December 2012 Stats Thread

[lisafx]

Wow, surprised nobody started this one.  Nobody wants to talk about December?  Me either, LOL, but I'll go ahead anyway. 

December 2012 was the lowest month for me since Dec. 2008.  I'm interested to see if this is widespread, or just my bad luck. I suspect this December was so low because of uncertainty about the looming financial crisis in the US, but if others had a good month, then I will have to rethink that. 

December was down 20% on last month, and 25% on last December.   For 2012 total year income I was surprised to be only 9% down on 2011 (that is with estimating an average PP income for December). 

Hope Washington pulls their collective heads out of their collective posteriors and we have a decent economic recovery this year.  Will probably have some effect on the world economy either way. 

[traveler1116]

Saw similar numbers as you Lisa but maybe Getty sales will be good this month since they just transferred about 800 over there, not too optimistic about that but a couple good sales could turn around the month.

[lisafx]

Saw similar numbers as you Lisa but maybe Getty sales will be good this month since they just transferred about 800 over there, not too optimistic about that but a couple good sales could turn around the month.

Sorry to hear yours was as bad as mine.  OTOH, misery loves company

Hope your Getty sales give you a boost though!

[JPSDK]

Shutter sales going up on sep, oct, nov but a bit down in dec
is sales down as always every month.
Dt underperforming.
Fot fine but unstable.

So December conclusion: average to the low side.

[cthoman]

Yeah, it was pretty awful, but not too much lower ($100 or $200) than December 2011 or 2010. On the plus side, I earned enough for it to be a BYE (best year ever).

[disorderly]

I had a pretty good month.  Down 3% vs. November, and up 7% vs. December 2011.  For the year I'm up 14%.  Big gains at Shutterstock (now 37% of my total, up 20% year over year), 123RF (16%, up 76%), Deposit (7%, up 253%), and CanStock (6%, up 64%).  Big slide at Fotolia (2%, down 61%).  iStock was flat (11%, up 2%), but that's after a steady decline starting in mid-2010.  And keep in mind I uploaded nothing at Fotolia or iStock last year.

By the way, my average decline from November to December is 11%, so this wasn't as bad as previous years.  December to January usually drops another 7%.  We'll see how I do.

[nicku]

Not a bad December...

SS  - good month ( for December) on pair with Nov. 2nd BME regarding downloads. -17% compared with the BME in revenue.
FT - average
DT - average
123RF - above average

pie slices :

SS - 65%
FT - 15%
DT - 11%
123RF - 5%

others 4%

[lisafx]

Congrats Harris!  Nice to hear some good news

I just did some more calculating and learned that although my overall year to year drop was 9%, the annual income drop from Istock was 30% and it was 41% from Fotolia.  So had either or both those sites managed to hold steady, or even dropped at a more moderate pace, I would not have seen an income drop. 

ETA - By contrast, SS was up 10% annually from 2011 and far more than that if you count only the last quarter.  Looks like the folks who rely most heavily on SS for their income had a pretty good month.  Kudos to SS!!

[Jo Ann Snover]

Still haven't finished the details, but December was good. I was up 103% on December 2011 (not much of an achievement as i was still working my way back from leaving exclusivity in June and IS was in the toilet) but more importantly was up 14.5% on December 2010. Dec 2012 is my second best month ever.

2012 as a whole is up 10% on 2011, so given the trends in the last half of the year, I'm cautiously optimistic for 2013. The caution comes from whether IS continues to slump or figures out how to fix things; what 123rf will be like and whether SS will continue to see the growth in non subscription downloads that has made the earnings there such a pleasant surprise.

Last month I had calculated that 67% of my income came from IS (including PP) and SS+BigStock. So lots of eggs in a rather small pair of baskets.

ETA: I can't do whole year comparisons to 2011 by agency as I was exclusive at iStock until early June 2011, but here are some interesting stats

Comparing Dec 2012 to Dec 2011:

SS was 100% up , DT was up 6.7%, 123rf was up 43% and IS was up 61%. PhotoDune was up 184% - but Dec 2011 was my first full month there, so that isn't a fair comparison. Dec 12 was up 37% over Nov 12 though, so it was a good month there (not counting the bundle sales in the November total though).

