Images on line may be easier but it is not an accurate measure of time invested for the reasons rehearsed previously...if you submit 10,000 images and one is accepted that is the same time invested as if you had 10,000 accepted. I do agree is academic really unless you have tens of thousands of images I doub't the stats really tell you more than gut feel. I do find the stats discussions interesting but I think people tend to draw way more meaning into the numbers than they merit RPD in particular. If I was doing this as a full time business I would be keeping a timesheet as time is probably the biggest input though some do seem to spend an extraordinary amount on equipment for an industry with relatively low returns.

Wasting time on statistics, trends and observations, instead of what sells now and where to best market now? People can sit and count their pennies over and over, it doesn't change how many there are.  Living in the past, doesn't define what will happen in the future.

Low returns, well yes, except I'd have this equipment and be taking photos anyway. Microstock, in my case, is just an outlet for what I'm doing already and a way to recover some of the expenses that I'd already have. I'm not doing this for a living. I do get some travel and equipment depreciation as a tax deduction. I'm pretty happy for those reasons. I should admit, I'm not dependent on Microstock for my income, it's roughly 100% discretionary income. 

I admit, that fact might change my viewpoint of the system and agencies. I never saw how groveling for quarters and RF downloads was a potential way to make a stable living. Yes someone will now point out that some do. Hey, all you math wizards, most don't make a reasonable wage and many don't cover equipment costs. Some are a success. Expectations and rational business views are important. Don't expect to make a living or much money at Microstock. Now the market is saturated and incomes are dropping, don't expect things to ever be the way they were.

I said this when I started, partly because of the referral money and people recruiting new friends to the way to make money. It's more like a MLM where people in at the beginning and those who recruit new members will make the money. Sure we aren't selling soap or vitamins, but look at what happened? Many join, few profit, and the agencies take the cream off the top, before paying us a pittance. Oh Yeah Baby, make money from those old photos on your hard drive...


(for those who don't get it = old photos on a hard drive...)

Some do well, some have done very well, most don't. Translation: don't quit your day job.  We should warn all new people who come here and talk of future sales and income, that there are people on the forum, who have been doing this for over ten years, and they have seen the fall and the future from an experienced effort over a long time. Hope and optimism are wonderful, don't let me quash those dreams, but please read and see what you are getting into, before thinking there's any kind of future in Microstock.

DT is dead because their time has passed. That's what happens in business. Nice people, nice agency, the big competition and the market are going to bury DT. I don't know how the other small agencies are surviving. Eventually if it costs more to stay in business, with losses year after year, it's time to stop bailing and abandoned the ship. When DT closes, that's a huge sign of the status of the Microstock photo business market.

Quote from: YadaYadaYada on July 02, 2018, 13:26

Quote from: Zero Talent on July 02, 2018, 08:43

Quote from: Herg on July 02, 2018, 05:22

They are full of words of criticism, perceived wisdom but with nothing to back them up as they hide behind their anonymity. I would just like to see their ports as a reference.

... said someone who "hides" behind his/her anonymity!

I don't think Marbury actually hides, just doesn't make himself easy to connect.

Who is "Marbury"?
I can find this when googling "Marbury shutterstock": https://www.shutterstock.com/g/hubballi

Not that it matters, but how can one tell that Marbury's port on SS (aka hubballi) is the same as Herg's?

... and btw, who si YadaYadaYada?

Or She? I say knowing who someone is and seeing their work, can lend to their credibility. And yes increasingdifficulty someone can pretend to be someone else, but they will be found out just as easily to be a fake. You can look at my name and my work and find that there's an overlap and it confirms who I am and what I do. With some anonymous poster here, we don't know if it's six of the same person, or someone with ten photos on Crestock. There is some value to knowing the source and their experience. Anonymous people and be anyone, anywhere, with a hidden agenda, disgruntled troll that hates a particular agency, someone who just doesn't like Microstock, and we'd never know.

In real life you tend to trust information or at the least evaluate the credibility, based on the source. An anonymous source has no base credibility or authority. Who, What, Why, Where, When and by what authority. Basic news or reporting, also how people view information. Of course this is the Internet, where anyone can write anything and get gullible people to believe it's real. 

One person says new images have a huge drop. Someone else says, new images are stealing the downloads from old images. Welcome to microstock, where anyone can make up any fact they want and some people here on the forum will believe them. Some have made puffed up personas and history, with exaggerated skills and history, and people on the forum believe that too, without checking.

