MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: Jonathan Ross on January 04, 2012, 12:44
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Hi All,
I thought you might like to see this break down of Micro sales. I hope it is of help.
http://blog.picniche.com/ (http://blog.picniche.com/)
Best,
Jonathan
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Interesting that IS had twice the number of unique visitors as SS. I think there will be a lot of disagreement on that by a few people here, any idea where the numbers come from?
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Interesting that IS had twice the number of unique visitors as SS. I think there will be a lot of disagreement on that by a few people here, any idea where the numbers come from?
I'm surprised IS only had twice the number of unique visitors in that the majority of SS customers are subscribers although that has been changing slowly over the last couple of years. I'd imagine the numbers come from the traffic monitoring sites. DT always seems to do well on traffic stats although this never translates into comparative sales.
Interesting that 83.6% of microstock stats appear to be made up by 14.3% of the bloggers.
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Interesting that 83.6% of microstock stats appear to be made up by 14.3% of the bloggers.
sorry.. where are you seeing that?
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Interesting that 'butterfly' is the 3rd most popular search, ahead of terms such as 'woman', 'people', and 'money'.
Guess I need to find me some butterflies. ;D
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I wonder
A: - where does this data actually come from
B: - is it actually correct
C: - do the words mean what I think they mean
for example - 19 million new images in 2011- do the same images uploaded to multiple sites count as one image or one image per site it is uploaded to? How about if it is rejected, fixed, and resubmitted, (or resubmitted without any changes).
50% of IS sales by 1.6% of contributors - they are more of a closed buddy buddy shop than I thought - or maybe 1.6 of their contributors have been very good and prolific for a long time.
Are the top searches from the agencies that list search terms normalized by the number of searches that agency gets? (or visitors or some other proxy)
I clear my cookies whenever I close my browser - does that mean I am a unique visitor every time I visit a microstock site?
Interesting stats, but I am very dubious about some of them.
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I clear my cookies whenever I close my browser - does that mean I am a unique visitor every time I visit a microstock site?
I keep them on my keyboard :D
once a week I do a heavy cleaning to my lcd/keyboard/mouse
overall I guess you are thinking too much, Bob did a great job :)
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Nice info but where did it come from and how accurate is it?
I said a while back that I thought less than 10% of contributors produced 90% of revenue for IS and that's pretty close according to this.
Even more interesting to me is 50% of revenue is produced by 1.6% of photographers. If that's accurate that means maybe only a few hundred people are making big money for IS and that's a relatively small group of people that have an enormous amount of potential leverage.
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Some of that data is believable - no idea if it's right though - and some seems just bizarre.
If iStock has 50,000 contributors, 1.6% is 800 and 7% is 3,500; I can believe that 80% of their sales come from 3,500 contributors.
Geisha is in the top 150 search terms? And Calgary? I find that just beyond belief unless there's some weird fetish searches driving this list vs. what buyers use in the real world. There are other odd terms in that list - offline, racing horse, fountain pen - not to mention butterfly being so high up
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Total Contributors: 38160
1.6% = 610
they could meet in a place somewhere and change IS :D
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Total Contributors: 38160
1.6% = 610
they could meet in a place somewhere and change IS :D
You're off by a decimal place: 1.6% = 61
The rest of your statement seems very accurate, though. :D
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Total Contributors: 38160
1.6% = 610
they could meet in a place somewhere and change IS :D
You're off by a decimal place: 1.6% = 61
The rest of your statement seems very accurate, though. :D
38160 x 0.016 = 610,56
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How do they get which search terms are used at iStock? It's still in the top four micros, so missing their search terms would skew that result.
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Total Contributors: 38160
1.6% = 610
they could meet in a place somewhere and change IS :D
You're off by a decimal place: 1.6% = 61
The rest of your statement seems very accurate, though. :D
38160 x 0.016 = 610,56
From now on, I should just assume anything I think is wrong arithmetically is right. :-[ :-[ :-[ (An easy way to have figured it out is 1% is clearly 381.6, so 61 couldn't possible be correct.) Sorry about that!
Too bad, because I think it's pretty much impossible to get 600 people to agree to anything, let alone all meet in one place.
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Too bad, because I think it's pretty much impossible to get 600 people to agree to anything, let alone all meet in one place.
really? honestly I donīt know but I do think it is possible.. the problem would be how many from the 600 are exclusives or independents? as we know they have a little higher % of royalties so I believe they would want more and perhaps for ind a lot less..
all this 600 are making a "lot" of money.. they would want to get even more thats for sure..
it does look impossible perhaps..
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Interesting that 83.6% of microstock stats appear to be made up by 14.3% of the bloggers.
sorry.. where are you seeing that?
