MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: UKstock on May 01, 2017, 08:57
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Well after a horribly slow start and all throughout Easter, things picked up towards the end of April. Comparable to 2016 but that's not fantastic after a lot of uploading. Shifting sands? Shutterstock starting to slide against others including Fotolia perhaps. May might give a clearer indication.
How was your April?
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After a good February and BME in March, April was an absolute horror.
I do video only.
SS for several months has been in old-files-only mode: 95% of my sales came from just a single file.
FT and P5 very bad too. I wonder if this is due to the new partnership program and disruptions due to mirroring P5 files on Adobe platform.
Easter was in the middle of the month and this probably affected sales
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Surprisingly, income for April was pretty good; best for the last 12 months on iStock (though that refers to March sales of course), and overall best income since Jan 2014, including video and RM, although again those mostly came from sales in prior months.
Still 15% down on BME but that's not too bad and at least it's on the up for once.
Remains to be seen whether or not it's just a blip!
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Started horribly but started growing steadily towards the end of a month, some random strange sales too, not the usual sellers.
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I haven't done my stats workup yet, but like others I had a dismal first couple weeks due to Easter and Spring Breaks (I assume), but things picked up late in the month. I'll finish below March, but still made a decent amount overall.
Istock was a surprise. Ive been waiting to see what sales did before removing the rest of my port. The April payout for March was almost as much as I made before the changes. They came in as my third highest earning site and within a hundred or so $ of SS and FT.
So far still making enough there to justify leaving my old stuff. I expect this will bring me some heat here, but I made enough there to pay my mortgage. If they keep selling my 5-8 years old pics and I don't see the expected drop in earnings, I'll stay put.
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On my side the whole 2017 Shutterstock have dropped a lot, I seem to have 1500 to 2000 less sales than last years on Shutterstock. Good thing though, other sites compensates for this loss but I hope Shutterstock will pick up later this year, I have been enjoying the good sales there :)
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BME! Mostly cause of my first premium license sale on pond5.
But strong on every site.
Good mix of new and old stuff
My almost 4 month saleless period even ended on videoblocks.
Just couple of sales and one refund, but now I know that i'm still visible there 😁
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Better than I expected - mostly due to a few big Alamy sales. SS was pretty horrible (about 1/3 of my 2012 average there) but actually beat an even worse December. Pretty much every site that matters was either close to or less than March, but March was good. Adobe was rising nicely but went down in April.
The thing that worries me is that it is just a few somewhat random sales that account for making this a decent month. The total # of sales at sites like SS are down a lot.
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Best month since October.
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Big drop att SS some 40-50% Adobe down 30% but compensated by a couple of other agencies who seems to have gotten that business. A couple of the more traditional agencies show at least a 40% growth and these are the agencies where I lay almost all my concentration on nowadays.
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SS - very good month (50% better than last April)
FT/AS - disappointing results
All the rest: average/normal (with a "+" for P5)
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I had to go back to March 2007 for a worse month. Unbelievably bad.
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Biggest let down since 2013
A floating turd had more get up and go than SS
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Overall:
-69% vs. Mar 2017
-69% vs. Apr 2016
Biggest losers were my (normally) biggest winners, SS, FT, 123RF, while others didn't even showed up. Devastated. what was that??
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Second really bad month of the year.
Down 48% compared to April 2016
Down 42% compared to March 2017
Shutterstock was worst month since Dec of 2012, and first month since then below $100. SAD.
YTD down 20%compared to 2016.
Not seeing a Trump bump in sales in 2017, that is for sure.
Haven't seen the Getty/iStock numbers yet, of course, but so far that is the only bright spot.
123RF, Dreamstime are holding steady
Alamy is down
fotolia up slightly compared to beginning of 2016, but down from end of 2016.
Shutterstock is dreadful and getting worse.
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The thing that worries me is that it is just a few somewhat random sales that account for making this a decent month. The total # of sales at sites like SS are down a lot.
Yep. That's the trouble with SS this last year. April marginally better than March but now the months of this year are around 25-50% down on previous years despite a portfolio increase of 50% in the last 2 years. Going to have to find a more remunerative reward for my genius! ;D
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For iS credits, the only month with fewer credit sales was Dec 2006. My first file was accepted on 19th of that month, so that's how bad April was. In March, I noticed that subs had fallen considerably in favour of premium access sales, at least for my port. It makes sense for them to push buyers towards these to cream off more of the money.
Alamy: stable. Another couple of months and my personal reality should settle a bit and free up time for occasional shoots.
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Mostly video here and lot better month then April! Strong sales across all sites!