What we used to call hitting the wall, is now controlled sales or an income cap. Same as before, just a new name, with dark implications. Makes for a good conspiracy, blaming the agency manipulation for low sales, instead of the market, over supply and limited demand. Then there's always new users, bad reviews, biased search, and all kinds of other things. Blame, conspiracy, accusations, but nothing to back up the claims except "it's obvious I can see it". Right and I can see that the Earth is the center of the universe, it's obvious because everything circles around us.

Well in marketing and microstock, everything does not circle around us, as some might imagine as obvious. There's a whole big market, buyers, agents, supply, demand, prices and twisted search systems, very little if not NONE, has to do with any of us personally or as individuals. Agencies don't care if I upload this month or not. There are no tricks, or magic wheel of fortune. It's not a game and not just blind luck.

Produce good needed work and you'll get sales.

Travel, landscape, nature....
Out of my own experience I�d say for an expectation of $300-500 better plan for 10.000 photos. You may have exceptional work and do better, or you may do worse...
Good luck!

I think that and the rest of the comments are more realistic. The new member boost is real, anyone who starts and thinks the same return will last or be proportional is going to get a wake up slap in about a year. RPI is not flat or equal as the portfolio grows.

I'd like to see some day what NatureShooter shoots. I mean that's a nice area and I'm sure enjoyable. But also like birds, they are everywhere and free. I know that offends some people, but if you shoot something that nearly anyone, with the right tools, knowledge and effort can go out and shoot, your competition is limitless. Nature is like shooting food, you need shots that are different, needed by buyers, useful, and stand out.

Quote from: Sky on May 29, 2018, 11:29

Could it be using a Shutterstock controlled revenue system?

The short answer is that it's possible, but it's highly unlikely. Nobody has yet produced any compelling evidence to support the theory.

Possible doesn't mean probable, I agree. Evidence or proof, that would be nice but also unlikely.  When anyone can make any claim and others will believe and repeat the same unfounded conjecture... then the myths become factoids.

My iStock sales are  1-3 hundred each month. Clearly not enough to be rich. For the last couple of years I have come to the conclusion I will not make a living doing this. I now put all my monthly earnings in a Fidelity stock market account. Maybe in 4 or 5 five years it will double in value. This makes my low photo stock earning look a little better.

IS = joke

Did you mean Money Market account?

First guess was, bad battery. Nope, I tried four that are all fine in other ##-D cameras.

I was thinking high battery usage, something draining them fast? Nope, put them on the charger and in under a minute full charge. Edit: now the second two batteries are taking longer. Of course if two are old, and recarge fast, short life, but two are newer and take longer to re-charge... I'm back to the camera is draining them? 

I'm guessing now that the camera is registering low power and shutting down, because of an error in the hardware or software that reads the battery voltage. Before I send this in to Canon, anyone have a similar experience or advise. I'm thinking I can maybe pull the system battery and leave it for a complete reset.

I did some searches, so far only found people with drain problems, non-Canon lenses or while the camera was off. I haven't located anything where fully functional camera, gives false battery low reports.

Quote from: YadaYadaYada on June 16, 2018, 12:48

RPI would only be a valuable tool if all the pictures on all your agencies were identical, same type, or same subjects. SS takes subjects and editorial that Adobe doesn't. Adobe takes drawings and some subjects that SS won't. Alamy takes everything is the quality is right. DT might accept or refuse for subjects and styles. DP seems to have stopped reviewing or they do bulk rejections. IS has different rules and standards than the rest including what editorial they will and won't take. How can you get any sense out of that, when the pictures, videoor subjects that are accepted are not the same?

Calculating RPI on accepted pictures doesn't make sense.
If you use the number of images submitted (or produced) it does make sense.
It tells you how much revenue to expect per image of your style / subject on average.
So you have a rough idea how many images you need to have to achieve a given monthly income.
Of course it's not exact, and of course it changes over time.
But it gives you a rough idea what to expect.

That part about only uploaded images and RPI does make sense. Especially for the reason you pointed out "how much revenue to expect per image of your style / subject on average."

But the way most people use RPI is, how much for agency by agency and as someone else has pointed out, if you have different images on all the agencies, the number has no statistical basis. Roughly 4,000 of my images on SS are not anywhere else. Most of my illustrations on Adobe are not on SS. IS cleared out my Editorial because it was competing with Getty paid photographers. Alamy I hardly upload new and have thousands of old images, many are not anywhere else!

DT for me is dead because I don't care anymore, so I really can't blame them for that. No new upload, no old files sell, apathy is it's own reward? 

But RPI for me, is impossible and means nothing, because of the above. If someone was to model something like you suggest, upload the same everywhere, and count produced images that where worked and uploaded, that would be a really useful number.

