Quote from: Freedom on August 15, 2012, 17:12

What is considered a "mature portfolio"?

I'd describe a 'mature portfolio' as that from a contributor who has been uploading reasonably steadily for 5-6 years+. That's about how long it takes to hit 'the wall' when the additional sales from new uploads are largely balanced out by fewer sales from older uploads (due to additional competition since they were first uploaded). That's the point at which your income stabilises and you can only grow it by massively increasing either quantity, quality or both. A severe change in the income from a 'mature portfolio' is a much stronger indication of a change at a particular agency or the industry in general than someone who is relatively new and still growing (as that disguises the effect).

Indeed!  so true it could be from a textbook.

Quote from: Freedom on August 15, 2012, 17:12

What is considered a "mature portfolio"?

I'd describe a 'mature portfolio' as that from a contributor who has been uploading reasonably steadily for 5-6 years+. That's about how long it takes to hit 'the wall' when the additional sales from new uploads are largely balanced out by fewer sales from older uploads (due to additional competition since they were first uploaded). That's the point at which your income stabilises and you can only grow it by massively increasing either quantity, quality or both. A severe change in the income from a 'mature portfolio' is a much stronger indication of a change at a particular agency or the industry in general than someone who is relatively new and still growing (as that disguises the effect).

Thanks for the answer.

Quote from: lisafx on August 15, 2012, 12:37

I agree.  Diversification last year managed to hold to 2010 levels, but that isn't helping this year.  Sales down from prior year nearly every month.  Summer sales shockingly bad.  I am quite surprised that there are people with mature portfolios who aren't feeling this.  Maybe it is that the lifestyle areas I shoot in are more overcrowded than the good niches? 

Lifestyle for sure is way overcrowded - every time I submit new lifestyle images, the returns are way worse than expected. They just get buried in thousands and thousands of similars. It used to be that having models in your images would give you immediate advantage, but now it's the opposite. I also noticed that when I come up with some original spin on a lifestyle theme and get it on online, a bit later I see surprisingly similar - almost identical images in Yuri Arcurs's and other portfolios that specialize in people. The concept gets copied down to the model's hair color and style and exact face expressions. Not going to give examples here, this is unfortunately business as usual. The only consolation is that production factories are burying themselves too with this overcrowding, even though they are taking us down with them.
I am back to shooting what I like and when I like - just they way I started, at least I enjoy what I do and get some money from it... but looks like I am not getting rich off microstock after all...

If the bold statement was in Facebook -- I would like it.   

Quote from: lisafx on August 15, 2012, 12:37

I agree.  Diversification last year managed to hold to 2010 levels, but that isn't helping this year.  Sales down from prior year nearly every month.  Summer sales shockingly bad.  I am quite surprised that there are people with mature portfolios who aren't feeling this.  Maybe it is that the lifestyle areas I shoot in are more overcrowded than the good niches? 

Lifestyle for sure is way overcrowded - every time I submit new lifestyle images, the returns are way worse than expected. They just get buried in thousands and thousands of similars. It used to be that having models in your images would give you immediate advantage, but now it's the opposite. I also noticed that when I come up with some original spin on a lifestyle theme and get it on online, a bit later I see surprisingly similar - almost identical images in Yuri Arcurs's and other portfolios that specialize in people. The concept gets copied down to the model's hair color and style and exact face expressions. Not going to give examples here, this is unfortunately business as usual. The only consolation is that production factories are burying themselves too with this overcrowding, even though they are taking us down with them.
I am back to shooting what I like and when I like - just they way I started, at least I enjoy what I do and get some money from it... but looks like I am not getting rich off microstock after all...

Great post Elena!  Sums up my experience and feelings exactly. 

A couple of years ago I really did think I was going to get rich doing this, or at least lead a comfortable lifestyle for the foreseeable future.  Now it looks like I will be lucky to hang in there a couple more years until my daughter finishes college. 

Happy to hear you are back to shooting what you like!  I am getting to that point too.  With all the work involved in setting up lifestyle shoots- models, locations, props, etc. - it is getting harder and harder to motivate myself to do it with so little return.  In my case, I don't even remember what I used to like shooting though, so may put down the camera altogether in the near future. 

With over 6000 Images in traditional RF (macro)... Through four different channels...
Definitively no increase in sales over the last 6 months. Sorry to say that.

Shutterstock is winning big time on it's subscription model and has always had a very restrictive commission policy. Cleaver business model, but problematic when it succeeds... For us...

I understand what you, Elena and Lisa just said but if both of you aren�t "rich", who are the rich persons doing microstock? I am saying that coz both of you are in the top 100 contributors for sure

I know everybody has different expenses (houses, kids, cars, etc) but in the end we are the ones making those expenses and need to understand where we are heading and if it is worth the run, not saying that you don�t know (I am sure a lot better than I do)

but what does "rich" mean? its relative like I have said but ain�t enough over 5k a month, over 10k to be considered rich?

if 5k $ doesn't make a person rich I wonder how most of the people can live and what makes them? incredible poor?