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I had to go back to March 2007 for a worse month. Unbelievably bad.
Same here! >:(
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April was little less than march, but my 1st day of may is worse, I don't know what happened to sales, was it some holiday ?
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April was little less than march, but my 1st day of may is worse, I don't know what happened to sales, was it some holiday ?
1st day of may is labour day in several parts of the world
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April was not bad...due to ODDs and one big SOD.
Without these... :(
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Bad
but good start in May (fingers crossed)
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Meh, about the same as last year with a lot more images online. So can't complain but can't be too overjoyed either.
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So far in 2017 SS a consistent 30% down on 2016 which is a worry. FT, DT, DP CS very close to 2016. Good month on Canva, 123 and Alamy, but not enough to balance drop on SS.
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awful, awful and more awful.
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76c below payout!!! Dire.
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It was a fairly average month. May is off to a much better start.
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March and April have been best months so far...
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It started slow but ended up being fine - a little less than April last year but no complaints. That was mainly due to higher-value sales - more clip sales than usual at SS, multiple ELs on SS and even one on 123, Canva doing great (although a lot less than last year), FT very strong, DT and CS weak, others OK and even a couple of sales on featurepics. Wish it would continue but without the rare, high-value sales it would be grim as volume was down more than 300 DLs from April 2016.
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I've dropped back to January 2015 levels, but at least a slight bounce back from last month. Shutterstock, unfortunately, has dropped 50% in six months.
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Yes^^ strange but the ones of us who declare a drop at SS. Always between 40-50% drop! wow! wht a coincidence ::)
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Latest SS figures
First Quarter 2017 highlights as compared to First Quarter 2016:
Financial Highlights
"Revenue increased 12% to $130.2 million
Income from operations decreased 5% to $10.3 million
Net income increased 8% to $6.6 million
Adjusted EBITDA decreased 3% to $23.2 million
Diluted EPS increased 12% to $0.19 per share
Key Operating Metrics
Paid downloads increased 6%
Revenue per download increased 5%
Image collection expanded 63% to 132.0 million images
Video collection expanded 64% to 6.9 million clips."
So downloads up 6% but submissions up an eyewatering 63%. So on average a drop of 40-50% none too surprising. Not a poor financial performance but doesn't justify the share price imho.
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https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/05/03/tepid-results-reveal-shutterstocks-vulnerabilities.aspx (https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/05/03/tepid-results-reveal-shutterstocks-vulnerabilities.aspx)
http://investor.shutterstock.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=251362&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2269176 (http://investor.shutterstock.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=251362&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2269176)
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Pretty average month for me. I've published my normal blog post about earnings and done a comparison month by month that shows consistency over the past 4 years, which would sound good if I hadn't increased my portfolio by perhaps 50% over that time!
(http://i1.wp.com/www.backyardsilver.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/MonthEarningApr.png?resize=300%2C218)
http://www.backyardsilver.com/2017/05/stock-photo-earnings-april-2017/ (http://www.backyardsilver.com/2017/05/stock-photo-earnings-april-2017/)
Steve
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An OK month, almost exactly as expected. SS down, other stocks up. If it's a reflection of the overall SS performance, hopefully the management will do something about it. Even if they do, I am not sure it will have an impact on my total income.
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I made about a third of what I used to make at my peak. That's just about normal for the last year or so. But I'm only clinging to that because I pick up a handful of quite large sales each month. Without those, things would really look quite dire which is a bit concerning.
Still, I've had a good run and quite a bit of fun.
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My volume sales at Shutterstock have fallen off a cliff and the decent size sales have evaporated too. I've come to the conclusion that Microstock just isn't worth the effort anymore. It's impossible for me to swim against the tide and survive. Sadly, I'll leave the field free for those working out of smaller economies...
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I made about a third of what I used to make at my peak. That's just about normal for the last year or so. But I'm only clinging to that because I pick up a handful of quite large sales each month. Without those, things would really look quite dire which is a bit concerning.
Still, I've had a good run and quite a bit of fun.
I know its strange but somehow always the same and some big sales saving the overall situation and you can imagine uploads up 63% well in a year or two down about 80-90% and then its goodbye SS.
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After almost BME in March, April was -3% compared to average of 2016.
All my comparisons made with averages of 2016. Sorted by earnings on April.
1. Shutterstock -1% (after BME in March)
2. Pond5 +21% (BME since June of 2016)
3. Fotolia +15%
4. 123rf +172% (#2 of all time)
5. deposit +42%
6. Videoblocks -84% (WME with only 1 sale)
Last three years i work only on videos.