Better than I expected, no complaints.

My mouth literally dropped. Never received this kind of sum from them. What is included, some AI bonus ? Where is the catch.

Average month, not poor or great...

Someone in North Carolina spent $499 on one of my abstract fractal images. (My non-exclusive 15% was $74.85.)

Quote from: synthetick on December 18, 2023, 21:22
Someone in North Carolina spent $499 on one of my abstract fractal images. (My non-exclusive 15% was $74.85.)

Very nice one :-)
I like to do fractals too - do you use Ultra Fractal 6 too?

Michael / MPfoto71

No, I use Chaotica.

Quote from: synthetick on December 18, 2023, 21:57
No, I use Chaotica.

Thanks for the info - I will try that one for sure, looks nice

Best month since Dec 2019. It's strange, I seem to have one standout* month a year, and that month changes apparently randomly.
*compared to my other months in the same year.
Still, it's all the lottery of getting one or more high value sales.

Gotta say that I find it extraordinary how low the RPD for videos is compared to images. I was an iStock video exclusive in the good old days (I used to earn a full time wage from it back then), and I understand that things have changed in the industry since then. But even so, I can't believe how undervalued video (especially animation) is on iStock/Getty.

There are 11350 images in my portfolio. Mostly photos of Türkiye. There are only 16 sales and $5 in earnings this month. I earned only 220 dollars in 1.5 years at istock. This is a very low figure compared to Shutterstock.

46 dollars in total. And this was carried by two sales, one photo, one video for10 dollars each.

Since I uploaded very little this year I think that is fair. Next year I will  make a serious push until I reach 200 dollars a month.

Will I need to add 10k files for that?

Quote from: cobalt on December 19, 2023, 13:38
Since I uploaded very little this year I think that is fair. Next year I will  make a serious push until I reach 200 dollars a month.
Will I need to add 10k files for that?

Depends on the clips.  I make about $1K per month on iStock with just over 5K clips.

Quote from: cobalt on December 19, 2023, 13:38
Since I uploaded very little this year I think that is fair. Next year I will  make a serious push until I reach 200 dollars a month.

Will I need to add 10k files for that?

I am at about $200 per month average with approx. 2k clips - and my clips are not at a high quality level.

For example this clip https://www.istockphoto.com/de/video/niedrige-winkelansicht-eines-fahrenden-autos-in-die-vorbeifahrenden-b%C3%A4ume-gm1330987881-414256398 had a $76 dollar sale last month, done with a smartphone sitting in a car.

I think a broad variation of topics is just as important as a usable quality - with a top quality you will certainly achieve more high sales.

Not too good. Only sold 1 clip in the whole month.

I only have 350 clips and I think I uploaded less than 10 this year. Most clips are over 12 years old.

Also, I find the istock upload system very cumbersome.

This month I sold 5 clips, lowest for 55cents, highest for 9.50.

The 9.50 is unusually high.

Actually reading what is being shared here is actually quite good for non exclusive video these days.

Most of my videos will be going to BB next year, but I still want to have a certain percentage for my direct sales ports.

I wanted to give istock mostly photos, because the returns are a lot better than for video.

But you have me convinced to also upload my direct video sales content to them as well. Maybe once a month as a one day effort.

Overall files have an amazingly long shelf life. I am always impressed how really old photos can still get reliable sales year after year.

For that alone I think istock is a good agency.

eta:

Longterm I think my income will come from Adobe, istock and Blackbox, with some add ons via pond5 and a few other agencies.

When I started uploading  seriously again last September I wasn't sure if making a full time income from stock is still possible. But the more I upload and the more interact...it is still very, very possible.

The difference to 10 years ago is that you have a lot less people sharing publicly that they are full time stock artists.

But there are many families with a reliable stock income. If it is well diversified it can be very sustainable.

Must work hard of course, but that is needed with any other job as well.

Quote from: cobalt on December 19, 2023, 16:03
Longterm I think my income will come from Adobe, istock and Blackbox, with some add ons via pond5 and a few other agencies.

If you participate in BB, can you upload those same clips to iStock and Adobe Stock?  I keep my BB submissions in a completely separate folder and those clips don't go anywhere else.

no, BB content is series exclusive to them and they distribute to pond5 and istock.

So far I was doing around 50% BB, 50% I uploaded myself.

I think  I might increase the percentage in favor of bb, especially send all editorial to them.

Longterm I would like to identify clear "themes" that go either exclusive to bb or go to my ports directly.

But this year I did very little video. Next year I will spend more time on that and in the end there will be some balance.

I like them a lot and might get lazy and send everything their way.

But sometimes it just makes sense to keep the photos and the videos together in case a customer wants both.

December stats are in.

For me very disappointing. I have earned a very similar amount on iStock pretty much every month in 2023, which is unusual as it is. In the past I used to have huge spikes in sales and revenue for Halloween and Christmas, but my December earnings are not different than any other month and only around 1/3 of what I used to earn in December '22.

Got a crappy December too. Already expected it, as I took a look on the views and interactions in the content statistics. Only half of what I used to get, and earnings are even less than half. Doesn't look much better when I look at the current situation for January. 

iStock/Getty accounted for 17% of my microstock earnings in 2023, which is a small drop in comparison to the 19% in 2022.

For me, December was the worst month I've ever had at istock - both in terms of downloads and revenue.

My video sales for December were up 180% compared to November. I haven't looked into it deeply but it may be because I chose to focus on uploading vertical Christmas videos. My image sales were down slightly compared to November, probably because I had dropped off the image uploads while focussing on video uploads.

Terrible month. Half the previous month.

Is it me or DM doesn't display right, Todayis20 shows no thumbs, the Dec. file reports as October? Did Getty adjust the access again?

Quote from: Uncle Pete on January 20, 2024, 20:37
Is it me or DM doesn't display right, Todayis20 shows no thumbs, the Dec. file reports as October? Did Getty adjust the access again?

Yeah, they changed it, again.
Apparently they have advised TodayIs20, and we're just waiting for them to have the time to make the necessary adjustments on their site.
Of course, if Getty would just give us decent stats, we wouldn't need external apps. 

Quote from: ShadySue on January 21, 2024, 01:10

Quote from: Uncle Pete on January 20, 2024, 20:37
Is it me or DM doesn't display right, Todayis20 shows no thumbs, the Dec. file reports as October? Did Getty adjust the access again?

Yeah, they changed it, again.
Apparently they have advised TodayIs20, and we're just waiting for them to have the time to make the necessary adjustments on their site.
Of course, if Getty would just give us decent stats, we wouldn't need external apps. 

Yes, how is it that individuals can write software to handle stats and our data, and the big multi-million dollar corporations, can't give us useful earnings stats. Adobe is another one, where we can't get image historic earnings, except from an outside creative, or by downloading and making our own database?

But IS is the worst and holds the record for that dishonor.