For me, DT is my second highest earner.   Sales have been holding steady, but I've noticed that RPD has been steadily falling for the past two years.

I'd say FT is the one dying.  They used to be my #2, and now they're #4.  (#3 is 123RF, and we all know who #1 is.) 

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Quote from: Buffalo Bill on November 06, 2014, 14:56

Could the DPC program be the root cause?

No, otherwise other sites would also be lower.  But for me, CAN is the only site that has been dropping lately, and it's a pronounced drop vs other sites experiencing pronounced rises.  There's something going on at CAN (like a search change, or a cut in marketing/advertising) or to CAN (maybe Google is showing them lower in results?)

I've been wondering the same thing.  In mid to late October my sales at CAN started to slide.  I'm seeing around half the sales I'd normally see each day.  Up until then I would have called them a solid performer, neck and neck with 123, BigStock and DP.  Now CAN has fallen by half, while the other three have stayed steady or increased.

.

RPI means nothing in my opinion. Let's take two photographers - one is doing complicated studio shot with a lot of lighting and retouching work, the other is lifestyle or street photographer making dozens of pictures at the same time. They both earn the same amount of money for the same time and work invested. The first one with one picture, the other with ten or fifty. And their RPIs are completely different.

But wouldn't you agree that both these individuals could forecast future earnings by knowing their own RPI and quantity of images produced? 

Here I figured I have used my RPI to forecast my own growth and set goals, so it's been a meaningful number for me.  I guess I've been wrong.

Quote from: gostwyck on October 06, 2014, 14:29

There's something seriously wrong with the results when nearly 50% of voters are claiming more than 40c per image/month ... which itself is nearly 50% higher than Shutterstock's declared average.

Even Sean said he's only generating about 60c per image/month (in a previous thread) so we must have some absolute stock geniuses voting in the poll.

1. I'd say MSG members tend to be more active or more succesful than the average SS contributor. The SS collection includes many bad, unsaleable files (at least from today's perspective). It's not surprising that members of an independent, professional forum will have better results than the average SS member.

2. RPI is not really about how good you are, especially at SS it's more about your position in the search results. Everything gets downloaded as long as it is seen by buyers. If you came to SS recently life is much harder.

I had to smile, because with my skills I might not qualify to set up tripods or lights in the studios of some of the great photographers who shared their results - and yet my RPI at SS is much higher than theirs:) What does it prove? Nothing. I would gladly swap my higher RPI for the total income that they derive from photography. 

3. RPI is only useful so that you can realize that if your income grows at all, this growth is not linear, i.e. it doesn't correspond to your portfolio growth. The only constant is that the RPI is dropping and the only conclusion that you can withdraw from tracking it, is that this business is unsustainable (for contributors) and you should face the music and find a real job.

I agree with you on #1 and even on #3 to a degree.  But you're off on #2.  "Everything gets downloaded as long as it is seen by buyers?"  Yes, to be downloaded it must be seen... but if something is seen, that doesn't mean it will be downloaded.

I'd contend the higher your RPI, the more you know what customers want and are delivering to those needs.  We can gripe that SS' search seems crazy, but face it, they live or die by search... if customers can't easily find what they want, they won't be back.  SS knows this, so their main mission is to serve the most relevant results to a customer's search requests.  By definition, they're serving up the stuff that the customer will most want to buy.  So yes, the search will benefit those best serving the customer's needs. 

A high RPI -- in relation to the masses -- is absolutely a sign that you're doing things right.

Despite some claims to the contrary, this thread is one of the most interesting I have seen on the forum in months.

Why?

I know my own RPI on SS and microstock overall.  It's a useful tool in my personal forecasting and goal-setting, regardless how anyone else is doing.  (And no one can tell me RPI is not useful in my forecasting.  That's just a silly argument.)

But the real reason this thread is insightful is because I've always wondered how I'm doing on SS compared to the overall base of contributors.  I don't mean in total dollars, because port size varies wildly.  And I don't care much about "I'm up 8% on SS this month" or "I'm down 20% this month" because that's just top-level trend info.

