December earnings

Highlights

At this time of year, it is usual to look back: beside the financial aspect, stock photography was clearly beneficial in a number of points with probably the most important is the improvement of my photo and software editing skills (especially HDR). Also got a better understanding of what kind of pictures are selling on what websites.

Microstock industry is very changing and it is difficult to make predictions but it is safe to assume that in 2008,Shutterstock, Istockphoto, Dreamstime and Fotolia will generate the most revenue. Next year will be critical for a lot of new microstock or midstock agencies and some of them have clearly less and less time to deliver. Finally it will be interesting to the evolution of prices since I stockphoto put in place a new table of prices.

To go back to December, the month was good with a comforting 14 % growth in earnings compared to November and a second half of the month significantly slower due to the holiday period. Three BME at SS,SXP and DT.

Microstock one by one

• SS (+23%) BME. The biggest earner for the fifth consecutive month and an increase in sales proportional to the number of new uploads. For the first time I sold more than 300 pictures a month and reached also 1000 downloads. I had also my best day ever with 34 sales. Global performance up to 54 % this month
• FT (-25%) Despite one EL (the first in almost six months), earnings went down 25 %. Performance just under 5 %.
• DT (+221%) BME. A very good month and for the first time, DT performed better than FT (just over 7%).Very important also to note, the $/dl almost doubled and was this month $ 1 very close to FT. At this pace I believe than DT will become number 2 earner very soon.
• IS (-15.6%) A bit slower this month but managed to get more pictures this month(+10)
• SXP (+15%) A slight increase this month. 100+ portfolio. Performance 3.8 % no far from FT
• Slow sites (less than 3% of sales): LO (1 sale), BSP (1 sale), CSP (2 sales),CT (2 sales)

No downloads yet on the new midstock agencies with 100 pictures on MP, 17 on ZY and 10 on PS.

Detailed earnings Figures in USD. Note: 100 % global performance is defined by a portfolio with an average of sales of $ 1 per picture. Ratio DL/IS is the ratio of all the time downloads over the total pictures of portfolio


% earnings for each microstock




Best seller december : $ 11.52

Miscellaneous stats

• 445 pictures sold (361 on SS)
• 1 EL on FT
• Days without sales: 0
• Best day: $ 14.84 (18/12)
• Most pictures sold in one day: 38
• Top seller made $ 11.52
• Average per download: $0.37
• Global performance : 89.9 %