iS: Compared to July 13, $$ up 25%, making it my second-worst month in three years. That was almost solely down to better rpd, as the dls were only 4% up.
     Compared to Aug 12: $$ down 18%, dls down 30%
     Compared to Aug 11: $$ down 35%, dls down c60%
In the second week, I thought things were turning for the better, but the last two weeks, especially the last week, were grim.

Pretty certain collections is impacting me hard, as some of my old better sellers were promoted, without deserving the + price hike; and some of my low-supply, low demand images were demoted - they sell as occasionally as ever, but at a much lower price. Insanity.

GI: Although I reported no GI July sales in another thread, it turns out I had two, but the $$ were so small, I didn't notice at the time. Oh - I must have had some more files made S+  . Last month I had a bit over 20% of eligible files waiting to transfer to Getty, but now it looks like almost 30%.

Alamy: Over 40% of what I made at iStock, despite being caught up in the mass refund that many people reported over there early in the month. Holding steady while iS freefalls.

FAA: 0 - my own fault, still haven�t put anything new/arty up, though I have a �work in progress�.

And for those who say you can�t make any money from Flickr, my �50 cheque came in from last month.    Small change to many of you, but I make no effort to sell from Flickr, so it's an inexpected and welcome bonus. 

Best month till now ($ 2,5 more than July!!  ) thanks to Shutterstock (July 55% of the income, August 75% of the income. iS bad and worst�)

I am up 38% for the new agencies on July, but my portfolio is still growing. I have between 200-400 files on average on the new agencies. Only 10-15% of my portfolio is online with new sites. I am taking it very slow and really hope it will pay off longterm.

Fotolia was the strongest for me,followed by Pond5, then SS,Dreamstime and Deposit. Fotolia is exceeding my expectations, with SS I am a little disappointed at this stage. But I suppose I simply don�t have enough files. 50% of the sales on Fotolia are single image downloads, it makes a big difference.

istock sales picked up in volume to the month before but royalties are still a lot lower than what they were before slashing their prices so dramatically.

I�ve added macrografiks and Westend61 as new agencies.

Westend61 should give me an outlet for a lot of content that I consider to be my best work but cannot find a home on stocksy because it is not their style. They distribute widely over all the macros including Offset and Alamy. The agencies pick and choose what they want. They also supposedly have a good ranking, so I am curious to see if my files will be selling better than under the Getty House contract. And they also sell from their own site and have a very good name in Germany which will always be my core market.

They do all keywording and uploading to the various agencies, so you just send them your stuff and they take care of the rest. They also share production costs on more advanced shootings and work very closely with their artists. They really have an excellent reputation and I am glad they accepted me. They do edit your submissions and don�t accept everything but from what I have heard it is a "normal" evaluation process and not a strict style filter. Which is good because the agencies can then pick and choose what they want for their agency but overall more files from a shoot will get exposure.

macrografiks is new but their niche is my niche and they have a very nice selection of work and a decent price point. They also pay out a very generous 60% to the artist. I hope this will leave them enough money for marketing.

I personally think specialized agencies like stocksy and macrografiks that work closely with their artists are a positive trend for the industry.

I would still like to open my own webshop, but between renovations, moving the studio and uploading new and old files, I don�t have time for that now. I also need to produce a much bigger volume of work in the content niche that I think will be interesting for a webshop.

The difference in royalties between video and photos is extreme though. On average this month I got 16 dollars for a video, but the average photo royalty is between 30 cents to 1.71 (excluding stocksy, but they are not micro).

So making more videos should be a priority in production.

I want to look into symbiostock over the christmas holidays. I would love to have a webshop that is connected with other people from msg. Maybe on the microstockexpo in Berlin I can learn more about from people who are active. It is not just having to work with computers and software that is scaring me, it is also the whole VAT /tax issue in Europe if I start to sell directly from my own site. Working through agencies makes this easier, it is their job to handle it correctly.

That is why I am even considering to open a shop on Photoshelter. Because they are a US company and charge the customer directly, it is easier for me tax wise. They may only take 10% royalty but I can still bill it as being sold via a US agency.

Quote from: cobalt on September 01, 2013, 07:12

I want to look into symbiostock over the christmas holidays. I would love to have a webshop that is connected with other people from msg. Maybe on the microstockexpo in Berlin I can learn more about from people who are active.

There is understandably a lot of enthusiasm for Symbiostock here at MSG and it is certainly an impressive project. But there is a lot of stuff which they are going to have to work out between them before it will be ready for the mainstream IMO. I have been following the project with great interest - partly just because I love all things Open Source.

I was surprised reading the thread about taxation to see the lack of group knowledge about taxation issues - particularly US and non EU contributors seemingly unaware that they need to be levying VAT on EU sales of digital goods. I have added some information to that thread at http://www.microstockgroup.com/symbiostock-general/symbiostock-script-vat-tax-question/msg341929 * which is hopefully helpful and relevant especially to people based outside of the EU. Obviously it affects the whole network that all parts of the network should be compliant.

If I was setting up a web shop which was anything other than experimental I think I would be looking at a more mature platform for the moment at least.

* I cannot get the direct link to the post to work. So you would have to scroll down to find the bit I posted.

Personally I dont have to work out anything between anybody using a Symbiostock set up. They are all individual sites. My site is my site, and I dont need to charge VAT, its the Irish tax laws I have to abide with. What anybody else does is none of my business. SYmbiostock is not an agency, its just the name of the software but there is a community behind it. All sites are individuals, even if there is a network option.

What is a mature platform? I am a sole trader, not a global agency.

What is a mature platform? I am a sole trader, not a global agency.

Apparently you have got to have offices all around the world 

1 office in south Africa for 1 sale per month

/

My August Sales were nothing special. Shutterstock was going to have a really slow month, but I managed two Single sale for over $100 each and just one ED, which brought it back into reasonable levels. Overall I failed to hit the $2000 bar that I like to think of as my target, ending up with around $1960 or so. No sign of earnings yet on the SignElements site, so I have guessed at that.
Top line graph is below, with more details, as usual, on my blog.


Steve

July and August were not good.
ss up 10% from 2012, but thats not enough since june 2013 was up many more percent.

fot did well in July and August
Dreamstime upcoming.
SS was weak.
Generally I was hit hard by the summer slump.

August was completely pathetic across the board.  All sales are way down from last year also.

I've usually seen my revenue from year to year go up and I'm afraid that this year it's going to go down as I'm absolutely nowhere near the numbers I was making last year.

On a strange note I made more at BigStock this month than DT so go figure.  DT doesn't even make my top four.

Top 4:

SS
CanStock
DP
FT

also.. don't forget to vote in the poll
http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?page=microstockmonthlysurvey

Only SS was steady in August (Though 25% lower than July). DT, FT, IS and 123RF sales were very poor.
DNBB