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Author Topic: The chart that says "unsustainable"  (Read 13486 times)

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« Reply #25 on: October 04, 2012, 10:21 »
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I forgot to say that my portfolio is 100% footage. It's hard to find any footage stats in microstock as it seem's only geared up for photography! Maybe footage is the new photography and it's reaching it's peek like photo's did in 2006?


« Reply #26 on: October 04, 2012, 10:30 »
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Ah! We're into apples and pears, then. Mine's entirely stills.

« Reply #27 on: October 04, 2012, 10:39 »
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If there is no money in it, then why not give it away?

I think I'd rather bury all my images in a hole in the ground than give them away for free. I can understand your frustration though. I feel it too. That's  the reason why I opened my own shop and only upload to sites that pay better now. I wish there were more sites that pay well though.

velocicarpo

« Reply #28 on: October 04, 2012, 11:21 »
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If there is no money in it, then why not give it away?

I think I'd rather bury all my images in a hole in the ground than give them away for free. I can understand your frustration though. I feel it too. That's  the reason why I opened my own shop and only upload to sites that pay better now. I wish there were more sites that pay well though.

So true. I would too rather put them on expensive sites, my own store etc. where the pissibility of sales is very low, but at least I feel my work valued.

« Reply #29 on: October 04, 2012, 11:34 »
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I did my version of the stats you posted and it's interesting that although there are some similarities, in spite of you having sold more overall at IS than me, my RPI for September was 17 cents and my highest this year so far - April - was 25 cents. No PP sales are included in those numbers (because of the bug on IS's side that has them all on one day). I'm at 17% royalty now too.

On a separate topic, it's a shame that IS has no data showing as to when images become (or left) Photo+. It appears that StatsPlus marks something that is now P+ as having been P+ always, even though it hasn't been. Might make trying to assess pre- and post-Photo+ performance a problem.

I also liked the display of monthly top 10 images over time. It was interesting to see the items that seasonally find their way back to the list (Christmas images in my case) and some that have their time and then fade away :)

« Reply #30 on: October 04, 2012, 12:15 »
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I just looked at your port, JoAnn. You've got far more people than me (well, I've only barely got more than none) a much more varied portfolio and your processing produces much brighter files than mine, all of which probably push up your dl/month compared with mine. Even so, 17c RPI is not a lot for the effort involved.

steheap

  • Author of best selling "Get Started in Stock"

« Reply #31 on: October 04, 2012, 12:22 »
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You prompted me to work out my rpi as well (where "i" is the number of images I have online with Istock, not the number of uploads). I get about 80% acceptance these days so they are not too far apart. Also, the number of images is the total at the end of each month which skews the results down a bit.

Anyway, caveats out of the way, I currently have 1744 photos online having grown to that number from 700 at the start of 2011. Income per online file was around $0.12 in early 2011, but went to $0.20 in Aug 2011 (Photo+?) and has stayed around that level ever since as I have grown my portfolio. September 2012 was exactly 20c.

I would like more, of course, but I don't find iStock to be that much incremental work (I use Deepmeta), and it is normally my second best seller.

Steve

lisafx

« Reply #32 on: October 04, 2012, 14:42 »
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Very interesting stats and discussion Baldrick.  Thanks for posting them. 

I would have no idea how to begin to do a chart like what you've posted, but I did calculate my return per image and it was .28 this past month, compared to .77 in Sept 2010, at the height of my heyday with Istock. 

« Reply #33 on: October 04, 2012, 14:59 »
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Very interesting stats and discussion Baldrick.  Thanks for posting them. 

I would have no idea how to begin to do a chart like what you've posted, but I did calculate my return per image and it was .28 this past month, compared to .77 in Sept 2010, at the height of my heyday with Istock.

^^^ Great numbers Lisa! Mine were 14.4c last month and 47c in March 2010 which was my peak at IS.

« Reply #34 on: October 04, 2012, 15:08 »
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Lisa, the stats were generated by that new program statsplus that is on offer in Beta from the iStock forum

here
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=347765&page=1
« Last Edit: October 04, 2012, 15:34 by BaldricksTrousers »

« Reply #35 on: October 09, 2012, 09:34 »
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The problem with istock is that they have management which is caring about profit only. Not caring about making their business more profitable in terms of obtaining more sales. All what they do is cutting authors part of royalties and upping prices sky high... That business model can't be sustainable!

lisafx

« Reply #36 on: October 09, 2012, 12:05 »
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Lisa, the stats were generated by that new program statsplus that is on offer in Beta from the iStock forum

here
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=347765&page=1


Thanks!  Really great program! 

