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Author Topic: Stats on Microstock  (Read 14955 times)

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« 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/

Best,
Jonathan


traveler1116

« Reply #1 on: January 04, 2012, 13:16 »
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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?

« Reply #2 on: January 04, 2012, 13:36 »
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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.

« Reply #3 on: January 04, 2012, 13:50 »
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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?

KB

« Reply #4 on: January 04, 2012, 14:01 »
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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

« Reply #5 on: January 04, 2012, 14:15 »
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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.

« Reply #6 on: January 04, 2012, 14:23 »
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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 :)

PaulieWalnuts

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« Reply #7 on: January 04, 2012, 14:51 »
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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.

« Reply #8 on: January 04, 2012, 15:15 »
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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

« Reply #9 on: January 04, 2012, 15:22 »
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Total Contributors: 38160

1.6% = 610

they could meet in a place somewhere and change IS :D

KB

« Reply #10 on: January 04, 2012, 16:24 »
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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

« Reply #11 on: January 04, 2012, 16:29 »
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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

ShadySue

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« Reply #12 on: January 04, 2012, 16:38 »
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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.

KB

« Reply #13 on: January 04, 2012, 16:53 »
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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.

« Reply #14 on: January 04, 2012, 17:07 »
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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 dont 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..

« Reply #15 on: January 04, 2012, 18:00 »
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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.

« Reply #16 on: January 05, 2012, 01:17 »
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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
« Last Edit: January 05, 2012, 01:24 by cthoman »


« Reply #17 on: January 05, 2012, 08:32 »
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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 wouldnt make any sense

« Reply #18 on: January 05, 2012, 09:00 »
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Most people use statistics like a drunk uses a lampost - to provide support rather than shed light!

« Reply #19 on: January 05, 2012, 10:17 »
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Most people use statistics like a drunk uses a lampost - to provide support rather than shed light!

if so I dont 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 dont but in this case there isnt a reason not to believe, you might want to know where it come from and how, looking forward to hear Bob here

« Reply #20 on: January 05, 2012, 10:29 »
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Interesting data indeed
----------------------
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.

----------------------

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

----------------------

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
« Last Edit: January 05, 2012, 10:31 by MikLav »

« Reply #21 on: January 05, 2012, 10:39 »
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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.

RacePhoto

« Reply #22 on: January 05, 2012, 10:48 »
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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?  ???

PaulieWalnuts

  • We Have Exciting News For You
« Reply #23 on: January 05, 2012, 10:56 »
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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?

« Reply #24 on: January 05, 2012, 11:12 »
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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
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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