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Author Topic: Feb 2011 microstock earnings  (Read 29824 times)

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« on: March 01, 2011, 02:43 »
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What a lousy month! Only CanStockPhoto and SS held up and even at SS a lack of ELs prevented it matching last year. Fotolia down 60% (half from the pay cut, half from the new best match), DT down 30% year on year,  123 down 15%, even Bigstock's brief recovery in the last quarter of 2010 has faded away.

It's looking as though this year my earnings will drop back to where they were in 2008.


« Reply #1 on: March 01, 2011, 03:19 »
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Not a bad month for us. (2nd BME)
Down ~3% since last month
796$ in income as IS exclusives.

I wish more people would share REAL NUMBERS instead of very pretty charts and tables which don't really say much.

« Reply #2 on: March 01, 2011, 03:21 »
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What a funny month (not as in "Haha", but as in wierd):

-) 123RF made more than Fotolia and Dreamstime together - my editorials are really doing well there  :)
-) Shutterstock delivered - no surprise there, with approx. 100 new photos
-) IS held up pretty good, despite going down to 16% percent payout and their search not up to its best
-) Only 2 non-subscription sales on DT the whole month  :P
-) Bigstock completely dead until the last five days of February

All in all it was good February for me, the sum of my earnings is OK. The pattern of the individual contributions by each agency to this sum is something I've never seen before  ???

« Reply #3 on: March 01, 2011, 03:38 »
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Not a bad month for us. (2nd BME)
Down ~3% since last month
796$ in income as IS exclusives.

I wish more people would share REAL NUMBERS instead of very pretty charts and tables which don't really say much.

i somewhat agree.  My numbers are so bad it will make anyone look better compared to mine.

I just left DT exclusive at mid-month. 
DT at about $70, down from $125  (1000 images online)
the rest based on 15 days of being active (ranging from 19 images to 700 images online)
SS at about $33
Veer at 3.50
Fotolia at 2.00
DP at 0.60
all others (14 of them including IS) at a big whopping zero

« Reply #4 on: March 01, 2011, 03:46 »
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for me istock was pretty much in line with the previous months until yesterday. And then suddenly several ELs on the last day of the month :) So Feb-2011 my BME on istock.

SS, DT, FT are ok, no surprises

123rf is better than usual but still within the historical deviation

I continue uploading to Alamy (which used to have very small portion of my portfolio until a few months ago) and that helps - I am getting sales there more often than before. Got 2 decent sales in Februrary.

« Reply #5 on: March 01, 2011, 03:54 »
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I wish more people would share REAL NUMBERS instead of very pretty charts and tables which don't really say much.

Real numbers say nothing at all unless you have all of them. I don't know how many files you have online, whether your sales are up or down. If you have 50,000 files then your result is pathetic, if you have 50 files then your result is brilliant. I don't know if your sum of money is more or less than last year (or if you have a big increase in files online or not) so I don't know if things are getting better or worse for you.

« Reply #6 on: March 01, 2011, 04:06 »
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I wish more people would share REAL NUMBERS instead of very pretty charts and tables which don't really say much.

Real numbers say nothing at all unless you have all of them. I don't know how many files you have online, whether your sales are up or down. If you have 50,000 files then your result is pathetic, if you have 50 files then your result is brilliant. I don't know if your sum of money is more or less than last year (or if you have a big increase in files online or not) so I don't know if things are getting better or worse for you.

Well then just ask :)
Feb last year we made 80$
We have ~2,000 images online of which ~1/4 are from 2008 and not worth much.
And things are quite stable for us if mesured by DPI & RPI.
We are going to get a substantial boost in income soon since we are expected to hit the 30% target in the next 2-3 months.

microstockphoto.co.uk

« Reply #7 on: March 01, 2011, 04:19 »
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All sites slightly up - including the hopeless ones - except IS (main site) which is continuing it's downward trend since mid 2010 for me.

So in the short term I'm happy. What worries me is the long term: my projected growth for 2011 (linear regression based on Jan and Feb data) is far lower than previous years.
« Last Edit: March 01, 2011, 04:23 by microstockphoto.co.uk »

« Reply #8 on: March 01, 2011, 04:43 »
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« Reply #9 on: March 01, 2011, 04:49 »
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and here's a colorful graph you don't like :)



Compared to last month


No real big changes except Veer didn't have as many extended licenses so they are at a more expected level and Fotolia managed to account for a larger % of income.  Shutterstock is by far still my 'bread earner'

« Reply #10 on: March 01, 2011, 05:01 »
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hi all, any good tool or website to track all sales results? i notice the microstockcharts.com is half-gone? all my previous results i keyed had disappeared..