This thread has showed me that my RPI is right in the middle or slightly above the average of others here, assuming people are answering accurately.  Is that actionable info?  Of course not.  But if your employer posted a breakdown of everyone's hourly rate, wouldn't you be VERY curious to see it?  Of course you would.  It wouldn't necessarily change how you work, but it would give you an indication of whether you're doing well or poorly on average compared to your co-workers.

This poll has filled a true gap in market intelligence. 

I was at $.61 for Sept at SS.  That's down a fair bit from last Sept.  I attribute this drop to the three core factors driving down microstock income for all contributors -- 1) exploding growth of ports at the big agencies and inability for a long-time contributor to grow at the same rate, 2) former IS exclusives dropping the crown and setting up at SS and the other big players, and 3) agency changes such as search changes and new offerings like DPC.

As for RPI as a metric...

Some keep saying RPI is meaningless.  I couldn't disagree more.

It's not about bragging rights.  It's not "Oh yeah, I could make my number higher by deleting my non-sellers."
You NEED your non-sellers in the count because the point is to AVERAGE out your good and bad sellers to determine how much the AVERAGE image will earn you.  You have no way of knowing whether today's batch of images will be good or bad sellers, but guessing that they will hit an AVERAGE RPI for your port is the best projection you can make.  If you apply an RPI that has been tinkered by removing your bad sellers, that's just foolish.

It's about tracking your performance over time and watching for trends.  It's about being able to project future income, setting goals and figuring out how much work you'll need to do to hit those goals.  For me, I bake in a continued slide in my RPI due to the three factors named above, and I feel this gives me the most reliable projection for future earnings.  There's NO better way to project this, until someone invents a time machine.

Quote from: stocked on September 30, 2014, 10:53

RPI is probably more important than RPD if you think about dropping exclusivity, the RPI for a given portfolio is pretty hard to forecast!
(with RPI I mean RPIO royalty-per-image-online)

This is the metric I would use to judge performance too.

People whose work I know and who oeuvre is similar to mine tell me $0.60+/image/month is about right for SS.

Yes, this is right, but I think only if you have a port full of high commercial value stuff.

Up about 10 percent from August, but that's a non-story.  We should all expect that.  We're going from what is traditionally one of the worst months to one of the best months.  If you're not up at least 10 percent from Aug to Sep, there's something seriously wrong.

The bigger story for all of us should be how are we compared to Sept 2013.  It looks like I'll be flat, almost to the dollar.  Yes, Sept 2013 was a great month, and I'm happy to have a nice chunk of extra income again in Sept 2014, but looking at the month as returns for a business where I invested a lot of my time over the past year growing my port significantly, this is a big disappointment.

As for the agency mix, comparing Sept 2013 to 2014:  SS, FT, iS, 123 down slightly or flat.  DT up significantly.  The rest up slightly.

Yes, unless you are a newbie with no history for comparison, your microstock returns are probably flatlining or crashing.  The reasons:

1.  FORMER IS EXCLUSIVES BOLT AND SET UP AT SS AND ELSEWHERE.  Veterans point to March 2013 as the month when their SS earnings took a nosedive and never recovered.  SS has confirmed that this is when they saw a big increase of contributors who were once IS exclusives.  Overnight the total port sizes at SS and other agencies grew enormously, leaving a smaller piece of the pie for everyone else.

2. HUGE INCREASE IN OVERALL COMPETITION.  Beyond the flood of former IS exclusives suddenly making their work available everywhere, all the agencies grew their overall image offerings by HUGE amounts.  SS went from 25 million to 40 million images in one year.  Unless you also grew your own port size by roughly 60% in a year, you probably saw a decline in earnings.

3. RISE OF BARGAIN-BASEMENT SITES LIKE DPC and DP.  Customers who might normally pay more at sites like SS and DT are being drawn to agencies where every day is a fire sale.  Nightmare scenario is SS, DT and other big players slash their prices to squash these threats and we all see a further 50% drop in earnings overnight.

I was once a hopeful person and thought microstock would give me a sustainable income for many years to come, but those days are LONG GONE.

I've noticed an increase in the past 10 days, for sure.  The question is, is this the normal significant increase we would normally see right after Labor Day or is something else happening?

To me, it looks like the typical post-Labor Day bump... same percent increase as the past several years.  Are you seeing something that suggests otherwise?