Quote from: Ron on August 04, 2013, 17:48
^^^ Sorry to hear Lisa. Thats a worrying development. Do you have sales from your own site?

Thanks for the sympathy Ron.  I can use it today

I get a few sales on my own site, but nowhere near enough to compensate for what's going on at the "agencies".  I haven't gotten around to doing a symbiostock site yet.  I know I really should figure out how to do it.  Just haven't found the time yet. 

Quote from: lisafx on August 04, 2013, 17:43

I just spent three days doing a huge photo shoot covering a wide variety of concepts.  Biggest I have ever undertaken.  I just can't see throwing the best of them into the microstock void.  Looks like I'm going to finally be uploading to Stocksy.

I can't see throwing much of anything into the microstock void any longer, particularly iStock.  In your case, Lisa, it will be Stocksy's gain, and I suspect yours too, in the long run.
 

Quote from: mlwinphoto on August 04, 2013, 18:18

Quote from: lisafx on August 04, 2013, 17:43

I just spent three days doing a huge photo shoot covering a wide variety of concepts.  Biggest I have ever undertaken.  I just can't see throwing the best of them into the microstock void.  Looks like I'm going to finally be uploading to Stocksy.

I can't see throwing much of anything into the microstock void any longer, particularly iStock.  In your case, Lisa, it will be Stocksy's gain, and I suspect yours too, in the long run.

Thanks Mark

Yeah, it's sad it's come to this.  I'm like the old dog who's not eager to learn new tricks, but maybe this shake up out of my comfort zone will be the best thing creatively ITLR. 

Quote from: lisafx on August 04, 2013, 18:26

Quote from: mlwinphoto on August 04, 2013, 18:18

Quote from: lisafx on August 04, 2013, 17:43

I just spent three days doing a huge photo shoot covering a wide variety of concepts.  Biggest I have ever undertaken.  I just can't see throwing the best of them into the microstock void.  Looks like I'm going to finally be uploading to Stocksy.

I can't see throwing much of anything into the microstock void any longer, particularly iStock.  In your case, Lisa, it will be Stocksy's gain, and I suspect yours too, in the long run.

Thanks Mark

Yeah, it's sad it's come to this.  I'm like the old dog who's not eager to learn new tricks, but maybe this shake up out of my comfort zone will be the best thing creatively ITLR.

Your situation reminds me of that many-time-mentioned invisible wall.  My situation is exactly opposite.  I am still gaining on wherever that wall is located.

I know it makes little sense to compare ports but arbitrary numbers do come into play.  My revenue numbers are growing along with the size of my port.  Nothing to stand up and shout about but not so discouraging as several "large port" vets.  I wonder at what point I will be "more" discouraged?

I have hit the wall on all agencies with 800+ images. I have stopped submitting to all at the moment as it doenst make any difference in income. My income has been the same for the last 7 months, adding images or not adding images doesnt do anything. I do know its related to my images as they do not have HCV.  Including FAA and direct sales, I have been sitting between 550 and 780 dollars per month.

If your portfolio is really below 1000 images then 550-750 USD is actually a good return IMO. I mean I don´t know how expensive your average shooting is, but this sounds good to me.

Quote from: cobalt on August 04, 2013, 20:39
If your portfolio is really below 1000 images then 550-750 USD is actually a good return IMO. I mean I don´t know how expensive your average shooting is, but this sounds good to me.

Thanks, its including FAA though, which brings me on average two good sales per month. From stock only its about 400-500 dollar per month.

ETA: I dont have much overhead, its mainly shooting around the city, so petrol, and shooting on travels. Travels I would do anyway since that is my other passion in life. Now I just take photos whilst doing that.

Quote from: lisafx on August 04, 2013, 17:43
Finally got around to doing my totals.  Even worse than I had imagined.  Assuming average PP sales, I am down 12% on last month, and 21% on last year.  Continuing my trend of being 20% down on the same month the prior year, that has been going on for over a year now. 

Dollars are way worse than last December after all.  Haven't made so little in any month since 2006.  Un-F#@%king believable. 

Best of all, on most of the major sites, my downloads are actually up significantly.  Only $ are down.  Really shows how their policies are F#@%king us. 

I just spent three days doing a huge photo shoot covering a wide variety of concepts.  Biggest I have ever undertaken.  I just can't see throwing the best of them into the microstock void.  Looks like I'm going to finally be uploading to Stocksy.

I am also seeing very significant decreases in RPD (return pr download). RPD decrease of around 15% over the last few months. I am also selling more, but making less.  And it is not just due to iStock lowering prices. It has fallen on all sites including SS. It is due to subscription downloads going up compared to on demand going down.

Are you also seeing this trend?

Quote from: cobalt on August 04, 2013, 20:39
If your portfolio is really below 1000 images then 550-750 USD is actually a good return IMO. I mean I don´t know how expensive your average shooting is, but this sounds good to me.

I make about $400-$500 per month on an average of roughly 400-500 images. It varies, as I have ~700 on SS but only ~250 on DT and IS. I'm happy with those returns. But as Ron mentioned, adding new images doesn't seem to help. For the last 12-18 months, almost everything I have uploaded has failed to sell anywhere. Old images keep selling, and selling. So I have no incentive to upload more, and except for a few random uploads here and there I stopped contributing to microstock several months ago.

Quote from: lisafx on August 04, 2013, 17:43
Finally got around to doing my totals.  Even worse than I had imagined.

So sorry to hear that Lisa I was hoping that you had dodged the bullet, unfortunately some of my friends are expiring the same. My sales have been down at SS for 4 months now. 