My computer is having a problem with java (even though I have reinstalled the latest version) so  Statsplus keeps freezing on me, but I did manage to see that I made a bit more on Istock in Sept. than I had thought.  Still a long way off "good" though...

« Reply #37 on: October 09, 2012, 12:18 »
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Lisa, the stats were generated by that new program statsplus that is on offer in Beta from the iStock forum

here
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=347765&page=1


Thanks!  Really great program! 

My computer is having a problem with java (even though I have reinstalled the latest version) so  Statsplus keeps freezing on me, but I did manage to see that I made a bit more on Istock in Sept. than I had thought.  Still a long way off "good" though...


I have tried it on the "past" (when jsnover talked about it) and havent worked, today it went over, nice indeed!

RacePhoto

« Reply #38 on: October 09, 2012, 12:54 »
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While I'm not a big fan of RPI for "how much can I make?" questions, I am when it comes to one agency and one persons own images. It's a good way to see how earnings are produced for a specific collection, on a specific agency. That aside, I thought I'd do my own "unsustainable" chart and see how things look. WOW!


Nearly Identical Images
And I have audio selling on IS... Haven't added to either since April. (except new audio, which has sold some)
IS is back to 2009, but I have more images and more different files, while SS is climbing, with no audio?



« Reply #39 on: October 09, 2012, 15:04 »
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I've been tracking the same stats for years on all my sites and I have almost identical results as the OP for IS (since 2005), FT (since 2008), 123 (since 2008) and CS (since 2005).  SS is almost flat on RPI while DT is down about 20% (since 2005).  My income also peaked in 2006.

The portfolios are pretty much similar on all the sites.  My portfolio went from about 200 images in 2005 to about 2000 images in 2009.  The quality also improved considerably.  Since 2009 I've only been uploading about 100 new images a year.  Kind of hard to get excited about it when your uploads don't keep your sales from falling.

« Reply #40 on: October 09, 2012, 16:12 »
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The iStock website is down again. They must be back from their vaccation. It's all getting very unsustainable.

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #41 on: October 09, 2012, 16:27 »
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Working again.
Howmany hours are still in the Calgary workday? 2?
Anyone want to lay bets as to whether
1. the long date (today) will in fact lead to the normal lightbox function being restored?
2. if the normal lightbox function is restored, will anything else break?

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #42 on: October 09, 2012, 16:57 »
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OK, so at the top of msg, I see a message from iStock which says:
"It's back! You can add to your lightbox again on individual pages. Just click "add to lightbox" under any item http://t.co/03TiqWMc"
I've tried a random file, and I've clicked the link to the favoured/featured file, but I'm too blind to see the link.

Didn't it used to be just below the main pic?

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #43 on: October 09, 2012, 17:00 »
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[moved to new thread]

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #44 on: October 09, 2012, 17:00 »
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.

« Reply #45 on: October 09, 2012, 18:20 »
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pretty graphs, but the conclusions aren't supported by the data - just because 2 stats are correlated, eg, increase in port with decline in RPI, doesnt show a cause & effect

there are many reasons for a decline in RPI, a questionable metric in the first place -- the portfolio is getting stale; the overall # of images for everyone is growing faster than sales; change in number of individual sales versus subs, etc, etc

 

for me the stats are reversed - on SS over the last 4 years my port has  quadrupled and my RPI as tripled.  over the last year my SS port increased 10% while income increased by 30%.  on DT my port has doubled, but RPI is static

i get < 10% income from IS - my port hasnt changed in about 2 years and RPI has stayed about the same

for me, the only stat that really matters is monthly income over time - as long as that increases by 20% or more each year i'll continue to feed MS

lisafx

« Reply #46 on: October 09, 2012, 19:05 »
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for me, the only stat that really matters is monthly income over time - as long as that increases by 20% or more each year i'll continue to feed MS

Yeah, well obviously.  The problem is how many people are seeing their incomes decrease.  That's why the other stats like falling RPI are illuminating as PART (nobody's saying ALL) of the picture. 


 

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