Now is the winter of my discontent.

Usually I experience a summer slump and December sucks but otherwise a gradual increase throughout the year however I seemed to have peaked in September 2008 and the a downward spiral starts again.

Updated figures

SS  44.3% 3WM08*
DT  17.5% 3WM08
FT  14.3% 2BM08 
StockXpert  6.8%
BS    5.5% 2WM08
123  5.4% WM08
IS    4.8% WM08 no surprise
FP   1.4%

3WM08 3rd worst month 2008
2MB08 2nd Best Month 2008

* actual number of 25/day DLs at SS lowest since February 2007

Only bright spots the exhange rate from $/� is still good for microstock earnings in dollars and VAT (UK sales tax) was reduced today (1st December) to 15% (from 17.5%) so my dollar earnings will go further I expect December will suck as usual so fingers crossed for 2009

the recession, 5 weekends, only 30 days, thanksgiving .... the only positive is the Christmas rush, but it doesn't look like it was enough.

IS 29.4%      BME
SS 22.74%   BME
FT 13.12%   2nd to BME
DT 10.55%   BME
StockXpert 5.89%   
Smugmug 2.99% (Selling through www.penguinphotos.net, however currently spending almost as much in advertising for it...)
Panthermedia 1.99% Disappointing

Rest: referrals and low earning sites

November was great..

November was not an impressive month, except the first half at Fotolia which has probably made my BME there.

I have less DLs at IS this November than a year ago, although my portfolio is at least three times bigger. How can that be possible?

DT is doing even much worse. However, November was bad last year too and December was even worse. Have to wait and see.

-14% overall from BME in September.

SS 34% (-23% from BME in Sept 2008)
IS 19% (-43% from BME in March 2007...darn best match...haven't ever come close to earning what I used to at IS)
DT 15% (-11% from BME in October 2008)
StockXpert 13% BME (+5% from BME in Sept 2008)
FT 13% (-30% from BME in October 2008)
BigStock 4% (-37% from BME in March 2008)
123RF 3% (-51% from BME in November 2007)

Other sales at Crestock and RedBubble.

+14%

SS       46.1%  (+40%)
IS       21.3%   (-17%)
DT      12.7%   (+18%)
BigStock      7.5%
FT+StockXpert+123RF = 12.7%

I will post a more detailed earnings report in my blog.

FT also low for me...

Everyone are talking about "Fotolia explosion" but not for us! 

BigStock is good for me this month, even StockXpert...

P.S:
For now: Sales:-16,67%
              RPI: -29,33 %

BME on most sites, IS still down from before best match change but will end up in second with EL.  SS still accounts for 45% of overall, IS 15%, DT 13%, with FT at 10%, and  StockXpert, 123RF, and BigStock making up about 6% each.

BME everywhere except SS. SS was down about 15% from last month BME, but my uploads were down too. StockXpert finally back to July level. 123 has had nice pickup in sales.

IS 100 % 

BME for earnings (by a long long way) - thirty per cent over my BME which was June where I had a couple of extended licences (none this month) and a lot of vector downloads. . Fifty per cent up on October.

Photo sales were actually flat from October but more medium and large, fewer tiddlers - and Illustrations started to pick up again  - and as they are nearly all ten credit or better I get a big boost in earnings as my proportion of illustration sales increases. While the October change in best match drove my vector sales down to near nothing for a couple of weeks, they have bounced right back this month. (tweaks to best match as far as vectors goes plus the growth effect of being a near new illustration contributor, I think - I've gone from zero vector files to over 100 in the last twelve months).

It's quite clear the latest best match favours exclusives and older rather than newer images. I was pretty pleased and suprised with the results  as I don't have much in the way of seasonal imagery (and what I do have isn't selling anyway!) and my photo uploads have been nonexistent this year (with dollar binning my photo portfolio has actually fallen in size I think)

It's not going to pay the mortgage but it will make the Christmas stockings for my kids a bit fatter (given they are my chief models, that seems fair enough!)

It seems we need a new letter word :  WMOTY, worst month of the year, dedicated to Istock only. 

November has been a great month for me. One of the reason is I grew my portfolio of 186 photos between mid-october and mid-november. The result was a 45% increase in my revenue. Like most non-exclusive, I had a drop at iStock but got a BME almost everywhere else. The raise at SS was good to me but the increase in portfolio size was even better since I sold 35% more photos than my best month (september). I didn't have any EL this month. The biggest surprise was Fotolia who took the 3rd rank and beat the crap out of iStock. It even beat the best month at iStock (september) by 50%. I produced a lot of white seamless photos and that seem to be what Fotolia wants.

Here's the breakdown:
1- Shutterstock = 47% (BME)
2- Dreamstime = 16% (BME)
3- Fotolia = 14% (BME)
4- StockXpert = 8% (BME)
5- iStockPhoto = 7% (Drop from rank 3 to 5)
6- 123RF = 6% (BME)
7- Yay Micro = 2% (BME)
8- Zymmetrical = 1%

Interesting month this. Ups and downs are compared to November 2007:

SS 37%, up 15%
IS 17%, up 15%
DT 16%, up 20%
FT 9%, down 19%
BS 7%, up 195%
StockXpert 6%, up 49%
123 3%, up 109%
Scanstock 3%, up 1,000%

Total sales up 21% since November 2007 and up 2% since October 2008.

The increases for BS and Scanstock may seem exceptional, but truth is that both of them have been increasing consistently through the year. On the other hand, I'm totally losing grip on what's happening at FT. My sales are sinking, my position on the statistics are sinking and they reject almost anything I submit.

