March 2013 Microstock Income Thread

[leaf]

How was your March?  I had a BME which I am getting to the point where I am thankful every time that happens (as apposed to expecting it) .. the wall is coming soon.  I'll post more detailed stats later today when I have things calculated.

Here is a direct link to submit your votes to the monthly poll, or go up to Poll > Submit Vote
http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?page=microstockmonthlysurvey

[fotografer]

best month for last 2 years.

[Poncke]

No BME overall. Only BME on 123RF. Very disappointing month to be honest. My growth is not what it should be. Struggling to increase sales for 6 months now and this is my first full year. So not doing too well I think. But then again, I spent no money on shoots. I did buy a new lens which I earned from stock sales

[Mellimage]

March wasn't that great for me. About 80% of the income I had made in February (and, even though I do not have exact numbers on that, significantly lower than last March as my FT income back then was about double to what it is now).

SS - about the same as last month - 53% of my overall income
FT - slightly lower than last month - 27%
DT - only 33% of the income of last month (which also was just an average month) - 10%
123rf - BMOTY - battled strongly with DT for the lost spot on my earnings rankings, lost by a small margin, yet - average earnings - 10%

[motionguy]

BME for me with a 300$ increase of the previous BME. Especially Pond5 (only footage) did really great for me.
Wish you all a fantastic april.

[Smithore]

BME on Pond 5 with photos and audio who start to sell well. Pond 5 is now my second earner after SS.
The other agencies are like always: they sell but are too stingy for the contributors.
123RF is performing a big drop, congrats!!!! I will call it 123 Rough Fall.
Istock is punished until death.
Alamy is a big disappointment.

[rubyroo]

My first response was 'bleah', as I was a fair way down from last month and my recent average, and I've never seen a drop across consecutive months like that in my entire stock history.  But I'm up on last March, and several hundred ahead of my cumulative from Jan to March last year - so at least that's a small positive.   It wasn't really a drop in sales volume that affected performance in March, but a massive drop in ELs.

From my figures:  iStock and 123RF sales seem to be going down the toilet and Bigstock is picking up.

[aeonf]

Worst month in years as an exclusive at IS (not for long).
~1,400$ if anyone wants to know.
Hopefully that will change soon.

[Jogga0]

first full month as an independent and royalties are 70% down compared to Mar 2012, hoping to improve on that next month!

[nicku]

Overall an above average month.

SS - above average
DT - above average
123RF - good revenue BME regarding sales
FT - average
Can stock - good month
DT - average

the pie slices:

SS - 63%
FT - 15%
DT- 10%
Can - 4%
DP - 3%
123 - 5%

[morning.light]

My earnings doubled compared to February, because the number of pics in my portfolio also doubled. SS and Fotolia make half of the income. 123RF, Deposit and Canstock are so-so. Dreamstime is a huge disappointment. As a beginner, I can say this is the first month when I'm seeing results and I finally feel encouraged to work more.

[Dan]

     Made  more  in  March  on  123RF  than  Feb  with  half  the  sales.

[MisterElements]

MrE: BME                                   
SS/BS: Avg
123rf:  BME
FT: Above Avg
DT: Avg
DP: Avg
Can: Avg
IS/TS: Below Avg
Zazzle: Below Avg
GL: Below Avg

MrE:  51%
SS/BS:23%
123RF: 6%
FT: 6%
DP: 3%
Can: 3%
DT: 2%
Can: 2%
IS/TS: 3%
Zazzle: less then 1%
GL: .01%

[disorderly]

Down 7% from February, but up 14% over March, 2012.  Year over year I'm up 9%.

123RF took top spot for me in March at 33% of my total.  Up 23% on February, up 100% over March, 2012 and up 89% year over year.

SS was #2 at 31%, down 37% over a particularly strong February.  Up 2% over March, 2012 and up 12% year over year.

iStock was #3 at 9%, up 8% on February.  Down 2% on March, 2012 but up 15% year over year.

Envato was #4 at 7%, up 81% on February.  Up 101% on March, 2012 but down 42% year over year (special bundle payment in 2011).

Deposit was #5 at 5%, even with February.  Up 11% on March, 2012 and up 124% year over year.

CanStock was #6 at 4%, down 14% on February.  Down 7% on March, 2012 and down 20% year over year.

DT was #7 at 4%, up 12% on February.  Down 23% on March, 2012 and down 15% year over year.

SignElements was #8 at 3%, up 252% on February.  Up 838% over March, 2012 and up 234% year over year.

BigStock was #9 at 2%, down 15% from February.  Down 41% from March, 2012 and down 13% year over year.  Not an auspicious result from their new subscription offering.