Interesting question...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_middle_class

There is a difference between being "rich" and "middle class" Middle class works their butts off to maintain relatively comfortable lifestyle. I you have a family and live in expensive place like Toronto, middle class income is barely enough.
My daughter is going to university in a year. I also paying her private school tuition since public education is not satisfactory. Real estate prices in Toronto are insane and getting worse, so are property and other taxes. Not to mention very high Canadian income tax. So after all with all the micro and macro income I am doing "ok", but it's a very long way to "rich"

Absolutely.  I am a long way off from any reasonable definition of "rich".  Rich or wealthy would be what, top 5-10% of the country?  Checking median incomes in the US, I am definitely just middle class.  And that's with my husband and my incomes combined.

Having lost 1/3 of my income this year despite putting in the same amount of work, No I am not feeling the least bit rich.  On top of that, my shoots this year have failed to cover expenses.  

I understand what you, Elena and Lisa just said but if both of you aren�t "rich", who are the rich persons doing microstock? I am saying that coz both of you are in the top 100 contributors for sure

I know everybody has different expenses (houses, kids, cars, etc) but in the end we are the ones making those expenses and need to understand where we are heading and if it is worth the run, not saying that you don�t know (I am sure a lot better than I do)

but what does "rich" mean? its relative like I have said but ain�t enough over 5k a month, over 10k to be considered rich?

if 5k $ doesn't make a person rich I wonder how most of the people can live and what makes them? incredible poor?

Jonathan Klein, Jon Oringer, Sean Locke...   

Having lost 1/3 of my income this year despite putting in the same amount of work, No I am not feeling the least bit rich.  On top of that, my shoots this year have failed to cover expenses.  

Sorry to hear that, Lisa.
In previous years,would you have expected shoots to pay for themselves within e.g. six months?

This topic kind of got me thinking about a different question:

Looking at your own general climate, your work, your process, your style, etc., are you changing or not?

I don't know if this is necessarily the secret to why I'm not only doing ok year after year but I'm continuing to see growth, but I think at least part of why I manage to continue selling is that I try to reinvent my work every year. I try not to reuse anything in my vectors that wasn't made within the current calendar year. In fact, I have folders for my various reference materials and vector assets that get reused in more than one image and they're labeled by year, and I almost never pull from a previous year's folder for a new image. I also try to branch into different styles, even if they are things outside my comfort zone, and experiment with different techniques. Some work, some don't, but I'm rarely sticking with just one style of image and repeating it. The exception being the current rend with vintage labels and badges which I can't seem to stop doing.

I bring this up because I'm looking at my stats and historically, when I've had trouble influencing my own income, it's been at times when I either wasn't working enough or I was repeating the same stuff too much. A few years back I did well with some icon sets and then over-did it with repeating them, creating about 2 dozen sets of way too similar icons. It hurt me in the long run because I was competing with myself.

I'm wondering if maybe we're all a little too inclined to stick with what we know in this business. And as much as we like to point to the business when it comes to identifying the problems and changes, we seldom look at ourselves. I'm not saying that this explains why anyone is doing well or not. For me personally, I think it's helped me to force myself to clear the canvas often and try new things. Anyone else have any thoughts on this? Have you seen any change in income based on how your work has changed?

^^^ I agree with you.  I think there's a few reasons why most of us hit an earnings wall but not being able to keep changing what we upload is probably the biggest factor.  It's so easy to have a small diverse portfolio but it gets harder the longer you do this.  But I do think that if the commission cuts hadn't happened, I would feel more inclined to put the hours in to microstock and work on constantly changing my style.  Not knowing how much the sites are going to be paying in 5 years time has destroyed my long term plans with microstock and now I'm looking at other ways to make money from photography.

I think this is true. We can always diversify what we are doing and improve our numbers in stock, but there is that problem of fighting an uphill battle. An agency can easily wipe out a whole years worth of growth with a few percentage point change. Then there is the question of whether it is right to get 20%-30& of the royalties that average out to $1 or $2. I looked at my iStock numbers at their peak and thought... if they would have paid me 50% then, I probably would not have bothered with the other agencies. They would have seemed cheap and insignificant. Obviously, that didn't happen, so I spread out to various agencies and undercut IS, myself, and pretty much everybody else. I guess I find it more frustrating than not being rich that I have something valuable and profitable that gets wasted because it keeps getting thrown in the bargain bin or trash.

Quote from: lisafx on August 17, 2012, 15:24

Having lost 1/3 of my income this year despite putting in the same amount of work, No I am not feeling the least bit rich.  On top of that, my shoots this year have failed to cover expenses.  

Sorry to hear that, Lisa.
In previous years,would you have expected shoots to pay for themselves within e.g. six months?

I don't keep exact records of when shoots pay for themselves, but in past years when I uploaded a good lifestyle shoot it would sell like hotcakes pretty much off the bat and keep selling.  This year they are mostly just sitting collecting dust and the occasional sale.  I believe Sean has said the same thing, more or less too, along with Elena above.  The market for lifestyle is just saturated, plain and simple. That, along with the cuts in royalties and the search engine jiggering are all making this business truly unsustainable.