Interesting discussion and I certainly agree with the last comment from Niktol:

That's quite ambitious I must say, at least in photography. Of course you do video which is not something I really know about.

One thing in this discussion about earnings that hasn't been mentioned - photo and video licensing is very different to other sorts of "work for hire" in that the earnings are not directly related to the work that you are doing in a particular year. So you can stop working on stock photos for 12 months and do something else, and, to a large degree, the income from your photos will continue to arrive. I've not seen any really substantive work on how long that will continue and at what rate it will fall off, but you are certainly looking at several years of similar if falling income after you stop submitting.

I guess a real economics expert could amortize that income back to what you are earning now to give you a better picture of your prospects!

Steve

Interesting discussion and I certainly agree with the last comment from Niktol:

Quote

https://www.backyardsilver.com/2015/03/serious-eats-guide-to-food-photography/

One thing in this discussion about earnings that hasn't been mentioned - photo and video licensing is very different to other sorts of "work for hire" in that the earnings are not directly related to the work that you are doing in a particular year. So you can stop working on stock photos for 12 months and do something else, and, to a large degree, the income from your photos will continue to arrive. I've not seen any really substantive work on how long that will continue and at what rate it will fall off, but you are certainly looking at several years of similar if falling income after you stop submitting.

I guess a real economics expert could amortize that income back to what you are earning now to give you a better picture of your prospects!

Steve

I think though it would be hard for anyone to estimate as the future is so uncertain. We may all be Kodakcoin millionaires ;-).

I guess you could estimate it reasonably well if you looked at the earnings of images first uploaded in 2012, say, and tracked them year by year. Of course, that assumes that the agencies don't downgrade the portfolio of someone that stops uploading.

Steve

It is stable and predictable to a degree. I would go with reasonable projections for one year ahead if past 2-3 years are analyzed.

Quote from: niktol on January 13, 2018, 12:26

It is stable and predictable to a degree. I would go with reasonable projections for one year ahead if past 2-3 years are analyzed.

Yeah id say two years is reasonable but I doubt a mortgage provider would agree ;-0. Although of course some believe that SS determine your earnings down to the nearest cent ;-).

Reasonable projections cannot rely on the revenue from a single agency. In that respect I believe exclusives are much harder to predict. People get worked up because of daily fluctuations in sales, agencies constantly tinkering with search algorithms (if that's a real thing), prioritization of contributors, caps, real or imagined, all sorts of random things, but in fact it's all noise. There are much more important parameters which aren't agency-dependent than all this nonsense. And those are never mentioned on this forum.

Hey I'm not insisting on anything. It's not academia where I have to validate every  statement and approach.

I doubt many will share so academic really...you are right though money grossed is very different from net profit. Personally I wouldn't spend money I haven't got yet from such a precarious exercise unless I had a fall back but I do project earnings forward but don't bet my essential spending on it......

Going back to the OP's original question, there's something to be said about the drawbacks of being results-oriented. In other words, asking how much one can earn before investing in those magical 10,000 words is putting the cart before the horse.

I used to play a lot of poker and perhaps this analogy rings true for this business. In poker, you can make the optimal decisions and lose in the short term (which can feel like an eternity). Eventually with enough smart decisions you'll end up ahead. Many amateur poker players make the mistake of changing their (optimal) strategy when in the short term results are unfavorable.

With stock photography you can spend a considerable investment on gear/setup, models, location, keywording services, uploading software and see the shoot become a flop. This can be to no fault of our own since client habits can be unpredictable to sites chafing the Lagos. What works for me is trying to keep my costs ridiculously low (which can be challenging since I do a lot of travel photography).

A recent example of lower costs is a session I did with my awesome 91 year old grandfather on the theme of fitness for seniors. I wrote about it on my blog:

https://brutallyhonestmicrostock.com/2018/01/11/photo-shoot-older-couple-exercising/

Even if these don't sell, we just had a lot of fun.

Going back to the OP's original question, there's something to be said about the drawbacks of being results-oriented. In other words, asking how much one can earn before investing in those magical 10,000 hours is like putting the cart before the horse.

I used to play a lot of poker and perhaps this analogy rings true for this business. In poker, you can make the optimal decisions and lose in the short term (which can feel like an eternity). Eventually with enough smart decisions you'll end up ahead. Many amateur poker players make the mistake of changing their (optimal) strategy when in the short term results are unfavorable.

With stock photography you can spend a considerable investment on gear/setup, models, location, keywording services, uploading software and see the shoot become a flop. This can be to no fault of our own since client habits can be unpredictable to sites chafing the Lagos. What works for me is trying to keep my costs ridiculously low (which can be challenging since I do a lot of travel photography).

A recent example of lower costs is a session I did with my awesome 91 year old grandfather on the theme of fitness for seniors. I wrote about it on my blog:

https://brutallyhonestmicrostock.com/2018/01/11/photo-shoot-older-couple-exercising/

Even if these don't sell, we just had a lot of fun.
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I want to reinforce the point to keep costs down by shooting friends and relatives, with examples of mg latest shoot. Would be too much unnecessary work and cost  to open up a whole new blog site. 

Sorry about duplicates above I don't know what happen (when I tried to edit it made a new post)

Well stock-photography is ALL about shooting what sell finding a niche etc or else the whole venture is futile! to a newbiee just scan the internet and see whats there. Its a cut-throat game and all friends here but dead enemies in searches, agencies etc.
Thats what its all about.

I would not discount the vagaries of what happens on the sites - delays in indexing, search changes, and someone else uploading a flood of similar content (or not) right after you can all have a huge effect on how well an image sells. Unfortunately there isn't a lot we can do about it other than upload more so that those effects get averaged out.

These things can happen in our favor or against them. I know of instances where this worked in my favor, and I suspect ones where they went against me.

The more your images are unique and in demand the more they will sell no matter what the agencies do or don't do.

Quote from: steheap on January 13, 2018, 11:54
I guess you could estimate it reasonably well if you looked at the earnings of images first uploaded in 2012, say, and tracked them year by year. Of course, that assumes that the agencies don't downgrade the portfolio of someone that stops uploading.

Steve
You could if you think the last 5 years reflects what will happen in the next 5....I doubt it myself. Any forecast based on past data only really works in a stable or predictable  environment.

This comment got me thinking about my own images and whether I could track their performance once I stopped uploading that particular subject or theme. I did find a subject (cats) that I stopped uploading in 2012 - even last year, they are still giving a pretty good performance - it is falling off, but still worthwhile. Now that isn't the same as stopping uploading altogether, but it does show that our images do have a pretty good shelf life. This graph shows the top level picture, and the full analysis is here:
https://www.backyardsilver.com/2018/01/can-make-just-travel-stock-photos/



Steve