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #11 on: March 01, 2011, 06:42 »
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iStock exclusive.
DLs down unspeakably: Feb '10: 175dls; Jan '11: 102dls; Feb 11: 85dls.
$$$ up c5% on Jan '11, up c10% on Feb '10, thanks to a good EL early in month.
Jan+Feb still well down on Jan+Feb 2010 for dls and $$$.
84 acceptances in Feb (mostly editorial) and another 50 in the oh-so-slooooow inspection queue.

lagereek

« Reply #12 on: March 01, 2011, 07:35 »
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All earnings aside. Has it occurred to anyone that the entire micro industry is singing on its 11th year and the novelty among buyers is wearing thin?  not so cheap anymore, gazillions of irrelevant stuff in almost every search, painfully slow sites with all sorts of problems.
Its no picknick being a buyer anymore and as many buyers say, even after hours of searching and still dont find it.

microstockphoto.co.uk

« Reply #13 on: March 01, 2011, 08:07 »
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All earnings aside. Has it occurred to anyone that the entire micro industry is singing on its 11th year and the novelty among buyers is wearing thin?  not so cheap anymore, gazillions of irrelevant stuff in almost every search, painfully slow sites with all sorts of problems.
Its no picknick being a buyer anymore and as many buyers say, even after hours of searching and still dont find it.

a partial solution to these problems could be that agencies started accepting the so called "low commercial value" pictures - which are actually selling if accepted:
- good, interesting lighting doesn't necessarily mean evenly lit;
- there's more to architecture than the big ben and brandenburger tor;
- not everyone is a businessman/woman smiling with a phone;
...

If I were a buyer, I'd like to decide MYSELF what I like, leaving to the agencies just a minimal technical/legal audit.
« Last Edit: March 01, 2011, 08:12 by microstockphoto.co.uk »

« Reply #14 on: March 01, 2011, 08:07 »
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All earnings aside. Has it occurred to anyone that the entire micro industry is singing on its 11th year and the novelty among buyers is wearing thin?  not so cheap anymore, gazillions of irrelevant stuff in almost every search, painfully slow sites with all sorts of problems.
Its no picknick being a buyer anymore and as many buyers say, even after hours of searching and still dont find it.
Today is March 1st, not April 1st. I don't think I've ever read such a nonsensical collection of patently untrue statements. Where do you get the idea that "the entire micro industry is singing on its 11th year"? A couple of minor agencies that no-one had ever heard of might have existed but in reality microstock only really began less than 7 years ago. At that point IS only had about 40k images and SS, DT, CanStockPhoto, BigStock, FT, etc, etc were still little more than ideas in their founders' brains.

Almost all the search engines are far quicker than ever before, have vastly improved facilities and buyers have never ever had anything like the choice of images that they do now. If buyers can't find what they're looking for today then they certainly couldn't a few years ago.The IS collections might be expensive but there's still plenty of cheap images out there. On SS I can buy any of their 14M images for less than $4, up to medium size, or about $9 for full-size images. That's all Canon needed to have paid to have Yuri's image on their massive exhibition poster for example. If a buyer thinks that's expensive for the commercial use of an image then that's a buyer who I'm not interested in.

lagereek

« Reply #15 on: March 01, 2011, 08:19 »
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gotswyck!  never before has anybody so totally misread a post. When I said 11th year, I meant ofcourse the birth of micro NOT all the late comers. Use your head man.
Ofcourse todays searches are technically better then yesterdays but because of years of accepted garbage, pics are less effectivly found. Its the magnitude of files not the technique. These are the buyers speaking, not me.

Also, dont like the tone in your pathetic statement. If you dont like it or whats written then please refrain from answering or go somewhere else, you no...............like have another beer or something, sounds as if youve had some already, bit early isnt it.

« Reply #16 on: March 01, 2011, 08:40 »
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Luckily I'm not english so I don't understand this flame.
Feb was good except on Fotolia.

Shutterstock +25%
dreamstime +31%
Folotia =


velocicarpo

« Reply #17 on: March 01, 2011, 08:58 »
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A stable month. About 10 % up from last month, but thats the usual up and down.
In real numbers: 3216.12 US$ in total.

Dreamstime continues to be the biggest disappointment due to their lack of understanding what images should be approved and which rejected. Veer, Canstock, 123rf, some local agencies are all above DT this month.

This shows the general image I expected and which I welcome. Income is distributing between sites more and more. This brings more competition against the established, more stability and less risk, and is also eliminating partially the competition of other contributors since many don`t bother to uplaod to new sites like veer, which is growing steadily for me.