I made it up. It's a joke __ like most of the other figures quoted.
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If iStock has 50,000 contributors, 1.6% is 800 and 7% is 3,500; I can believe that 80% of their sales come from 3,500 contributors.
I think the real question is how much do you need to make monthly to be in the 1.6% or 7%? Or are we just talking about sales volume as opposed to earnings? Because a photographer on IS could outsell an illustrator 10 to 1 and still earn the same amount. Also, an exclusive could sell half as much as an independent and probably make the same money or more. But...
I read once that 50% of statistics are wrong 50% of the time. ;D
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I read once that 50% of statistics are wrong 50% of the time. ;D
I know thats a joke but I cannot believe Bob would make up all those "factoids" on the post, it wouldnīt make any sense
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Most people use statistics like a drunk uses a lampost - to provide support rather than shed light!
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Most people use statistics like a drunk uses a lampost - to provide support rather than shed light!
if so I donīt see a point to have a thread regarding month income/% etc..
there will be always people you trust in life and in this forum, other you donīt but in this case there isnīt a reason not to believe, you might want to know where it come from and how, looking forward to hear Bob here
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Interesting data indeed
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It's very interesting how 80/20 rule is shifted @istock to 80/7
However looking at my own referrals I think that it's the case elsewhere too. I see many more registered in 2011 than ever before. Most of registered "contributors" among my referrals don't have any single photo or have a very few pics.
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I don't believe in 19 million images produced and uploaded in microstock - I think it can only be true if that counts same images uploaded to multiple agencies
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The pace of video sales growth might overcome static pics but I am sure volume of sales will stay behind at least for a couple more years
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I don't believe in 19 million images produced and uploaded in microstock - I think it can only be true if that counts same images uploaded to multiple agencies
Exactly. No microstock library even has '19 million' images so the statement is clearly absurd. The actual number of new images accepted last year was more like 5-6 million. Roughly 4M independent images and 1-2M exclusive images at Istock.
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Interesting that 83.6% of microstock stats appear to be made up by 14.3% of the bloggers.
sorry.. where are you seeing that?
I made it up. It's a joke __ like most of the other figures quoted.
I was headed that direction but I'll bite my tongue. I agree with you, where's the background data for these claims? Any traceability at all? Why do people keep doing the same traffic stats and find IS is way down, not at the top? Seems odd...
What worries me is that .56 of a person. Little Person contributor or someone with no legs? ???
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I don't believe in 19 million images produced and uploaded in microstock - I think it can only be true if that counts same images uploaded to multiple agencies
Exactly. No microstock library even has '19 million' images so the statement is clearly absurd. The actual number of new images accepted last year was more like 5-6 million. Roughly 4M independent images and 1-2M exclusive images at Istock.
Could 19M mean submitted instead of accepted?
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Hey all :) Glad to see my post leading to some discussion... now to clarify on some of the questions you guys (and girls) have raised:
Shutterstock show a smaller market-share (by unique users) than they would if it showed market-share (by revenue) because of their strong subscription-base (for obvious reasons).
Defining and detecting a unique-user is pretty complicated (it's a whole big web-analytics thing) since everyone measures it differently and in many cases it can be gamed (a couple of agencies gained 1% on their market-share in that chart because they've gamed their usage stats, or have better social-media-integration than others). It's a small enough margin though that it didn't need to be factored in for the sake of an infographic where 1% on a pie is pretty meaningless.
The iStock numbers are pretty accurate (give-or-take a bit of wiggle-room)... some details in this video of my StockInRussia presentation (~606 photographers make 80% of iStock's revenue iirc):
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3A1C4EDD72DB3DA6 (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3A1C4EDD72DB3DA6)
iStock has just over 37,000 contributor accounts with at least 1 image for sale (getting excel to chart that many datapoints was a challenge I can tell you ;)).
~19 million images (~ = approx, in this case a ballpark of around 16-22m) uploaded (not accepted) is based on how many images I KNOW were uploaded to each of the 40+ agencies on picWorkflow, extrapolated for the rough market-share and number of agencies (and micro-priced individual collections) I know of across the industry, then reduced to account (this is the least certain part) for the number of duplicates (also gathered from picWorkflow data). It's not 'hard fact' (hence the section is fact'oids', not facts ;)), but it's a pretty close estimate.
Don't forget, on the scale of the web, 19 million is not that much... flickr was getting 1 million per day in 2006, and facebook gets 200 million per day now. There are a LOT of photos on the web, and a LOT of photo-selling sites. I know fb/flickr don't equate to stock but as an indicator of how many people are capable of producing images it's good to know a comparison since at such large scales numbers like this don't make much sense :)
I also 'discovered' that many of the biggest contributors to iStock already do collaborate with each-other, or negotiate better terms. I'm not important enough to know for a fact what those terms are, but preferential search-placement is certainly on their radar. The iStock search-engine know who produces images which convert views-to-sales, and reward them.
