Don't get me wrong the poll on the right is useful as a rough guide but a statistician could use it to write an entire book or deliver or a year's worth of lectures of what's wrong with that poll from a statistical standpoint. Sadly we have nothing better as the world of microstock is pretty devoid of any meaningful  numerical data...

This is correct. This poll should only be considered "directional".

Is SS number one as this poll suggests? Most probably yes, as already acknowledged by many contributors, here and elsewhere.
Is SS in a relative decline? It looks like.
Is AS number 2, these days? Possibly.
Are IS and AS significantly different from a contributor's revenue standpoint? Probably not.
Is that old claim putting Alamy on the 1st position accurate? Most likely not.

Quote from: Pauws99 on April 17, 2018, 09:34

Quote from: Uncle Pete on April 17, 2018, 08:03

Quote from: Pauws99 on April 15, 2018, 12:12

It would be interesting if anyone has kept a record of the poll I expect there's been a long term decline across the board particularly the low earners

I actually thought the screen captures would bring some comments on the state of Microstock. Maybe most here don't read the "Newbie Discussion" area?

Things like, look how many agencies there were that made the list in 2012? 19 (whatever the numbers, 50 people or more were voting)

Look at what IS numbers were when the totals were combined vs split. IS was 50 - now Ind are 25 and Exclusive are 200 many months...

Fotolia/Adobe and Pond5 are the only two that have gone up in the poll. (did I miss something?) Make a note for Alamy but that has to do with who votes more than earnings, as I know personally the licenses there have dropped in dollar value, but have increased in number.

It confirms what we already know I think so not really much to say...other than despite all the complaining about it SS remains by far the dominant earner. Across the board its a much tougher business and its not about to get any easier

only because they have probably 100 million more files and 50.000 more photographers!!  stands to reason they are No.1 but on the whole I bet it evens out!

The poll is individual not total agency earnings...I thought the theory went that fewer "better" contributors and fewer "better curated" images would make for better earnings for individuals.

I'm 90% sure that I once read somewhere that a score of 100 meant that the average earnings from that site equates to $500 a month.

I'm not going to go digging for the specific answer from Leaf but, yes you remember right. 

Before the change the sites were based on the highest site, which put ShutterStock at 100% all the time and everything else as what percentage of the base = ShutterStock, any other site was. No dollar relationship. Now the new version is not showing dollars but roughly based on 100 equals $500.

There's also a cap on how much someone can report for a site, so the IS exclusives could be at over $2,500 a month, and of course someone on SS could also, but the poll would never allow a response higher than +$2500 maybe that's good so huge variances are eliminated and anyone playing with the poll or working as a shill for an agency, can't create a biased higher result with one vote?