There are too many variables in RPD or RPI to make the numbers accurate or important across agencies. Yes it can be interesting and general but statistically both are full of flaws and susceptible to high probability of error when using to compare agency to agency. With that, knowing my RPI at SS with twice as many images, that are almost 90% different from Adobe? Meaningless.

I'll admit if someone has 90% the same images at all their agencies, RPD and RPI would be very interesting, that and what sells best at each individual agency. Why upload flowers to one place if they don't sell, but then on another flowers make good downloads. Use time for making what sells... not wasting time on irrelevant statistics, charts and graphs. 

Quote from: ShadySue on June 13, 2018, 12:43

They can, but they choose not to, in the grounds that they can't know what a sub sale has earned until the sub period has expired. I'm averaging a lot more on sub sales now than I was when they were 'fixed price', so we need to be careful what we wish for.

Of course, they could still tell us which files sold in real time, without the $$, but they choose not to.

Have I misremembered or did they say as some point they would provide real time sales info? (not price though)

I think what was said was maybe some day, but no promise. That was on the forums after a new version of ESP late last year. I doubt that the statement was anything official, just a maybe. It's like me saying, if I ever have a spare million dollars, I might buy you a new camera. Don't expect I ever will, but see, I said I'd buy you a new camera. 

One of those things where, when I see it, I'll believe it. Right now the DM stats are most friendly but ESP did add some details and impossible to understand complicated, loaded with irrelevant data, kind of charts and graphs.

Quote from: BalkanskiMacak on June 14, 2018, 09:26

Well, I saw, over the past year, some revenue increase, making it the second highest in the grow of the low earners... Then, I got a careful look at the stats: they are now accepting more or less anything, so the RPI is actually extremely low, the worst of the platforms I'm on... When even 123RF is better, then it's maybe time to consider leaving the boat!

Why does RPI matter?

Because people like looking at statistics that are, in the end, mostly meaningless.

Yes it's nice to know that agency A makes a RPD of .## and agency B makes .## maybe annual RPD, but knowing has no effect on future performance it's just history. The data could spot a trend, if done by subject or styles or video vs photo Etc.

RPI, even less relevant or useful. Like people have pointed out for time after time, if one agency takes anything and I have 10,000 images and another is selective and I have 4,000 and another doesn't take Editorial so I have even less, how do I compare apples and oranges to the bananas? They aren't the same photos. Plus the one that's got only the best, should make more money because the useless filler has been removed.

The only number that matters to me is money in the bank. How much do I make from an agency per month and more valuable the long term, per year. There are daily ups and downs, months that are better or worse, but a year is a year, and that's the number that goes on the tax forms, which is nice to monitor.

Maybe some people think that watching months and days or making charts and graphs does something to help sales. Only if the data is used to predict what subjects, concepts, and styles sell better. For just numbers, that's a waste of time. You can look at your best seller lists on any agency and see what sells without making pie charts. RPI and RPD are virtually useless for building sales, they only reflect what's already happened.

Yes DT is dead for me, not a shock or unexpected. Keep in mind that DT knows they are dead and suing Google, claiming that the sales have fallen off terribly because of the search. DT knows that they are in trouble. Too bad, nice people, but business is more often just about business, not nice people we'd like to see making a good run at Microstock.

Instead of a number, I'm starting over with just the general subject.

Shutterstock Milestones:

September 21, 2006 - Shutterstock surpasses one million stock photos
February 20, 2009 -Shutterstock reaches 6 million photos, (5 million 2.5 years)
February 14, 2010 - Shutterstock reaches 10 million Photos (4 million 12 months)
June 19, 2012 - Shutterstock reaches 20 million stock Images (10 Million 28 months)
October 30, 2013 - Shutterstock reaches 30 million images (10 million 15 months)
August 4, 2014 - Shutterstock celebrates 40 million images in it's collection. (10 million 10 months)
December 31, 2014 - 46.8 million images in the collection. (1 million new files per month)
March 3, 2015 - 50 Million Image mark is reached (10 million in 7 months for those watching)
August 12, 2015 - 60 Million Images (10 million in 160 days. 62,500 new files a day)
December 15, 2015 - 70 Million Images (four months)
March 26, 2016 - 80 Million
June 16, 2016 - 90 Million (10 million under three months)
Sept 8, 2016 - 100 Million
February 2017 - 110 Million
October 28, 2017 � 160 Million
December 29, 2017 - 170 Million (10 million new two months)
April 16, 2018 - 190 Million (20 million new in 3.5 months)
June 10, 2018 - 200 Million (10 million new in 55 days)

No longer tracking the following.