The list of search terms are not from iStock (no microstock agencies currently make their actual search volumes available, despite my constant and ongoing requests)... the search terms are gathered from my own microstock search apps, addons, feeds, plugins, widgets and various other services/proxies I run. My dataset is skewed towards these split (so it doesn't make 100%) demographics:
~90% technically-capable users (at least enough to install an addon/plugin or run a blog/website)
~90% individuals or freelance/self-employed
~40% free-users (want free images, I'm working on the upsell)
~10% spam-users (kids looking for naughty pictures)
The searches are accurate for all of my received searches, it's close to agency data, but not 100% what they would see since I have very low corporate-reach (mainly means I see a drop in business or news related terms, I also have a low-side people search-list but that's improving).
As MikLav said, I am referring specifically to growth when I say "outpace the growth", not volume. Volume on stills will probably always outsell footage, though total revenue for footage will probably beat stills within 3 years.
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I also 'discovered' that many of the biggest contributors to iStock already do collaborate with each-other, or negotiate better terms. I'm not important enough to know for a fact what those terms are, but preferential search-placement is certainly on their radar.
Care to expand on this? What does "collaborate with each-other" mean?
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I also 'discovered' that many of the biggest contributors to iStock already do collaborate with each-other, or negotiate better terms. I'm not important enough to know for a fact what those terms are, but preferential search-placement is certainly on their radar. The iStock search-engine know who produces images which convert views-to-sales, and reward them.
I have never heard anything like this from anyone.
Also, I'm not a big fan of any of these services aggregating data for public consumption.
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Eavesdrop at a conference... People talk... be the wall with ears ;)
j/k, mostly :)
It's most-often not a 'formal' collaboration, but negotiating with agencies is common-place and photographers know that distributing their work together (as a network) is a great way to demand higher prices. Monkey business run just such a network for at least a handful of the top-20.
Along with the top 100-or-so photographers clearly visible in iStock's search results (just look at page 1/2 of any search). Their results are clearly split between top contributors and partner/sponsor programmes at almost any agency (iStock is leading the way here of course, but the same can be seen at any agency with funds to spend on their search algorithm).
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If MB or Yuri want to be the clearinghouse for X number of photographers and take their cut, that's "allowed", sure. But the payout levels at IS are what they are, and as far as placement, there are too many factors contributing to say "well, obviously, this person has a 'love' factor of 10" or something.
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If MB or Yuri want to be the clearinghouse for X number of photographers and take their cut, that's "allowed", sure. But the payout levels at IS are what they are, and as far as placement, there are too many factors contributing to say "well, obviously, this person has a 'love' factor of 10" or something.
I'll confirm what Bob is saying. Search placement would seems to be something thats on the table. That is if you have a big Port with good selling power.
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Along with the top 100-or-so photographers clearly visible in iStock's search results (just look at page 1/2 of any search). Their results are clearly split between top contributors and partner/sponsor programmes at almost any agency (iStock is leading the way here of course, but the same can be seen at any agency with funds to spend on their search algorithm).
You have a vivid imagination and it is leading to some bizarre conclusions. Can you define just one search on Istock and then illustrate how "the results are clearly split between top contributors and partner/sponsor programmes at almost any agency".
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I'll confirm what Bob is saying. Search placement would seems to be something thats on the table. That is if you have a big Port with good selling power.
Are you saying IS offered you something to not go independent?
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I'll confirm what Bob is saying. Search placement would seems to be something thats on the table. That is if you have a big Port with good selling power.
Does it occur to you that 'Top Contributors' might actually have earned their search placement through the excellence of their work rather than through secret deals? How do you think they became top contributors in the first place? Most contributors, big and small, perform similarly with respect to others on every agency that their work appears. Is that because of secret deals or is it because a natural meritocracy allows the cream to rise to the top?
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The search-placement issue has been discussed many times on microstockgroup and was demonstrated perfectly in Rahul's post on the Lookstat blog (http://blog.lookstat.com/2011/01/10/istock-best-match-search-results-analysis-of-lifestyle-medical-and-business-searches/) so I won't get into it (as it's a waste of everyone's time). It's a fact that if you produce images that convert views into sales, you will get more impressions... (this seems to be a universal truth of online-sales of pretty-much anything) the top contributors DO produce images which sell... ergo... top contributors get more impressions. Don't waste your own time or energy believing otherwise.
