You forget the opportunity cost.

Let's say it takes you 20 hours to upload to the the sites that make you $1600

Sounds fantastic doesn't it an hourly rate of $80?

Had you instead invested those 20 hours on your best returning site you may have made $4000

The difference is opportunity cost.

Understand now? :-)

I don't understand.  You are just pulling whatever numbers you want out of thin air.  The only real number was $1600 and you just made up the other two.  If the numbers you gave are accurate then people should be able to pull in $16000 a month in microstock just by working 20 hours a week.  I wonder how many people are able to do that.

Quote from: michealo on April 17, 2013, 11:52

There is a flaw in your logic there too
The choice is between uploading lots of files to sites that have poor returns versus creating new files that can be uploaded to sites with good returns.

To equal the average return of SS (83.9) seen across one needs to upload From Depositphotos down to Cutcaster (16 sites) (87.5)

If you have 1000 images at Shutterstock then you can double your income by uploading to every site from Deposit to Cutcaster.

To double your income with just Shutterstock you would need to produce 1000 new images, and that would take a LOT more time than just uploading already existing photos to other sites.

Well said; good post.

Quote from: michealo on April 17, 2013, 11:52

There is a flaw in your logic there too
The choice is between uploading lots of files to sites that have poor returns versus creating new files that can be uploaded to sites with good returns.

To equal the average return of SS (83.9) seen across one needs to upload From Depositphotos down to Cutcaster (16 sites) (87.5)

If you have 1000 images at Shutterstock then you can double your income by uploading to every site from Deposit to Cutcaster.

To double your income with just Shutterstock you would need to produce 1000 new images, and that would take a LOT more time than just uploading already existing photos to other sites.

Taking more images should in theory improve you photography / editing skills.
Doing more admin makes you better at admin.

If you take your 1000 image portfolio 20% will make 80% of the revenue
shooting more like these and uploading to SS and a few other higher returning sites would be more beneficial than uploading the same 1000 files to every site that exists.

spending 20 hours on tax planning or developing your photographic or editing skills might give a better return too

If you knew which 20% like the saying about advertising spending 50% is wasted the problem is knowing which 50%

It's the 20% that sell most - it's not rocket science.

I didn't liken stock photography to rocket science.

I said 20% of a portfolio will make 80% of the revenue.

And working out that 20% isn't rocket science.

Quote from: michealo on April 18, 2013, 07:11

I didn't liken stock photography to rocket science.

I said 20% of a portfolio will make 80% of the revenue.

And working out that 20% isn't rocket science.

If it's so easy to work out the high sellers, everyone's sales would be evenly high throughout.
On the downside, the collections would be even more evenly generic than they are just now, and the buyers would have less choice.

You can't work out the the 20% of your portfolio that sells the most?

Quote from: ShadySue on April 18, 2013, 07:30

Quote from: michealo on April 18, 2013, 07:11

I didn't liken stock photography to rocket science.

I said 20% of a portfolio will make 80% of the revenue.

And working out that 20% isn't rocket science.

If it's so easy to work out the high sellers, everyone's sales would be evenly high throughout.
On the downside, the collections would be even more evenly generic than they are just now, and the buyers would have less choice.

You can't work out the the 20% of your portfolio that sells the most?

Indeed, but mine are out of the usual as of my top 20 sellers:
2 are of the kitchen in my old day job the day it opened. I have no access to it any more, and it certainly isn't new.
2 are of an iceberg in Newfoundland. That iceberg has done very well for me, and paid for the trip over several images. However, there's no guarantee that any are there at any given time, and I was lucky in that that one was particularly pretty, and I could shoot it twice, a week apart, and also sail all round it. Not always the case.
5 are scanned slides from Kenya, taken long before I was on iS.
1 was taken in Uganda, another more recent Kenya one
1 Grand Canyon
1 winter shot
2 which sold nothing until they were put into the Dollar Bin, then took off
3 random isolations, which sold well in the first couple of years then floundered. Took hours to set up; hours to clean up in post, as I don't have lighting; did in my back, as I don't have a studio and was 'making do'.

So, nothing I can exactly recreate this afternoon when it's raining APU. Also these have a huge cost, so a simple rpd or rpi doesn't cut it.

Also more recent safari pics which IMO are actually better haven't sold so well. These early scans almost certainly wouldn't even get accepted nowadays. One in particular has a very strong 'rival' on iS, and I'm astonished every time mine still sells. (Similarly, they almost certainly wouldn't get into other agencies.)

YMMV.

PS: As a comparison, I just a couple of minutes ago had a dl of a pic I took 'randomly' (I just 'saw' it when the light was good) when out for a meal. First download, uploaded 2009 (!).
Cost to take: $0; rpd: $7.31. 
No cost calculations are simple. That one has now netted me more 'profit percentage' than any of my highest sellers. FWIW.

No, it's certainly not rocket science. Rocket science is both predictable and replicable. Stock photography is not. There is a huge amount of luck involved in how an individual image will sell on one agency or another which is why an image might sell 1000x on one agency and only 5x at another. Even Yuri freely admits that he only rarely knows if an image will do well or not.

You get a heart for this. That first line cracked me up.

Well now you've all moved this well off topic, I will attempt to bring it back a little towards subject 

I made the decision but not lightly, out of the 15 agencies I have finally decided to remove my ports from 5.

 Not 'may as well leave my pics there and see' attitude, they have had more than their time to perform and still do not So to quote Suggsy 'They failed miserably, you're fired!'

I say no more chances for underperformers, they reserve the right to pick and choose which of your pics they want and still can't sell them? Give them the boot!

By dropping a third of the agencies this really does let me just focus quality time with the ones that have always looked after me well.

Having done the math there is no great loss to me in this culling and the time saved and put into performing agencies should more than make up for it.

Sounds like a smart idea. 

If the site has an extremely easy uploading process and there are at least some sales, I can't see any reason why not upload.

I have a dozen of sites where the active uploading time (just a few clicks) is about 1 minute per month and each site makes be around $200/year. And that's just for 12 minutes of extra work per year. That's $1000 per hour, a very nice rate.