SS Members by registration year rounded
2004 - 2000
2005 - 4300
2006 - 3900 = 9000
2007 - 3800 = 13,000
2008 - 5500 = 19,000
2009 - 7200 = 27,000
2010 - 6000 = 33,000
2011 - 6000 = 39,000
2012 - 10000 = 49,000
2013 - 11000 = 60,000
2014 - 14000 = 74,000
2015 - 26000 = 100,000
2016 - 64000 = 165,000

-=-=-

Year   Cont YR   < 0 Img      Cont % < 0   Cont T      < 0      Cont % < 0

2004    1,950       1,030       52.82%    1,950       1,030       52.82%
2005    15,426       4,725       30.63%    17,376       5,755       33.12%
2006    26,349       3,676       13.95%    43,725       9,431       21.57%
2007    36,631       3,939       10.75%    80,356       13,370       16.64%
2008    48,267       5,767       11.95%    128,623    19,137       14.88%
2009    70,125       7,866       11.22%    198,748    27,003       13.59%
2010    58,454       6,324       10.82%    257,202    33,327       12.96%
2011    66,479       6,026       9.06%       323,681    39,353       12.16%
2012    154,082    9,661       6.27%       477,763    49,014       10.26%
2013    205,951    10,990       5.34%       683,714    60,004       8.78%
2014    228,906    14,050       6.14%       912,620    74,053       8.11%
2015    343,461    26,455       7.7%       1,256,081    100,508    8.00%
2016    422,950    64,440       15.24%    1,679,031    164,949    9.82%

I'm not sure the number of contributors makes a difference any longer. The number is so large, people come and go. I'll try to stick with images from now on.

I see my portfolio too but can't log in to see whats going on!?

Read above, Canstock is giving away your images for free. Two choices. 1) Drop them or 2) take the minimal money from CS and admit you don't mind them giving away your work for free, because you need the pittance from CS sales.

Personally when things like this have happened, I dropped agencies. I don't mind making a little less, because I'm not going to sell out and become a willing victim of this abuse. As long as people keep working and supplying these places, they will keep using and abusing us. You have a choice!

thanks for  everyone, giving me quite an insight.

Another question - I've noticed when signing up - some of these sites want you do give them a drivers license, passport, etc just to sign up... is that 'right'? My concern is about identity theft, and seeing as how a lot of companies can be hacked, I'm not quite that comfortable giving that... What do you do about that?

They need to know who you are, and where you live for tax reporting. Also agencies need to keep anyone from opening many different accounts with different names. It's all about legality and security. But bottom line, you need to be a verified real person to receive money.

I don't know why you want to work for DP if you have read the forum here.

I've been in microstock 10 years now.

I remember when it was exciting to track sales and watch my income steadily rise, like some on this page are reporting. 

But a few years back, everything changed:

- My port size hit 10,000 and each new upload was a miniscule addition as a percentage of my total collection... meaning I couldn't expect to see constant growth like I did as a newbie.

- At the same time, oversupply at the agencies was getting out of control... total collection sizes were going up by tens of millions a month, and my few hundred new images meant nothing.

- The agencies started stacking the deck against us, favoring the brand new artists to give them hope that this is a sustainable income so they keep uploading.  (news flash... it's not.)

So, how was my May?  Crap.  At least I assume, because looking too deep into the numbers is depressing and I've stopped putting myself through that.

Right except the agencies have always "stacked the deck" in favor of new artists. Look back when you started and you'll see how your files got a huge boost. You won't see that in earnings necessarily but you should be able to see disproportional download numbers for the number of files you had. Then things slowly level off, more new files, same DL numbers. Until just what you said, diminishing returns. In the early days it was called hitting the wall. Same thing, different name. 

May 2018 was the lowest May for me since May 2013, but considering the state of the business, the market and everything, same as I've been seeing for a couple years now. Plain flat sales, no changes when I add hundreds of new files in a month, for a few months, or add nothing but one photo each month for a few months.

Flat means some months are better, some lower, no growth to speak of. Also no huge drops, just kind of limping along based on what people need and buy. And yes I know some very active, good, successful people, who had sales drop in half in the last year or two, for no apparent reason. I see it as a flood of files, similar to what's working for these people... slice of the pie smaller and divided thinner, when there are hundreds of thousands of over covered subjects and concepts.

I don't see any change or any reason to believe anything will be getting better. The growth and any boom of sales, is over, never to return. Some folks talk about the next big thing or bring back the old days. Only in our memories, not going to happen. I didn't know that unsustainable was referring to all of us, but that was the right observation.

How do you warn new people that they are investing their time and hope on a doomed, sinking ship?