Edit: I don't refer specifically to iStock, all big agencies do this, some of the through negotiation, some through performance. In iStock's case, the only thing I know which they don't flex on is upload limits (even Yuri has the normal limit), afaik everything else would be up for discussion with the right portfolio (though with the current market-pressures you'd have to take them an awesome footage portfolio to get much give at the moment)
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It's a fact that if you produce images that convert views into sales, you will get more impressions... (this seems to be a universal truth of online-sales of pretty-much anything) the top contributors DO produce images which sell... ergo... top contributors get more impressions. Don't waste your own time or energy believing otherwise.
Well, that isn't what you said a few posts up. That's common sense.
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I'll confirm what Bob is saying. Search placement would seems to be something thats on the table. That is if you have a big Port with good selling power.
Are you saying IS offered you something to not go independent?
No! What I'm saying is that after talking with some top producers search placement is indeed something that is negotiable.
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I'll confirm what Bob is saying. Search placement would seems to be something thats on the table. That is if you have a big Port with good selling power.
Are you saying IS offered you something to not go independent?
No! What I'm saying is that after talking with some top producers search placement is indeed something that is negotiable.
I can't believe Sean would be left out of that loop :o
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I donīt know nothing about IS but I do know (and everyone else can check) that DepositPhotos have made a few top contributors into their highest ranking without selling what is supposed to
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I can't believe Sean would be left out of that loop :o
Maybe he did not ask ;)
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I can't believe Sean would be left out of that loop :o
Maybe he did not ask ;)
Dammit!
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I can't believe Sean would be left out of that loop :o
Maybe he did not ask ;)
Dammit!
Yeah, you have to ask for your preferential treatment icon. ;)
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If search placement is "negotioable on istock" means deals along the lines of "We promise to put x% of your files into Vetta/agency" then yes, I will believe that, because this is already being done with all that content coming in from Getty. V/A gets preferential treatment in the search. So do the exclusive files and arenīt there a few Getty artists/groups that have exclusive crowns although they are not exclusive and also sell their files elsewhere?
But for the normal collections? I do a lot of searches, really a lot on istock and I have never seen anything that would make me believe that some contributors had "special deals" to push their content to the front.
Besides, we all know the joke how if it wasnīt programmed by Sean the code wouldnīt work and mess up the site...and there is truth to that. ;)
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If search placement is "negotioable on istock" means deals along the lines of "We promise to put x% of your files into Vetta/agency" then yes, I will believe that, because this is already being done with all that content coming in from Getty. V/A gets preferential treatment in the search. So do the exclusive files and arenīt there a few Getty artists/groups that have exclusive crowns although they are not exclusive and also sell their files elsewhere?
But for the normal collections? I do a lot of searches, really a lot on istock and I have never seen anything that would make me believe that some contributors had "special deals" to push their content to the front.
Besides, we all know the joke how if it wasnīt programmed by Sean the code wouldnīt work and mess up the site...and there is truth to that. ;)
Outside of the Vetta/Agency files we see coming in from Getty not one of the people I talked with said anything about iStock playing that game, but I got the impression that for many of the Agencies smaller than iStock this way normal business.
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Let's not be naive. Every business arrangement is negotiable.
None of this should surprise anyone... we don't live in a fair world, so why would anyone expect anything other than preferential treatment and favoritism to exist? Favoritism goes to those that bring a lot to the table. I've seen it happen so many times; even intercepted a few emails I was CC-ed on by mistake, which give proof of it.
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Hi photoplan,
I really like your icon, do you mind me asking how you did it?
Thanks,
Jonathan
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I'll confirm what Bob is saying. Search placement would seems to be something thats on the table. That is if you have a big Port with good selling power.
Are you saying IS offered you something to not go independent?
No! What I'm saying is that after talking with some top producers search placement is indeed something that is negotiable.
I can't believe Sean would be left out of that loop :o
Yes I tend to think you are perfectly correct with that belief.
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SURPRISED? well Im surprised you are all surprised. What Bobbimac is saying, is nothing new, its been going on for 30 years in the photo-agency business. Its a way of life and goes on in all businesses.
Ofcourse if a top-notch contributor comes along, ofcourse he will get a better treatment and prefferences then some normal walley from the street. What do you expect?
I myself negotiated a deal, two weeks before X-mas, involving some 40 images, ( not with IS) and its just a natural thing to do. If you have the stuff, why not? In the early 90s, this is what the Image-Bank, went through, after it was found out, they were giving a little bit of favouritism to a bunch of NY based photographers. No big deal, it was expected.
Any agency would in fact be quite stupid, if they did not "look after", some high end suppliers with special material.