Thanks to Steve and your work for this data.

It would be interesting to chop the files count by lifetimes earnings at a finer slice - and then graph the total earnings by # of files - what is the sweet spot - is it really images that make ~80$ each, or more like ~50$ or what?

I still think there are a number of things out of our control that make the difference between a decent seller and a top seller - mostly those are the vagaries of sales and the how the sites decide to display the images. I'm sure Steve has produced more images of his cat and I suspect that some have done well and some not well at all - and as you say - it is hard to impossible to predict which ones will perform better - and the fact that some images do great on only one site suggests that it can be as much the site as the image itself. Still, producing a lot of good content is the most likely way to get decent and top sellers.

I suspect that Steve's top earners from 2020 are due to his recognition of trends - probably mostly around Covid and producing images that met those trends in a timely manner - well done. My facemask images produced early in 2020 didn't go anywhere, but it was a pretty half-hearted effort and I didn't have any old theater marques to play with.

I think timeless images could have a very long 1/2 life especially compared to current trend images - the fall off of sales is more due to how the agencies treat them than the images themselves. Stuff like wildlife and landscapes could age very well - unless the agencies just push them down over time solely based on their age - in which case maybe you should just re-upload everything every 10 or 15 years or once there are no sales after a certain period - in fact this is something that could be done automatically by a program even after you are no longer putting any effort into image production. 

My personal best seller at SS had daily sales until one day it didn't - it went from a top line on page one for a one word search to nowhere in the top 10 pages one day and the sales went away too. I think predictions for how sales would be 10 or 20 years out are on very shaky ground. I think with a large enough portfolio sales will go down to some low level and then putter along at that level - until the sites change something or technology like AI images comes along and they go down even lower. We have some historical data for the last 15 years or so, but the changes in the industry over that time are enough that predictions based on that data are pretty suspect.

I think the best seller sales over time graph would be easier to read if the 0 was the bottom line on your graph - not some point in space above it.

I guess the real takeaway is no secret - consistently produce images that meet a need and upload them to a lot of sites and you will get a lot of sales and once you stop producing images sales will fall off - rapidly at first and then more slowly.

After my first few years (and maybe even then) I think the changes at the sites make a bigger difference than any changes I made other than the number of images I uploaded and even that is small potatoes compared to a site taking 20 or more percent of every sale. In general RPI and RPD has been on a downward trend for a long time. Actual income seems to have leveled off at a much lower level, but it is still dropping if you take inflation into account and the sites probably are about to announce some more exciting news.

I think DT might have a 100% royalty day about once per year - figure out when it is and put it on your calendar and then buy yourself up to $100 and cash out.

Or upload a lot more images that sell, or just write it off.

I agree that 100$ is a bit of a high amount with the rate of sales these days, and they should pay whatever balance remains when you close the account, but this is the way it has been at DT for as long as I can remember, so at least it isn't because they moved the goalposts.

Looks like performance is pretty steady to falling slightly. Earnings are falling much more steeply though. It would be interesting to see the stats over a longer time period.

Does anyone know what "applies" and "exports" means. My guess is applies is usage in a canva design and export is similar to sales on other microstock sites.  Those numbers are pretty high - 1-2 orders of magnitude greater than sales on adobe for similar to more $ at adobe.

Quote from: pancaketom on February 08, 2023, 11:14

So are you saying not to include the keyword "background" for a background image so as to not compete with hundreds of millions of images or not make those images at all or just stick it somewhere down after the first 10 or more keywords?

First of all, I would be saying not to create a background image to compete with hundreds of millions of other background images. But if you decide to do so, then yes, using just "background" as one of the first ("most important") keywords is probably not the brightest idea. Depends on your portfolio etc., but on average your chances for ranking for that keyword would be increadibly small

ok, I was thinking if you had for example a mosaic tile background image, you would still want to put background in - just in case someone searched on "tile background" or "mosaic background". There would be no expectations you would show up on a search on just background - which is the case for almost any single word search these days unless you have great search placement or the single word is pretty obscure.    Looking at my last 20 sales on Adobe I certainly wouldn't want to have not made any background images.

I have reached the $10,000.

Nice work, does that come with anything from SS anymore? It used to mean .38 sub downloads (or maybe that was at $30,000 lifetime earnings, I can't remember. )

I have my name, city, and state hidden by default, although it would be easy enough to find - and presumably they sent my name in error. It is a pretty bad breach by DT. Not as bad as when some place was letting buyers see model releases with all their info, but still pretty bad.

I looked up the person who's data I got - they have 1/3 the income with 2.5 times the images. I think DT likes me (or they hate others more - and they might have sent my private info to someone else). I guess lots of similar travel images don't do all that well on DT.

Interesting to see your results as always.

Wow, SS really is jumping the shark. You do seem to mix return per download (RPD) and return per image (RPI) at times, but the only number that really matters - total $ is down - especially when you take inflation into account.

For a while we had similar sized ports and stats at various sites - you have a lot more now than I do. I usually do 2-3x what you do at DT with a similar sized port and usually do at least a bit better at Alamy. I've given up on SS and iS though.

I hope things pick up after Jan, but I don't have a lot of reason to think they will.

I'm not sure I have can see the new dashboard, what I can see is pretty short on information. I'm also pretty sure that is on purpose.

Canva has always been the most lopsided site for me as far as the majority of the sales come from a few images. Since they went to the all you can eat mystery buffet I only get a few individual sales each month. They are still dominated by a few files.

Revenue continues to fall.

In cases of pics of myself I have used the same model release for a while - I presume I should upload a new model release when I cross an age boundary (or in my case is it possible to re-associate pics from a different age category with a different model release?) since it has been a number of years and photos since that happened.

I get a 404 error when I clicked on the "what do we mean by ...." link.

I presume we are to label people of mixed ethnicities/race as both or do we go with the USA method of just a little non-white makes one the non-white category.

At least it wasn't for 2 cents - but that is still unacceptable.

Not that they were great before, but after PA media took over their trustworthiness is even less impressive.

and the ranking is based on # of downloads, not $, so you might make a good amount with videos but rank very poorly because it is appears to be solely based on the # of downloads - perhaps per period of time, but I think it is just the overall # compared to everyone else.