Ports on SS are probably much larger since SS has no upload limits (yet  ).

I guess I'm the youngest one here @ 18

No, you're not. My

photography partner

(and main model) sneaked in here at MSG but he decided to stay under the radar till he can register without restriction at microstock. He's just lurking for now.

Off topic:

youtube

can be a free marketing tool even for photos.

AndresR

,

Arcurs

, etc... and of course the well-know, simply amazing and fantastic Vonkara videos:

here

and

here

. 

seems that Q1 should be the lowest.

You're right. The Q values are totally mixed up. I don't know whether it's generated by the site or Leaf mislabeled the measures.

Great work, thank you for doing all that work, it is very interesting to see all those stats and I'm sure many people will find it quite useful, keep up the great work Leaf!

Really interesting information!  Thanks for taking the time to compile it Tyler

Here are two more little graphs.  One displaying the top performing site according to RPI, and one of the number of photographers in each income bracket.

Thanks Tyler, This is great stuff.

If you divide the average gross annual earnings ($10076.68)  by average number of images online (1156.4) you get an average of earnings of $8.71 per image per year.  I have no idea if this is a valid analysis but I find it interesting.

c h e e r s
fred

Yeah, I figure it is the old 80/20 power curve with 80% of the earnings going to 20% of the contributors.

c h e e r s
fred