As promised, here's our Year 1 report for the iofoto collection. We started uploading January 2007.
First and foremost- the entire microstock community should be really pleased with the amount of information sharing, both members and distributors. For a stock shooter with 25 years of trying to make a living in stock, simply the concept of re-ordering search results by "Downloads-Descending" can be called a phenomenon. This is the type of information that used to run up our bar tab!
As most people know, I diversify my stock revenue through rights-managed, traditional royalty-free, midstock and microstock distributors. Overall, our strong growth in the past 12 months has been at the high end and low-end. In one metric outside of microstock, 26 out of 30 best sellers were rights-managed with the very top RM images creating over $10,000 each in revenue. Likewise, we had select microstock image productions returning close to $10,000. I use the term "production" as we look at the specific ROI on a shoot basis. Where RM is all about usage rights and exclusivity, RF is about maximizing a production since those images might be offered as both single image or subscription downloads.
Another critical metric is not the average number of downloads per image, but our "sell-through" rate. That's the number of images licensed one or more times divided by the total number on the site. We average 60% or higher on the best performing sites, and probably 95% or higher on a subscription site. This is the true bottom line when it comes to reviewing your past work- look at the number of images that have actually produced revenue. Specifically, look at your "sell-through" rate in reverse... If I licensed 60% of my images, that means that 40% of my investment did not produce any return! Remember that at some distributors, the default search order favors best sellers so that new clients see already proven images. In this case, new images are swimming upstream until they get a few downloads.
Sell-through rates should naturally increase over time. Having diverse portfolio that targets a diversity of keywords will help. My business goal has always been to have a consistently selling portfolio. Our sales might not always be the highest, but every month we're guaranteed revenue. I have images produced over 15 years ago that are still providing healthy revenue.
The chart above is our monthly revenue. There's no numbers, just trends. We saw the typical summer slump- which unexpectedly extended into September- usually a strong month. December was seasonably down as well. Again, as an ode to diversity, our RM December sales were really strong. Last month, January, was our best month ever exceeding our November by 4%. While the percentage increase isn't huge, January is really only a "3 week" month. For various reasons, we uploaded very few images in both December and January which makes January a good base level to analyze future efforts. We're back uploading this month with another 1,500+ images.
Are we making money? Yes, we're creating strong revenue, but no, we're not quite break-even. At the current growth rate, I would anticipate positive returns within the next 6 months. In just my business perspective, if you can break-even in stock within the first 3 years, all is good! Most businesses can take 5 years or more to return a profit.
The above is a chart of January sales by distributor. Look at this with a very critical eye- not every distributor has a great month, every month. Not all distributors have all iofoto images. On several sites, we have less than 50% of our collection represented. On others, our recently uploaded images are still swimming upstream. Some of the sites in the lower tier may be on top a year from now- the microstock industry is too new and there are too many industry changes that may affect sales. For this reason, we are hesitant to commit to exclusivity. A really strong marketing campaign, partnership, merger or alliance amongst any of the distributors could change the dynamics in just a few short months.
I anticipate microstock/midstock to continue to be a strong part of our overall revenue, but certainly not the only revenue source. Diversification is good and we're investing significantly in RM this year as well. As microstock/midstock prices rise, not only the photographer but the client and distributor will all benefit. In the end, we're all in the business of delivering images that clients need!
The sharing is really important. Thanks to everyone on this forum!
Ron
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