MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => iStockPhoto.com => Topic started by: cdwheatley on March 31, 2008, 20:51
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Even with the price increase, Istock earnings for this month will almost double my second place site this month. This is strange? was wondering if anyone else is experiencing this trend? or maybe just a fluke?
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They are a long way ahead just now, but SS haven't yet announced their increase. Let's see how things look in a couple of months.
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Yes, it seems that a lot is riding on what shutterstock does with their next increase, as far as keeping the market stable. If this trend continues, what is going to stop most of the top microstock photographers (diamond level) from going exclusive? Istock could become the next microsoft of microstock. Its to bad some of the other sites didn't bump up their prices a little higher.
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IS is the only site that reacts to my effort predictably. First month on SS brought $198. Why now on the third month when I have 200+ more images it is only $120? IS for the same months period $34, $74 and now $89. Also I have 2.8 times less images on IS than on SS. Clearly IS will be ahead of SS for me soon.
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Number of photos sold, SS still out in front, but... money?? IS is number one for me. SS is number 2 in $. I don't have exact numbers but I'd venture to guess that either one of them alone is more than I make on all my other 10 put together. Don't take it wrong though, I won't be quitting my day job any time soon to live off microstock. 8)=tom
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Yup... my 2nd month in a row for a BME (before this my BME was two years ago!). Clearly IS is doing something right and exclusivity is looking better and better... SS is 3rd best for me after DT and both of them are distant to IS.
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Is was 69% of my earnings for 11 sites. Jan was 51% and Feb was 67%. That about says it all for me.
I like SS but they dropped like a rock (half) when I stopped uploading for a month. IS still increased by 50%. SS is like a transaction. IS is like an investment.
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I don't think they'll dominate the market, but they will be one of the first sites that many people will think of when they hear the word microstock. As for me, this month my earnings actually went down a bit on iStockphoto(I'm blaming Easter). But Bigstockphoto made up for it.
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Shutterstock has been ahead of iStock in my portfolio earnings 3 consecutive months, and 4 of the last 5. This month, Shutterstock was a full 35% higher than iStock.
Dreamstime closed the gap between its #3 positon, and iStock at #2. iStock still earns about 27% more on my porfolio than Dreamstime, but that is changing as many DT images are starting to go up in Level.
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The market is too big and too diversified to be dominated by anybody, particularly with IS' new policy on copyrighted items like cars etc.
For me, SS is still bigger, and DT equal in size to IS. In addition, StockXpert, 123, BS and not least FT are growing fast. This is not the time to put all the eggs in one basket.
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The market is too big and too diversified to be dominated by anybody, particularly with IS' new policy on copyrighted items like cars etc.
For me, SS is still bigger, and DT equal in size to IS. In addition, StockXpert, 123, BS and not least FT are growing fast. This is not the time to put all the eggs in one basket.
Right, maybe not such a good idea at this point. But I bet there are a lot more people thinking about exclusivity now than say..this same time last year. Everyone has their braking point. If Istock was 60% of your earnings for 6 months in row you might reconsider? Thats not the case for me, but I could see it happening with one more price increase. Or maybe if a good portion of good getty shooters jump on the microstock bandwagon.
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Not for me. I made over 25% more on SS than on IS and last month at fotolia because of 4 els, 2 each at 150$ and 100$ even they beat them by a small amount.
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istock is way behind SS for me and my earnings haven't increased much in a year. I have seen big gains with FT, DT, StockXpert and BS.
I still think going exclusive is not the way to make the most money, as you can't upload RF to the higher priced sites. I am uploading to alamy and already making money with mostphotos. There are lots of other higher priced RF sites that I am going to join in the future. Just a few of those should make more than I earn with istock.
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Is was 69% of my earnings for 11 sites. Jan was 51% and Feb was 67%. That about says it all for me.
I like SS but they dropped like a rock (half) when I stopped uploading for a month. IS still increased by 50%. SS is like a transaction. IS is like an investment.
