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Author Topic: How it all adds up  (Read 3599 times)

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« on: June 22, 2009, 10:08 »
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So I spent some time today adding up all my microstock sales and earnings in the five years I've been submitting to various sites.  I've decided to go ahead and make this public since so many are secretive about what they actually earn in the microstock world.  Maybe this will shed a little light into the area.

Over five years I sold 37,143 image licenses through six agencies (IS,DT,SS,FT,123rf,StockXpert) for a total of $17,641.96, averaging $0.48 per license from a collection of about 1,700 images.  That puts my overall return per image per year at around $2.08.

There you go, not the best results in the world, but they've certainly paid for equipment upgrades and studio space.  Feel free to step up to the plate and share your cumulative totals, maybe it will help give people just starting out some realistic expectations.


« Reply #1 on: June 22, 2009, 10:33 »
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I did a similiar statistic over my big5 (IS,SS,DT,SX,FT) and came with these results. I have also images on other sites (both micro and macro) but those are not included here.

Years in business: about 4
Images produced: about 1500 (between 1200 and 1300 accepted images)
Total amount of licences sold: 46,931
Earned money: $31,392

About $20 for every image produced.

So, what is the situation now?
-RPI is falling because the market is getting oversaturated.

-I have no people shots in my portfolios (except some body parts like hands and such). People shots would most likely have better RPI's, but also more hassle: finding and booking models, releases etc.

-My production speed has increased significately, I just doubled my port size in one year,
and now I have the same goal (3000 images next summer)

-Still going strong, this month is propably going to be my best month ever.


Feel free to step up to the plate and share your cumulative totals, maybe it will help give people just starting out some realistic expectations.

I don't think my numbers give realistic expectations. I had a very good start in the beginning, 2005 RPIs were much better than now. I don't think I would have ever started if the RPIs were as bad as today.
« Last Edit: June 22, 2009, 10:37 by Perry »

« Reply #2 on: June 22, 2009, 11:36 »
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I'm on pace this year to have added another 600 or so by the end of the year, but I've had several long periods where I barely uploaded anything.  Looking at this again, about 40% of my portfolio are people shots now, but 80% of those shots have been added since June of last year.  I didn't really take that into account before, but my sales have been up this year on all the sites.  Not sure if that is due to uploading a lot more new images, or if it is the fact that they are images of people.

Either way, I agree with you on the best month ever, June has been particularly good to me in a time when I normally see sales slide quite a bit.



 

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