Author Topic: January 2011 Microstock Earnings Thread (Read 16238 times)

leaf · « **on:** February 01, 2011, 04:00 »

How was your January?

I'm just about to calculate my months totals so I'm post them as soon as I'm done. Also, as always, don't forget to vote in the monthly poll. http://www.microstockgroup.com/pollsvote/
I will be interesting to see how the sites juggle around this year.

Ellerslie · « **Reply #1 on:** February 01, 2011, 04:19 »

Well, I was waiting for this thread since some days because my earnings are very strange. I've sold a lot only on Shutterstock and, more or less, nothing on the other agencies so I'm thinking to remain only on SS.

This is about

Fotolia: - 80%
Dreastime: =
Shutterstock:............... + 127% (!!!

)

and what can you tell me?

p.s. Always, sorry for my terrible english.

ibogdan · « **Reply #2 on:** February 01, 2011, 04:27 »

Actually January was my BME with SS, FT, 123rf being BME indeed. Istock was solid, DT, average and the rest weak, just as usual. A pleasant suprirse was Veer which brought me a nice number of sales.
The big disappointments are Canstock, been there for half a year an they earned me only 4$ in this time; Crestock, since August 2008 and they earned me slightly more than 20$ since then, and Stockfresh, since July 2010, no sales and only 6-7 views for a portfolio of nearly 400 images...Not talking about Mostphotos, over a year and a big nothing. Only blah-blah

leaf · « **Reply #3 on:** February 01, 2011, 04:35 »

Ok, my totals are tallied. I had a BME which was exciting but $30 away from a goal post I was looking forward to hitting

Here is my graph

My total was 30% more than January 2010, mostly thanks to Veer and a number of good extended licenses. You can see in the graph that Veer was my number 2 site this month.

One other interesting note was that all the sites were up between 5%-100% but Fotolia singled themselves out as being the only site where earnings decreased, and that by 30%

aeonf · « **Reply #4 on:** February 01, 2011, 04:49 »

Exclusives at IS.

290 images + 2 EL's sold
825$ income
BME and a huge 61% increase from last month (no canister change).

joingated · « **Reply #5 on:** February 01, 2011, 05:11 »

Independant, about 2100 images on most sites, half photos half vectors.

Top 4 all doing well, bme for istock, nearly $1000 a month there now with small mostly vector portfolio (about 350 images) Im only on 16% there now.

Shout out to Veer for doing really really poorly for the first time, about $35!

The others were pocket change as normal, will stop contributing to agencies that deliver under $100 a month this year.

January a much better month than december where I was way down.

ShadySue · « **Reply #6 on:** February 01, 2011, 05:14 »

iStock exclusive. $$$ -20% compared to Jan '10, -c7% compared to Dec '10. (same royalty rate)
Downloads in total freefall -66% of Jan 2008 -68% Jan '09)
I was focussing on building my Alamy port, so only increased my iStock port by 6.5% in 2010

visceralimage · « **Reply #7 on:** February 01, 2011, 05:15 »

Leaf, how many images online to generate the sort of traffic and those numbers

leaf · « **Reply #8 on:** February 01, 2011, 05:38 »

Quote from: visceralimage on February 01, 2011, 05:15

Leaf, how many images online to generate the sort of traffic and those numbers

traffic?
I have 5000 on Dreamstime, 1600 on iStock and around 6000 on Shutterstock.. the other sites are somewhere in between those numbers.

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #9 on:** February 01, 2011, 07:06 »

Weird month. iS, DT and Fot all down - the last two even worse than iS.

SS, 123, CanStockPhoto, BS all up quite nicely.

20% down year on year.

NitorPhoto · « **Reply #10 on:** February 01, 2011, 08:04 »

I observe the same tendencie every months. IS is going down while FT and SS is going up. If I compare it to Jan 2010 my overall income is +50% higher while my IS income is down by 15%. DT is very slowly growing but I can't check the recent statistics since their site is down all day.

cthoman · « **Reply #11 on:** February 01, 2011, 10:41 »

Very strange month. If this is the way the year is going to go, I'm not sure what to expect.

SS - 20%
IS - 17%
CanStockPhoto - 15%
my site - 13%
CLO - 13%
DT - 7%
FT - 3%
VS - 3%
V - 2%
123 - 2%
BS - 1%
GL - 1%

WarrenPrice · « **Reply #12 on:** February 01, 2011, 11:03 »

CUTCASTER came roaring to the front.