Overall dissapointing month , but sales at Yay, Zym and Panthermedia  consolidated the big 6 sales.
123rf was my worst month of the year, IS is sinking as well
FT doing pretty good with StockXpert
More details on my blog:
http://microstockexperiment.blogspot.com/

L

Not my BME, and also not BMOTY - October was 49 cents better in total. Still, overall I am happy with the performance. Again, I had a really good month at FT.

FT: 58,7% (BME)
IS: 18.3% (not WMOTY, but not good either, especially compared to last year)
SS: 13.6%
DT: 9.3% (BME, seems extending my portfolio there is finally paying off)

Compared to last November: +155% 

Site                - % income      - %change/october  - %change/year avg.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shutterstock        - 30%           - 19%              - 25%
Dreamstime          - 21%           - 5%               - 3%
StockXpert          - 11%           - 36%              - 43%
Fotolia             - 10%           - 13%              - 30%
Crestock            - 9%            - 5%               - 27%
Istockphoto         - 9%            - 70%              - 48%
Bigstockphoto       - 7%            - 71%              - 6%
123RF               - 3%            - 10%              - 41%
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Overall             - 100%          - 7%               - 23%


Comments:

First off, I uploaded very little in 2008, only about 85 files. So that is a big cause for the large drops.

70% rise in income at Istock over last month doesn't say much when October was my worst month ever, even below my first month uploading. The 48% decrease compared to my typical month there says more about how IS is doing.

This was my worst month of the year, not by much though. Things are already looking good for December with an EL already from SS, and strong sales on other sites including Istock. Did they change the best match again or something? The past 10 days have been A LOT better than the 40 before them.

My November and 2008 numbers, with 2007 for comparison:

Site	2007	2008	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
IS	26%	24%	22%	37%	26%	26%	23%	18%	26%	18%	21%	21%	20%
DT	16%	20%	30%	16%	18%	22%	14%	26%	23%	17%	16%	17%	20%
StockXpert	20%	21%	19%	12%	22%	21%	24%	13%	21%	22%	30%	25%	22%
FT	13%	13%	8%	11%	16%	13%	13%	15%	10%	16%	13%	16%	13%
BigStock	8%	6%	8%	5%	5%	3%	7%	9%	6%	6%	10%	6%	7%
123	4%	6%	5%	8%	3%	4%	8%	11%	5%	5%	5%	4%	2%
FP	3%	5%	2%	3%	4%	10%	3%	7%	7%	8%	2%	4%	2%
CanStockPhoto	2%	<1%	1%	1%	1%	<1%	<1%	1%	1%	1%	<1%	<1%	<1%
Scan	1%	1%	0%	<1%	1%	<1%	1%	<1%	0%	4%	0%	2%	0%
CS	<1%	<1%	0%	0%	0%	~0%	1%	0%	1%	2%	1%	<1%	1%
Zymm	<1%	2%	3%	5%	2%	0%	3%	0%	0%	0%	0%	3%	5%
rest	3%	<2%	3%	1%	<1%	~0%	1%	0%	0%	1%	<1%	<1%	8%

Overall 14% below October, with the biggest lost in FT, followed by IS and StockXpert.  Stable at DT. Actually biggest loss was in 123RF, but as sales are so low for me there, the impact is very small.  FP slowed down too.

StockXpert, IS, DT and FT have been respectively my 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th earners for 4 months in a row.

CanStockPhoto and CS still with very low earnings, basically subs.  Nothing at Scanstock this month.  One sale in Zymm, one in Albumo, one in ImageVortex.  Fotomedia and SV dead for months, and still nothing at MP.  I asked MicrostockPhoto to remove my portfolio, but they haven't done anything - that's the first agency I give up.

Regards,
Adelaide

would anyone find some sort of a built in function for that monthly %'s thing usefull?  Where perhaps in your profile you could enter your %'s and then post the numbers easily with a code or some other thing...

or is it just as easy like it is now?

Quote from: leaf on December 02, 2008, 05:13

would anyone find some sort of a built in function for that monthly %'s thing usefull?  Where perhaps in your profile you could enter your %'s and then post the numbers easily with a code or some other thing...

Although I don't place much value in the monthly percentage thing, I'd like to see it replace and/or be integrated into the 'Microstock Poll Results' on the right hand side of the site. I think it could more informative to see the various sites laid out according to income percentage rather than a score out of ten that's derived from an unnecessarily complicated survey. Adding buttons to quickly/easily input data and view a graph (income % vs time) would be nice, too.

If you do it percentage wise the results would be completly spoiled by istockexclusives which always only would have the option of 100%. Or did i misunderstand you?

If you do it percentage wise the results would be completly spoiled by istockexclusives which always only would have the option of 100%. Or did i misunderstand you?

Yes, that is true. But there will also be independents who report 75% FT and 25% DT which looks like "WOW! FT is doing really well!" ... but they leave out the part where their total income on FT was $7.50 and their total on DT was $2.50. The same goes for some of the ranters in the stats thread whose "income dropped 50% on IS this month!!!!!!" (from $2 to $1). There is no way that any format is going to be a completely accurate representation because there are so many different size portfolios. I'm also convinced that some people rate sites they don't even participate in, simply out of spite.

That being said, it doesn't really matter to me if I'm excluded from your numbers game. I don't base my decisions on those anyway, for the reasons mentioned above.  

About 250 images on average on line (very small portfolio). Roughy 0.80 RPI.

DT 44.5%
SS 40.7%
IS 9.3%

everything else is just noise (<3%).