Author Topic: What's the Future of Microstock (Read 3640 times)

Bauman · « **Reply #50 on:** December 27, 2024, 03:26 »

Quote from: mike123 on December 26, 2024, 18:29

I do also sell through POD sites, but sites like FAA and Pictorem barely sell anything for me, likely because I've got very few images of interest to US buyers (I am located in Germany).

I agree with Mike, Steve is doing a great job, but this does not apply to us Europeans. It is much more difficult for us to make these numbers.

FAA and Pictorem have customers mostly from North America and want content related to their places. Just look at what FAA sells on the "sales announcements" page.

Similar Web says that FAA has customers divided as follows:

United States 70.24%
Canada 3.6%
United Kingdom 2.59%
Germany 1.68%

And Pictorem:

United States 42.36%
Canada 6.16%
Indonesia 3.44%
France 2.86%

Then we must add that the FAA algorithm rewards contributors who have been registered for a long time. (open a sales thread in their forum and check who are the ones selling: all registered at least 9/10 years ago) And Steve has been registered since 2011, one of the pioneers of FAA.

And on Pictorem Steve's portfolio is one of the few that is always in the list of "featured artists" and this gives him great visibility.

https://www.pictorem.com/collectionartists.html

Finally, I add that, compared to the United States, there is little tradition of hanging photographs on the wall as art in Europe. (Look at the difference in the walls of homes in American and European movies). People prefer original paintings, historical prints, IKEA budget prints, or photographs of their family (wedding, travel, children ...).

All this makes it much more difficult for us Europeans to sell wall art.

And I agree with Mike that the best way is to find customers through good SEO and interesting content on the Blog.

Pacesetter · « **Reply #51 on:** December 27, 2024, 03:56 »

Interesting perspectives.

Bauman I recall you do quite well with regular microstock? You offer photos and video?

Bauman · « **Reply #52 on:** December 27, 2024, 04:12 »

Quote from: Pacesetter on December 27, 2024, 03:56

Interesting perspectives.

Bauman I recall you do quite well with regular microstock? You offer photos and video?

Yes, I am full time. But I only sell photos with microstock, no videos.

Unfortunately in the last two years I have lost 25% of my annual earnings. And now I can no longer afford to lose earnings, otherwise I will have to go back to doing microstock part-time

. 2025 will be very important for me.

I have always focused on the quality of my content and this has worked for 15 years. I have always uploaded 300/400 images per year of the highest quality, and this has allowed me to be full-time for many years. Now this does not seem to work anymore.

Halfway through this year I changed some strategies. I increased the quantity at the cost of losing a bit of quality ... let's see if it works.

Selling prints contributes only about 10% of my earnings. Maybe I haven't done a good job of marketing in these years; I should have worked more on the blog than on social media. But I can say that selling prints with European content is much more difficult.

Pacesetter · « **Reply #53 on:** December 27, 2024, 04:20 »

Quote from: Bauman on December 27, 2024, 04:12

Quote from: Pacesetter on December 27, 2024, 03:56
Interesting perspectives.

Bauman I recall you do quite well with regular microstock? You offer photos and video?

Yes, I am full time. But I only sell photos with microstock, no videos.

Unfortunately in the last two years I have lost 25% of my annual earnings. And now I can no longer afford to lose earnings, otherwise I will have to go back to doing microstock part-time . 2025 will be very important for me.

I have always focused on the quality of my content and this has worked for 15 years. I have always uploaded 300/400 images per year of the highest quality, and this has allowed me to be full-time for many years. Now this does not seem to work anymore.

Halfway through this year I changed some strategies. I increased the quantity at the cost of losing a bit of quality ... let's see if it works.

Selling prints contributes only about 10% of my earnings. Maybe I haven't done a good job of marketing in these years; I should have worked more on the blog than on social media. But I can say that selling prints with European content is much more difficult.

Well being able to do this full-time is a remarkable achievement and especially so without video. What size generally are your portfolios?

Bauman · « **Reply #54 on:** December 27, 2024, 04:43 »

Quote from: Pacesetter on December 27, 2024, 04:20

Well being able to do this full-time is a remarkable achievement and especially so without video. What size generally are your portfolios?

5500/6000 images.

Yes, very small for almost 15 years of full-time activity (I am very selective about quality).

But until 2022 it always worked. Today it doesn't anymore.

Before, I sold a lot of photos at high prices (>$50) every month.

This doesn't happen anymore because (IMHO) Shutterstock and Alamy have lost a lot of customers (they were my best sellers) and this loss has not been compensated by Adobe, where high-priced sales are very rare and in any case almost never exceed $20. Then, my content has lost visibility due to the competition of AI images which are really a lot.

This year, to date, compared to 2023 I have made a -16% (revenues) on SS and only a +2.2% on Adobe Stock.

mike123 · « **Reply #55 on:** December 27, 2024, 06:39 »

Quote from: Bauman on December 27, 2024, 03:26

I agree with Mike, Steve is doing a great job, but this does not apply to us Europeans. It is much more difficult for us to make these numbers.

FAA and Pictorem have customers mostly from North America and want content related to their places. Just look at what FAA sells on the "sales announcements" page.

Second that. The European art print market is much smaller than the US one and much harder to be successful in. But I still was surprised with some big expensive print sales to European customers, so the market still has some potential

MicrostockGroup Sponsors

Author Topic: What's the Future of Microstock (Read 3640 times)

Bauman

Pacesetter

Bauman

Pacesetter

Bauman

mike123

Related Topics

Sponsors

Microstock Poll Results

Sponsors