[sgoodwin4813]

Solid but unspectacular month.  BME on FT for $$$ and on SS and BS for DLs but not $$$.  Starting to see a lot of subs on BS so sales are up but revenue down - I am afraid subs sales there are taking away from regular DLs. 123rf dropping rapidly and ended up #6 this month after fighting for #3 for quite a while before the royalty cuts.  A couple of nice sales on FAA made them #2 at around 50% of SS, although they will drop to #3 after iS PP sales come in next month.  That was a nice bonus with only 15 images on FAA.  Overall SS was 39% of the total, 47% of the microstock total excluding FAA.

[JPSDK]

Compared to Feb, down at:
SS
FT
DT

[daveh900]

SS: BME
123RF: BME
CanStockPhoto: BME
FT: BME

BS: Missed BME by $.11

DP: Down
DT: Why bother?

Plus first sale at StockFresh, so I guess that is another BME. 

[cthoman]

Best month of the year so far, and my 5th best month ever. It is shaping up to be a good year.

[rubyroo]

It's great to see that others have had such a good month!  I'm glad to know my drop isn't indicative of the whole market.  Hope lives on.  Good stuff. 

[steheap]

Seems strange not to be writing about Symbiostock!

Anyway, I haven't been neglecting my core business of selling stock photos! March was good, but not as good as I would have liked, bearing in mind the efforts I have made to add new images to my agencies. Shutterstock, of course, was best with almost $900. iStock continues to tank to give earnings from the site of just $145. I'll probably get another $90 from partner sales, but this site is really going down quickly, for me. Pond5 was a nice surprise. I have deliberately priced high on that site ($40), but I still seem to sell a nice amount. Total earnings of $125 from the site, which is as good as many of the traditional sites. Full details on my blog, http://www.backyardsilver.com/2013/04/earnings-from-sale-of-stock-photos-march-2013/ and I'm going to do more detailed analysis of the split of SS earnings between the various download types to see if I see any trends there - more later on that.

PS - there was a complaint last month about the images being too big, so these are size reduced. Hope that is better.

Steve

[KB]

Stupid iStock exclusive here:

March 2013 vs 2012:
$s -17%
DLs -40%

March 2013 vs Feb 2013:
$s -25%
DLs -22%

[davidgoh]

A (new) iStock exclusive here:

March 2013 vs February 2013 (Not a year-old stocker yet)
Portfolio Size: +20% (From 110 to 133)
DLs: +64%
$$: +195% *

* Became exclusive mid-March, so royalties received quite a jump.

I've only been doing this for 4 months, which is why I think my growth looks good as I'm still gaining momentum. I'll probably start decelerating very soon.

[wordplanet]

Compared to last year, March looks particularly good, not surprising since last March was my worst month of 2012.  It was an OK month, earning me just slightly above what I averaged each month in 2012.

SS 33% + 57% over Feb 2013, +60% from last March � A slightly above average month there.

DT 31% BME +123% over Feb 2013, which was + from Jan -  a nice trend. (Second WME March 2012, so % improvement from last year too skewed to be worth mentioning).

Alamy 35% up 65% over Feb 2013 (in March 2012 only NU sales there, so comparison�d be really skewed, but aside from that anomaly for the past year I�ve been averaging 2-3 regular sales a month, so the month to month comparison makes some sense, though it can vary widely since prices there vary so much. Slightly lower than average month there). Since someone asked me to clarify: I�m using net sales not gross (that wouldn�t make sense, they are 50-70% higher). I have a mix of RF and RM, sold one RM and one RF last month, one the last day of Feb gave me 3 sales in one week, 2 the first week of March was promising but then month dried up. Average earnings down from 2011 despite doubling my portfolio in 2012 and selling more images. One average sale in 2011 usually netted me more than 3 regular sales do now).

iStock, Fotolia and Bigstock were all pretty much the same as prior months, surprising since I deleted a third of my portfolio at iStock. Such small amounts percentages don't really make sense. (I added a handful to BS a year ago - not migrated so really negligable)
No sales on redbubble or FAA this month.

Overall YTD stock photo earnings are up 85% from this time last year, so that�s the most important thing.  I�m certainly hoping this keeps up.

[oboy]

March was a good month with a small increase of 2% compared to February, and only down 5% compared to March 2012.

The 4 best agencies for March: Shutterstock, DepositPhotos, Zazzle, Dreamstime

Complete statistic at: http://microstockinfos.blogspot.com/2013/04/stock-photography-sales-statistic-march.html







(This statistic include referral earning at the different agencies)