You might find this info interesting

http://bits.shutterstock.com/

Snip

Now suppose you are so diligent that you keep rolling out A/B tests, this time testing a fancy search ranking algorithm. Two weeks later you see that there is a $0.10 increase in dollar spent per visitor for the test variant compared to the control (i.e. existing search ranking algorithm) variant. If the increase is real, with 100K visitors each day, that's $0.10 × 100,000 = $10,000 dollars extra revenue each day. Now, let's add a twist: you need five extra servers to support that fancy algorithm in production, and the servers cost $10,000 each to buy, and another $10,000 to run per year. You want to make sure it's worth the investment. Your stats tell you that you currently have a p-value of 0.3, which most people would interpret as a "nonsignificant" result. But a p-value of 0.3 means that with the new ranking algorithm the net gain in extra-money-making probability is 0.7 − 0.3 = 0.4. With the expected size of the gain being $0.10 per visitor, the expected extra revenue per year is $0.10 × 100,000 × 0.4 × 365 = $1.46M dollars. The rational thing to do is of course release it.

Quote from: lisafx on August 04, 2013, 17:43
Finally got around to doing my totals.  Even worse than I had imagined.  Assuming average PP sales, I am down 12% on last month, and 21% on last year.  Continuing my trend of being 20% down on the same month the prior year, that has been going on for over a year now. 

Dollars are way worse than last December after all.  Haven't made so little in any month since 2006.  Un-F#@%king believable. 

Best of all, on most of the major sites, my downloads are actually up significantly.  Only $ are down.  Really shows how their policies are F#@%king us. 

I just spent three days doing a huge photo shoot covering a wide variety of concepts.  Biggest I have ever undertaken.  I just can't see throwing the best of them into the microstock void.  Looks like I'm going to finally be uploading to Stocksy.

Shocked that you're still in decline, Lisa. You seem to be doing everything right.
Hope it works well for you at Stocksy. 

I don't agree with the idea of stopping your uploads because you don't see some new sales. I have batches here and there that don't sell, then sometimes I get a hit that goes 7-8 downloads a day. You got to keep throwing out photos until you get some hits. You have to come up with new concepts or re-shoot to improve old ones. I just had a whole batch of 50 photos not get any movement, and I thought some were good. I'm uploading 25 more from a couple of new shoots today.

Not every photo is equal, and sometimes you just get some bad luck. It's a numbers game -- and if you stop pulling the lever, you will never hit jackpot.

Quote from: robhainer on August 05, 2013, 06:00
I don't agree with the idea of stopping your uploads because you don't see some new sales. I have batches here and there that don't sell, then sometimes I get a hit that goes 7-8 downloads a day. You got to keep throwing out photos until you get some hits. You have to come up with new concepts or re-shoot to improve old ones. I just had a whole batch of 50 photos not get any movement, and I thought some were good. I'm uploading 25 more from a couple of new shoots today.

Not every photo is equal, and sometimes you just get some bad luck. It's a numbers game -- and if you stop pulling the lever, you will never hit jackpot.

That might be true indeed. But if for 7 months I dont see the money go up, then I should now see a decline in revenue. I only stopped uploading a month ago, and I will probably not upload any new images for another two weeks.

Quote from: robhainer on August 05, 2013, 06:00
I don't agree with the idea of stopping your uploads because you don't see some new sales. I have batches here and there that don't sell, then sometimes I get a hit that goes 7-8 downloads a day. You got to keep throwing out photos until you get some hits. You have to come up with new concepts or re-shoot to improve old ones. I just had a whole batch of 50 photos not get any movement, and I thought some were good. I'm uploading 25 more from a couple of new shoots today.

Not every photo is equal, and sometimes you just get some bad luck. It's a numbers game -- and if you stop pulling the lever, you will never hit jackpot.

Depends on the agency. I hear SS has, or at least had, a 'new photo' boost. At iStock, for about nine months now, new files have been hit really hard in the Best Match (which isn't working properly anyway), so pretty pointless unless it has near-unique main keywords.

Surprisingly July was a good month with an increase of 20% compare to June and and a 33% compared to July 2012.

Four best: Shutterstock, Zazzle, DepositPhotos, Photospin

Blog post: http://microstockinfos.blogspot.com/2013/08/stock-photography-sales-statistic-july.html







(This statistic include referral earning at the different agencies)

Quote from: ShadySue on August 05, 2013, 09:47

Quote from: robhainer on August 05, 2013, 06:00
I don't agree with the idea of stopping your uploads because you don't see some new sales. I have batches here and there that don't sell, then sometimes I get a hit that goes 7-8 downloads a day. You got to keep throwing out photos until you get some hits. You have to come up with new concepts or re-shoot to improve old ones. I just had a whole batch of 50 photos not get any movement, and I thought some were good. I'm uploading 25 more from a couple of new shoots today.

Not every photo is equal, and sometimes you just get some bad luck. It's a numbers game -- and if you stop pulling the lever, you will never hit jackpot.

Depends on the agency. I hear SS has, or at least had, a 'new photo' boost. At iStock, for about nine months now, new files have been hit really hard in the Best Match (which isn't working properly anyway), so pretty pointless unless it has near-unique main keywords.

Agree. I don't even consider iStock in my comments because I don't contribute there. I was more thinking about Shutterstock.

Very late report from me this month. Now that the PP earnings are in, I was finally motivated to update my graphs and publish the post on my blog.
http://www.backyardsilver.com/2013/08/earnings-in-july-2013-for-stock-photography/

Overall earnings were again over $2000, ending up at $2149 helped by startling earnings of $114 from Zoonar! I've kept uploading to that site as it is pretty easy to do, and last month I got $41 and this month $114 - things are looking up from their partners!!

Here is a different graph for you - percentage of earnings at each site:


Steve

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0 from GI (20% of eligible files not yet moved over).
Still worst month since 2007.

However, I do note a lot of people reporting great sales over there.

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