Really, it is slow but "When it rains it pours." Love those niches.

Pretty good month all around. Barely getting started at iStock. All the negative chatter is very discouraging.

Three months of PENDING sales at Thinkstock; iStock's baby sister.

Daevid · « **Reply #13 on:** February 01, 2011, 11:06 »

Overall, I saw a 25% improvement in earnings over last January. Since I have about 25% more images online since last January, this almost makes too much sense.

Pixart · « **Reply #14 on:** February 01, 2011, 11:14 »

This was my poorest month since December 2008. RPD seems to be crashing on FT and IS (surprize, surprize). I hope this is not everyone's trend.

I'll Post my RPD's for top 4.
IS .62 (previous low 2008 $1.11 / I'm not in subs program)
SS $1.72 (and this is a "subs" site, over 45% from OD's no EL's)
DT $2.2 (pretty much the same)
FT .59 2/3 of sales were subs - has FT be a subs-only site?

Xalanx · « **Reply #15 on:** February 01, 2011, 12:11 »

Overall up almost 100% from last January. It's the year when I went full time on photography and it shows.
So most agencies are up (with SS in the lead), except for Dreamstime, which was catastrophically down. I seem not to get that agency at all.

lisafx · « **Reply #17 on:** February 01, 2011, 12:13 »

January was pretty dismal. Better than December, but that's not saying a lot. Sales up 5% from December and down 7% from Jan 2010.

Here's the breakdown by site, with the growth or decline of the top sites since Jan '10 in ()

   ISP   37% (-13%)
   SS   21% (+25%)
   DT   13% (-6%)
   Fot   18% (-9%)
   BigStock   4%
   123   2%
   Crest   0%
   CanStockPhoto   2%
   Alm   3%

From my stats it looks like the trend of Istock sales migrating to Shutterstock continues.

lisafx · « **Reply #18 on:** February 01, 2011, 12:16 »

Quote from: leaf on February 01, 2011, 04:35

My total was 30% more than January 2010, mostly thanks to Veer and a number of good extended licenses. You can see in the graph that Veer was my number 2 site this month.

Wow! Congrats Tyler! I have 550 images on Veer and still not enough to make payout. How many images do you have there?

Hoping that when I get more of my port online I will start to see some sales...

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #19 on:** February 01, 2011, 12:36 »

IS exclusive. January wasn't bad given that the site was a wreck and it's typically a slow month for me anyway.

$$ flat with December and up 25% on January 2010. Downloads were down 10% on December and 4% on January 2010. I guess when we see where March is, we'll have a better idea of where 2011 is heading.

ETA a comment on the poll. Perhaps it really isn't useful to have exclusives at any one site, complete the poll, but if you're interested in capturing that, having some numbers above $1,000 would make sense. I never fill this in as it would always be the same - at least $1,000.

pancaketom · « **Reply #20 on:** February 01, 2011, 13:21 »

This is cut and pasted...

SS: No ELs or video sales but more DL than any month since Nov 2008 (perhaps because I uploaded a lot of new images?) and a pretty good $ return (would have been 4th best of 2010).
DT: One of my worst months here in a while, low sales, low RPI.
IS: The new lower royalties kicked in the 11th. IS has been plagued with site problems. a poor month with no real optimism there.
FP: No ELs but a few decent sales.
123RF: not bad.
BigStock: Pretty poor - still just barely alive for me.
Veer: It picked up again with an EL and some other sales - BME here not counting the DFC.
Overall it was a decent start to the year thanks to SS, 123RF, and Vr but it is sad to see the commission cuts at IS (and at Fotolia too - one of the reasons I don't submit there). Hopefully it isn't the start of the second round of commission cuts.