December is always lower than November for me - typically by 10-30%. This year December dropped 16% - middle of the range, but (a) November was very strong and (b) December beat October by 6% where typically it's lower. In my benchmark year, 2010, December was 11% lower than October. Both IS and SS were up in December over October 2012.

[Poncke]

Up 103% is more than double 

[steheap]

December for me was not great, but not too shabby. $1723 compared to $2200 in November.  Dec 2011 was $1200 so I increased quite a lot during the year. This brings the year to $19,200 compared to $10,600 in 2011. I'm doing a bit of analysis of my stats which I will publish later with my normal graphs.

Steve

[ShadySue]

iStock exclusive:
Dec 2012:
For $$, worst month since Aug 2010.
The last week of Dec had the same number of dls as the last week of Dec 2006 - I submitted my first images to iS on 12th Dec 06 and had my first sale on 19th, so you can see how bad the last week was, even comparatively speaking.

Compared to Dec 2011: $$ down 32%; dls down 40%
(Omitting GI last Dec, as this year's haven't been published)
Compared to Nov 12:
$$ down c23%, not counting GI in Nov; dls down 25%

Annual total is down just under 1%, counting last year's GI in Dec (I count GI in with my iStock totals) - so IF I get some reasonable GI sales (not $1.17 which I once got, less than any iStock sale in years) I could balance or maybe even beat last year's total by a little.

Port increase: c17.5%

Alamy: 4 lowish value sales in Dec. Haven't worked out the annual $$ total yet, but more sales than last year which isn't saying much.

[Jo Ann Snover]

Up 103% is more than double 

I understand. I did mean that (I'm math literate)

[Anyka]

December was break even with December 2011 :  Dreamstime and Fotolia went down (Fotolia even 16%), and all others pulled up to achieve the break even.
2012 gave me a growth of 9% overall.  Have to say that Fotolia went up during the first 6 months, and has been going down with an average of 14% in the second half.  Dreamstime is on the way down too, and Istock (Thinkstock included) has made its come back and taken the 3rd place again after SS and FT.
Thanks to the weak Euro, I made more than +9% in Euros, so I'm quite happy with the results, especially since this was my first fulltime year as a photographer.

[pancaketom]

Dec 2012 wasn't particularly good, in fact it is one of only 2 months in 2012 that were worse than the corresponding months in 2011.
SS was quite good until the last week which was pretty dire. That is typical for the month though. SS seems to be at a new higher steady state than it was in previous years.
Alamy was pretty good. All my work getting my images up there in 2011 seems to be paying off.
DT improved slightly on Nov and appears to have hit a new (lower) steady state following their mid year commission drops for contributors.
123RF was ok, but once again nowhere near their doubling of sales promise or even as good as they were in the first 1/2 of the year for me.
Pond 5 actually had some decent sales in Dec (I have been working on getting my port up there over Nov and Dec (and now Jan I guess).

In order of income for the year for me it is SS, Alamy, DT, Veer, 123Rf, CanStockPhoto, BigStock, IS - should beat BigStock with PP sales,  FP, PD, GL, P5, 3DS, SF. (the last 4 were quite insignificant, but P5 was only for the last 1.5 months)

This year was my BYE though, so it isn't all doom and gloom, and I produced a few less (but hopefully better) images than previous years. 2012 income was about 135% of 2011 income.

[KB]

My worst month since Feb 2011. $s down 32% from Dec 2011 and coincidentally also down 32% from Nov 2012. Portfolio size +47% from Dec 2011.

[luissantos84]

- from November 2012 (down 3.2%)
- from December 2011 (up 38.5%)
- 44 months of stock
- 6 new uploads in December (SS)
- SS with 4021 pictures (370 editorial)
- traditional top 5 - 65.4% (SS, IS, FT, 123RF, DT) (Nov 69.6%)

Dec % - Nov % - last month $ %

TOP 8 - 76.8% (82.6%)