I beg to differ, best match policies assure that what were your best selling files will fall off, maybe slower than SS but it will happen, and a point is reached where you have to put a great deal of continuous work into your portfolio to maintain the sale volume of sales, you cannot rely on way above inflation annual price increases to bulk up your income for ever.
Many Diamonds report doubling their portfolios over a year and showing no increase in sales volume over that period.
Good Investments are not usually typified by halving in value over a year!
With the ease of entry of new photographers and no real cap on what can be uploaded it won't be that long until the law of diminishing returns sets in big time.
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Just examine the March earnings breakdown thread. iStock is way down from where they were 1 year ago on a lot of larger contributor's lists. Take a look at AndresR's percentages. Fotolia has been far and away his best earner for 3 or 4 months straight.
I like iStock. They are my #2 earnings producer and always contribute a lot to my bottom line. But not nearly enough to consider going exclusive.
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Just examine the March earnings breakdown thread. iStock is way down from where they were 1 year ago on a lot of larger contributor's lists. Take a look at AndresR's percentages. Fotolia has been far and away his best earner for 3 or 4 months straight.
I like iStock. They are my #2 earnings producer and always contribute a lot to my bottom line. But not nearly enough to consider going exclusive.
I think the numbers on some contributers with huge portfolios will be a little misleading, due to the amount of images on each site(istock upload limits). Plus, if you sell enough images on fotolia you can jack your prices up quite a bit. Not quite sure, but guessing fotolia only gets a fraction of the traffic that istock gets.
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All of that counts, CD. If an agency restricts your upload amount, earnings will be capped. If one agency allows you to raise prices, but another doesn't, that has to be factored in too.
You can clearly make more money than iStock in other agencies, for a myriad of reasons.
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From the perspective of a new starter IS is the only way to go, I have already hit a payout there but still haven't got accepted at SS.
DT,BS and FT are very much 2nd Tier with every other site at the noise level
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All of that counts, CD. If an agency restricts your upload amount, earnings will be capped. If one agency allows you to raise prices, but another doesn't, that has to be factored in too.
You can clearly make more money than iStock in other agencies, for a myriad of reasons.
Totally agree, you have to take absolutely everything into consideration and I only have a portion of my portfolio there but it is not by choice. I agree that Istock has a lot of the market but it is a lot less than you think. Fotolia, Shutterstock, dreamstime and stockxpert are huge, bigstock and 123rf are quite big too. If I was to go exclusive (which I have considered) it would be to Fotolia.
Andresr
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From the perspective of a new starter IS is the only way to go, I have already hit a payout there but still haven't got accepted at SS.
For me it's the other way around. Just got accepted to IS while I've earned enough for my first payout in the first month on SS.
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If I was to go exclusive (which I have considered) it would be to Fotolia.
Andresr
I know where you're coming from, Fotolia do a huge amount of unseen marketing in the UK, I was speaking to a design company the other day and they search Getty first and then Fotolia, my brother who runs a film company has had cold calls from Fotolia's marketing people.
For me sales are good there, consistent and if I ever query anything Peter gets back as quick as a flash, and the best bit is were paid in real money ;)
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It is always my best performer, I do OK on others and I am not ready to dump them yet. I don't think new players are going to make a dent now. The big ones are established and there is little room for growth.
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For me istock has been consistently losing ground over the past year. They used to be close to 50% of my earnings each month, but have gradually dropped to where they are 36% for the month of March.
Fotolia replaced SS as #2 for the first time at 19% with SS coming in third at 17%. SS really do need to get busy on that commission raise IMHO or else see themselves falling further behind.
But back to the istock issue, until recently I had pretty much exactly the same images on all sites, so portfolio size wasn't the reason for istock's drop in my rankings. And now that my productivity has gone up and upload limits prevent me getting all my pics on istock, I am concerned the decline there will only continue.
The attractiveness of exclusivity at IS has gradually slipped away over time, due to many factors including low commission %, site instability, search confusion, upload limits, and now ownership uncertainty.