Elenathewise · « **Reply #21 on:** February 01, 2011, 14:22 »

January was a good month for me, better than expected. My biggest earners this month were Fotolia, Istock, Shutterstock, and Dreamstime (in that order).
Not the best month ever, but definitely not the worst.

jm · « **Reply #22 on:** February 01, 2011, 14:42 »

January was my BME - total and thanks to great ten last days DT and 123.
SS - 50%
Zazzle - 13%
FT - 13%
DT - 8%
123 - 5%
Veer - 4%
Can - 3%
BS - 2%
GL - 1%
DP - 1%

redo · « **Reply #23 on:** February 01, 2011, 15:34 »

agency %2011 (%2010) +-%

istock 28 (35) -7
shutterstock 25 (16) +9
fotolia 21 (20) +1
dreamstime 13 (16) -3
canstock 8 (2) +6
bigstock 2 (1) +1
veer 2 (2) +-0
123rf 1 (1) +-0
StockXpert - (7) -7

from Hellman & Friedman -14% !

dreamstime -3%

others +17%

-15% compare to January 2010

but the last 12 months I uploaded only 10-20 pictures.

jamirae · « **Reply #24 on:** February 01, 2011, 15:39 »

well.. I'm still building my ports at SS, FT, DT, StockFresh (SF) and Alamy since quitting exclusivity at istock in october. I'm slow because I have very little time outside family and the job that pays the bill, but thought I'd provide an update on my status as a new independent.

IS - downloads are about equal to what I did in 2010 but the dollars are dramatically down since I went from 35% Gold canister royalties to the new RC scheme at an Independent level of 16%.

important to note that I only have about 1/10th of my port uploaded on sites other than IS right now.

SS - is great for downloads and it is my second best earner after IS.

DT - 3rd place for me with some decent earnings, but I think I need to work on the portfolio building and promotion there to make that one start earning more for me.

FT - haven't seem to caught on to FT yet, only a small number of sales, think I need to build my port more there.

SF - not one sale there. But then I noticed that the file with the highest amount of downloads there seems to be just '9 downloads' so I'm hoping they get their marketing going soon to promote the site.

Alamy - I only just got accepted there so haven't put any more images other than the initial 4 or 5 so no sales yet.

leaf · « **Reply #25 on:** February 01, 2011, 16:48 »

Quote from: lisafx on February 01, 2011, 12:16

Quote from: leaf on February 01, 2011, 04:35

My total was 30% more than January 2010, mostly thanks to Veer and a number of good extended licenses. You can see in the graph that Veer was my number 2 site this month.

Wow! Congrats Tyler! I have 550 images on Veer and still not enough to make payout. How many images do you have there?

Hoping that when I get more of my port online I will start to see some sales...

I have 5350 images on Veer. I uploaded everything I felt worthwhile when they had their dash for cash promotion. 1300 images are also from the PhotoOp, but still, the photoop images still account for less than 20% of my sales (last month at least). The big jump in income came from a group of extended license sales on a series of images. I think I had $250 in EL that day. I like Veer's higher prices... my average return per download was just over $5.00 last month.

madelaide · « **Reply #26 on:** February 01, 2011, 17:19 »

Once again, less money. I am making my way out of microstock, for sure!

Oldhand · « **Reply #27 on:** February 01, 2011, 17:33 »

Hi there

$1500 from usual sites, SS accounted for well over $600 of them. Up to 4,000+ pics and illustrations of mediocre stuff. IS's contribution negligable as I'm not a fan anymore.

Not a bad return since my retirement from full time stock and return to the office - I only put in 2 days work per week. Tell you what - having the income as a bonus rather than a wage is great.

Rgds

Oldhand

melastmohican · « **Reply #28 on:** February 01, 2011, 18:18 »

25% less than December. From top 5 only 123RF was better than in previous month.

http://melastmohican.net/wordpress/2011/02/01/january-2011-earnings-breakdown/

disorderly · « **Reply #29 on:** February 01, 2011, 19:05 »

Strange month. Down 2% from December, and down 16% from January, 2010. Fotolia did particularly well, edging past iStock for the first time. Curious to see how that plays out, with the iStock royalty cut in effect and the Fotolia cut to come. 123 edged out Dreamstime for the second straight month, pushing DT to fifth place.

Shutterstock	33.9%	-6.2%
Fotolia	16.9%	+34.8%
iStockphoto	16.6%	-8.1%
123RF	8.7%	-36.2%
Dreamstime	8.5%	-16.0%
BigStockPhoto	5.3%	-19.3%
Zoonar	4.3%
Veer	1.8%	-23.8%
CanStockPhoto	1.7%	+37.0%
Graphic Leftovers	1.0%
Deposit Photos	1.0%	-20.6%
Stock Fresh	.3%	+100.0%
Cres	.3%	+260.0%

klsbear · « **Reply #30 on:** February 01, 2011, 19:30 »

Too new at this to have year-to-year comparisons but I did notice a few trends that were encouraging. DT started getting regular DL's and I had some regular traffic at FT too, as well as IS and SS. SS has been my best in the past and it was down a lot this month. I attribute that to the fact that a good deal of my portfolio was Fall and Holiday. Got a slow start uploading new content but I'm starting to see some returns for those images and so far, a 100% acceptance rate on the new images has been encouraging.