SS 37.9% (42%) (down 8.3%) (Dec - 1 EL + 4 SOD = 65.29$) (Nov - 0 EL + 1 SOD = 30$)
IS 11.8% (10.1%) (up 14.3%) (9 months with no new uploads)
123RF 8.2% (7.2%) (up 9.1%)
FT 4.5% (8.2%) (down 46.9%) (less than 100 downloads, back to August 2011)
Z 3.9% (2.1%) (up 73.7%)
ISIGN 3.8% (4%) (down 9.2%)
DP 3.7% (5%) (down 28.8%)
DT 3% (4%) (down 28%) (May 69$ (BME), Jun 35$, Jul 35$, Aug 39$, Sep 34$, Oct 47$, Nov 46$, Dec 33$)

MIDDLE - 19.1% (13.8%)

XY 2.7% (2.1%)
XW 2.4%
XX 2.3% (2.2%)
PM 2.1% (0.7%)
XZ 1.7% (2.1%)
PD 1.5% (2%)
BigStock 1.5% (1.6%)
Alamy 1.4% (1.4%)
XA 1.3% (0.7%)
XB 1.2%
CanStockPhoto 1% (1%)

LOW - 4.1 (3.6%)
(13 agencies all below 1% each)

comparing to 2011:
- earnings up 48.4%
- downloads up 17.3%
- portfolio up 12.7% (MP portfolio)
- rpi increased to 2.76$ (2.13$) (MP portfolio)
- rpd increased to 0.7$ (0.55$)

[dbvirago]

Pretty good month for a December. Not my best, but close. Did have my best December ever at SS. Looking forward to 2013 continuing the trend begun in 2012.

[Tabimura]

SS - average increase (as in "the current month increase over the previous' year same month")
IS - bad
FT - bad
DP - increase
DT - bad as usual
123RF - BME (!)
Photodune - I've got a file in an Envato bundle so.... hm-hm... thanks guys!
Alamy - many sales of low commissions. That place is slowly going micro.

others - irrelevant.

Conclusion - noticeably increase over last month's December, an average month for this year.

[gillian vann]

only my first year in but I had a BME at SS, iS, DT and DP.

I was nervous that December would be awful - and it was at 123 and Fotolia.
otherwise I was pleased.

[Sedge]

December was my worst month of the year, but not by too much so I'm not panicking just yet.  iStock was terrible; my worst month in over 5 years and I'm estimating that my PP sales will outperform my regular iStock sales for the first time.  How depressing is that! 123 RF and DT were good.  Fotolia sales were poor, but not unexpected as I have a small portfolio there (they reject most of my background images).  SS was excellent as usual.  Despite the slight downturn, 2012 was my best year in MS (going into my 7th year).

Other things to keep in mind about this December: There were 10 weekend days in the month, which I'm told doesn't happen very often.  Also, the past two years both Christmas and New Years were on a weekend day.  I think both holidays being on a Tuesday this year was a detriment to sales as it provided more opportunities for folks to take more time off from work.  Just my theory, but I think it makes sense.

[sdeva]

My december 2012 was nothing to write home about!  SS held (slightly increased) over December 2011 and 1 or 2 of my newer sites, like PD held up quite well.  But Fot and DT tumbled well below November performance and even lower than December last year.  Is held though barely.  However year on year 2011 to 2012, I almost tripled my stock income mainly because increased portfolio up by about 800 images and signed up to a few new sites.  So that's the positive of it.  I now have images on 11 stock sites, most of the top and mid tier companies and even some low earner ones.  However haven't signed up with Depositphotos yet because still unsure about their pricing policy that seems to drag the rate structure further down.  Not to mention the free image giveaway etc programs ...  Although looking at some of the contributor comments, perhaps I should consider signing up with them. A case of if you cant beat 'em join 'em!

[gillian vann]

  Also, the past two years both Christmas and New Years were on a weekend day.  I think both holidays being on a Tuesday this year was a detriment to sales as it provided more opportunities for folks to take more time off from work.  Just my theory, but I think it makes sense.

this is very true - and quite nice for us holidaymakers
anyone selling into asia shouldn't have been hit at all, but I guess for most of us Europe/US is the main market.

[Poncke]

My SS dollars are down 33% from november which was my BME. I am 10 months in stock now and it has me worried that my port is not good enough. The drop in December is too big for a new portfolio imo. So 2013  for me is about adding better photos and a lot of them.

[aeonf]

A bit better then expected for us but still a bad month.
1,520$
From 11/12 down 19%
From 12/11 down 19%
Port grew 45%

PP+GI should bring in another ~100$