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My experience is very similar to that of Lisa. My earnings at iStock have been steadily losing ground since the first big change to the best match, spent many hours and $ disambiguating the portfolio but it did nothing to help.
In March, SS is #1 for me, FT is #2 and IS is #3. I have uploaded a lot of new images recently and so earnings at SS were very good, up by 200%. In same time, have only managed to get about 50 online at IS, partly due to their upload limits and also their unreasonable rejections (none of the other sites have rejected same images - make me think that IS actually don't want them and are finding reasons to reject).
And if I were forced to be exclusive, I'd be on Fotolia with Andres :)
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I'm finding exactly the same as Lisa and Phildate. I haven't reached emerald yet on FT but when I do it will put fotolia well in front of FT and possibly SS also.
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I wouldn't pay iStock prices if I could get the exact same thing in a SS subscription.
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I'm finding exactly the same as Lisa and Phildate. I haven't reached emerald yet on FT but when I do it will put fotolia well in front of FT and possibly SS also.
fotolia well in front of FT ?
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double post
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I meant to say well in front of IS
I'm finding exactly the same as Lisa and Phildate. I haven't reached emerald yet on FT but when I do it will put fotolia well in front of FT and possibly SS also.
fotolia well in front of FT ?
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I'm probably the next or 2nd next person who will reach emerald with 384 downloads to go and this month FT was already the best selling agency for me, so I guess when my pricing because x2 what it is today, there is no way for IS to catch up with it.
Also something weird happened this month on IS. My number of sales went up like 20% while my income got reduced by 10-15% ???
This shows me that I had lots of XS downloads which I really hate :P
If you need images for web , S is the size to go people !! :P
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Also something weird happened this month on IS. My number of sales went up like 20% while my income got reduced by 10-15% ???
This shows me that I had lots of XS downloads which I really hate :P
Which brings up another issue - despite all the complaining about .25 - .30 subscription sales, istock still holds the dubious position of being the only site where contributors can get paid as little as .16 and .17 commission for a licensed image. And XS sales are all too common there.
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Which brings up another issue - despite all the complaining about .25 - .30 subscription sales, istock still holds the dubious position of being the only site where contributors can get paid as little as .16 and .17 commission for a licensed image. And XS sales are all too common there.
But buyers pay 80-84c (some more than US$1) for that 400x300pix image, not 30c for a 8MPix one (or even a 4MPix).
Although XS images are fairly common to me too, I seldom get less than 22c for them.
Regards,
Adelaide
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As a small time contributor, 116 images on Istock and just over 200 on the less fussy sites, I have found since I started a year ago Istock has consistently been in the top 2 earners every month, whilst other sites have yo-yo'd up and down.
What i have found this year though is that my average amount per download at IS has increased from 56c in 2007 to 90c so far this year.
Obviously I am more liable to fluctuations due to the small size of my portfolio.
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I only know that im my case SS beats all of them together , and it beats them good.
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I only know that im my case SS beats all of them together , and it beats them good.
Even per photo? You have about 4,800 photos on SS and only 572 on IS.
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I only know that in my case SS beats all of them together , and it beats them good.
Even per photo? You have about 4,800 photos on SS and only 572 on IS.
Why would I care for high earnings per photo on IS when I dont have a chance to upload most of my work there ? Only thing I care about is total income , and that pays the bills.
I started with stock 2 years ago , almost at the same time at SS and IS and the fact that I have about 10 times more images at SS its a result of IS policy.
IS gives me 2 times more per photo , but I have 10 times more photos at SS. IS is rejecting half of my work in 90% of the time is because that they do not find it suitable for stock.
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For me istock has been consistently losing ground over the past year. They used to be close to 50% of my earnings each month, but have gradually dropped to where they are 36% for the month of March.
same for me...
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Suprised at the response! I guess its different for everyone. I noticed a huge difference in sales at istock after I started linking series, similars, and lightboxes. Its a ton of work, but worth it for a small port.