Hey there! I got into microstock recently so I don't know what's normal for the holidays. Are the sales usually fewer in december? I just got accepted by Shutterstock and I want to upload my whole portofolio, but I'm afraid not many people will buy images now and I'll lose the "new pictures" advantage until January. What should I do?

There is often a nice little spike in the next week or so (usually one of the highest in the year) but between christmas and new years and a few days before sales are almost 0.  I've all but stopped uploading for the year and will resume again in Jan / Feb when sales are generally pretty good again.

It depends on what you are uploading though.  If you are uploading stuff that has a very niche subject and your images are some of the only ones available anyhow then upload whenever you want, it won't make much difference.  If you are uploading business men, flowers or hand shakes, you might want to wait a little.

Yep, feb, march, April too!

I see! I'm glad this crossed my mind, I was about to upload a lot of pictures...and most of them are not very very special I suppose.

Quote from: leaf on December 13, 2012, 16:51

I've all but stopped uploading for the year and will resume again in Jan / Feb when sales are generally pretty good again.

Oh, so sales are bad in January too?

You can see the spikes and drops of my income in this blog post
http://blog.microstockgroup.com/6-years-of-microstock-income-graphed/

Quote from: leaf on December 13, 2012, 17:40

Quote from: sjlocke on December 13, 2012, 17:36

Yep, feb, march, April too!

only if you submit to istock

Touch�! 

But earnings in the last months of the year are higher and you'll earn more in the last 3 months than the rest of the year (only at iStock, of course)

Just to give you and example, last year first half of December made up 70% of the month earnings. So I expect that sales will slow down after this weekend.
As for January for me only the first few days are a bit slower and as for February you need to remember there are fewer days as well. March is typically a good month.

As for the question whether you should upload or not, there is no good answer. The pros would be less competition and faster reviews (hopefully), the cons are obviously less clients and less sales. I personally upload constantly whenever I have something to upload, but that's just me.

Sure! but this is no holiday or anything. Its like this you see. The most prominent agencies decide that we are paid FAR, FAR, too much. So, since we are totally overpaid they decide to change all that. Tweaking the search, w#nking around with the sort, a little bit here and a little bit there, a little bit everywhere, a little bit up and a little bit down. Wait for it!  this is the best, we push back the higher percentage earners in the search and let the noobs, ponses and panders be first, that mob we can just throw a few cents, they be happy anyway.

Its like a few years back when I described the little monkey playing with himself out in the bush somewhere only this time its got BIGGER!

or are there stock agencies in china we haven't heard of? *but could be submitting to*?