Noodles · « **Reply #31 on:** February 01, 2011, 19:47 »

iStock Exclusive

48% down on last month
63% better that January last year

I'm so proud I worked out how to do stats

visceralimage · « **Reply #32 on:** February 02, 2011, 03:37 »

DT exclusive, last full month of being exclusive at DT.

Up almost double my previous four month average in money earned. Total files online is 805 for DT. Working hard to prepare images for the new sites coming later this month.

Most seem to report that DT is anywhere from 10-15% of their total income. That being said, if I can make an addition 85% off the images I currently have, I will be pleased.

pancaketom · « **Reply #33 on:** February 02, 2011, 09:52 »

Quote from: visceralimage on February 02, 2011, 03:37

DT exclusive, last full month of being exclusive at DT.

Up almost double my previous four month average in money earned. Total files online is 805 for DT. Working hard to prepare images for the new sites coming later this month.

Most seem to report that DT is anywhere from 10-15% of their total income. That being said, if I can make an addition 85% off the images I currently have, I will be pleased.

You will likely take a hit in the commission % and placement at DT, so although after you get established at all the sites DT might be making 10-15% of your total, the amount at DT will probably be a bit lower too. Hopefully you have a good number of level 3 and above images which seem to make most of my returns at DT.

melking · « **Reply #34 on:** February 02, 2011, 09:57 »

My January 2011 Micro Stock Stats are here: http://melissaking.ca/wordpress/january-2011-micro-stock-stats/

gostwyck · « **Reply #35 on:** February 02, 2011, 10:44 »

Up 5% from December but down 2% compared to January 2010. Quite relieved by that as the slowdown in sales appeared to be accelerating over the last few months. Earnings for major agencies as follows (with 2010);

SS 32.9% (23.8 )
IS 27.6 (36.2)
FT 22.5 (22.1)
DT 12.3 (11.9)
BigStock 3.3 (1.9)

Istock have now slipped backwards, as a proportion of my overall earnings, for 7 consecutive months. However sales at SS and also BigStock continue to strengthen.

Actual earnings at each agency compared to 2010 were as follows;

SS +35%
IS -26%
FT 0%
DT 0%
BigStock +75%

oboy · « **Reply #36 on:** February 02, 2011, 11:32 »

These are for me the best 4 performing stock agencies for January 2011:

1. Shutterstock
2. Veer
3. Alamy
4. Can Stock Photo

January was a good month with a 7% increase compared to December. It was the best month ever for Alamy, Veer, and Clipdealer.

You can find my complete list here.

brookefuller · « **Reply #37 on:** February 02, 2011, 12:39 »

I am down for the first month in a long time, but not much, just $80.40

lienkie · « **Reply #38 on:** February 03, 2011, 01:24 »

I had a BME for both downloads and revenue overall. SS, DT and Canstock were BME's.

BS and 123RF were average performers.

jamirae · « **Reply #39 on:** February 04, 2011, 10:38 »

a lot of red down arrows in the poll results there in the right margin. is that normal for Jan or just not a lot people have reported in yet?

lisafx · « **Reply #40 on:** February 04, 2011, 18:54 »

I had forgotten to take the poll. My numbers aren't going to change the results any though..

leaf · « **Reply #41 on:** February 04, 2011, 19:19 »

Quote from: lisafx on February 04, 2011, 18:54

I had forgotten to take the poll. My numbers aren't going to change the results any though..

they would make the numbers stronger though.

ShadySue · « **Reply #42 on:** February 04, 2011, 20:06 »

That's interesting. Anecdotal evidence from the forums here seemed to suggest that SS was on the up, which doesn't seem to be supported by the poll.

pancaketom · « **Reply #43 on:** February 04, 2011, 21:06 »

I would say that the last quarter of the year was quite a bit different from the first half (as far as SS / IS) go, but looking at the whole year makes IS look stronger than it seems lately (and SS has swung up lately) at least that's how it seems to be, but the long term trends are more useful in the long term. If IS ever get's its collective act together they could come back.

ETA: oops, I was thinking about the yearly poll, not the monthly one - never mind, carry on.