« Reply #18 on: March 01, 2011, 09:07 »
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A strange month.  Veer took off, 123 gained, Fotolia fell off a cliff, iStock and Dreamstime continued to disappoint.  The last year was just slightly down from the year before.

month---
year
Shutterstock
28.3%
+1.6%
27.7%
-2.3%
Veer
18.1%
+1143.8%
9.1%
+338.3%
iStockphoto
13.2%
-3.4%
17.3%
-13.1%
123RF
9.9%
+39.2%
9.7%
+39.2%
Fotolia
8.3%
-40.2%
12.1%
-2.1%
Dreamstime
6.8%
-2.0%
8.1%
-33.6%
StockXpert
6.7%
1.3%
-86.1%
BigStockPhoto
4.3%
-1.5%
4.8%
-24.5%
CanStockPhoto
3.3%
+141.2%
3.0%
+112.9%
« Last Edit: March 01, 2011, 09:11 by disorderly »

steheap

  • Author of best selling "Get Started in Stock"

« Reply #19 on: March 01, 2011, 09:09 »
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Unfortunately, this is a short month, and the results show that (and then some!). Total earnings were just $500, down 20% on January, but there were no real winners outside the main stock sites. Shutterstock and iStock were around the same level as January, Fotolia achieved its best month ever, but the rest of the sites were just steady and boring no large image sales, and some sites with no sales at all. I've continued to add images - the most recent following a vacation in St Thomas and St John (working vacation for a stock photographer!!), but these were too late to make much of a difference. To make it worse, Shutterstock rejected about half with "Poor lighting, white balance may be incorrect..." I'll have to sell that x-rite colorchecker!

I keep a graph of sales per site on my blog - I'll work out to post that here for the next month. I've noticed that most people only post the percentage of sales from each site - is there some risk in posting actual numbers?

Steve
http://www.backyardsilver.com

« Reply #20 on: March 01, 2011, 09:46 »
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My BME in terms of RPI and total revenue for the month, pretty great considering Feb had just 28 days.  I'm about 2.5 years into microstock, and the growth continues at roughly the same pace as my very first months, though some sites are performing much better than others.  

Shutterstock - steady growth
Fotolia - fantastic growth
Dreamstime - steady
IS - peaked for me in Oct/Nov 2010 and has since been on a steady decline

All the rest - steady growth

I think it says a lot about iStock's position in the industry right now.  My port is posting great and steadily rising numbers on just about every site except IS.  I think my numbers are proof that buyers are slowly turning away from IS and buying elsewhere.
« Last Edit: March 01, 2011, 09:52 by stockmarketer »


« Reply #22 on: March 01, 2011, 10:00 »
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I keep a graph of sales per site on my blog - I'll work out to post that here for the next month. I've noticed that most people only post the percentage of sales from each site - is there some risk in posting actual numbers?

I used to like to post my numbers, but ultimately realized it served no real purpose.  Everyone's ports are so different that comparing yours to mine won't really tell you anything.  If you think my earnings are great, it could give you unrealistic expectations or make you feel like you're failing.  That doesn't help anyone.  Plus, as has been pointed out countless times, big dollar amounts are flags to people who want to "get rich quick" and think they can copy the success of others.  None of us needs that.

traveler1116

« Reply #23 on: March 01, 2011, 10:07 »
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My BME in terms of RPI and total revenue for the month, pretty great considering Feb had just 28 days.  I'm about 2.5 years into microstock, and the growth continues at roughly the same pace as my very first months, though some sites are performing much better than others.  

Shutterstock - steady growth
Fotolia - fantastic growth
Dreamstime - steady
IS - peaked for me in Oct/Nov 2010 and has since been on a steady decline

All the rest - steady growth

I think it says a lot about iStock's position in the industry right now.  My port is posting great and steadily rising numbers on just about every site except IS.  I think my numbers are proof that buyers are slowly turning away from IS and buying elsewhere.
Not sure I'd say proof although I'm only on IS now, my feb. 2010 to 2011 is +80% although I did add about 120% images. 

« Reply #24 on: March 01, 2011, 10:52 »
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My BME in terms of RPI and total revenue for the month, pretty great considering Feb had just 28 days.  I'm about 2.5 years into microstock, and the growth continues at roughly the same pace as my very first months, though some sites are performing much better than others.  

Shutterstock - steady growth
Fotolia - fantastic growth
Dreamstime - steady
IS - peaked for me in Oct/Nov 2010 and has since been on a steady decline

All the rest - steady growth

I think it says a lot about iStock's position in the industry right now.  My port is posting great and steadily rising numbers on just about every site except IS.  I think my numbers are proof that buyers are slowly turning away from IS and buying elsewhere.
Not sure I'd say proof although I'm only on IS now, my feb. 2010 to 2011 is +80% although I did add about 120% images. 

My Feb 2011 is also up significantly over Feb 2010, by about 60%.  But the proof of a decline I'm seeing is the fact that for the past four months every agency but IS has posted steady, solid gains for me while IS has posted slow, steady losses.  When every runner is sprinting forward, but one is crawling backward, clearly there's something wrong with that one under-performer.


 

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