Friday, February 1, 2008

January earnings

Highlights

In term of sales, January was quite the opposite of last month: a very slow start and a good finish. Overall January earnings took over December at the very end of the month and thanks to one sale at Mostphotos, I was few dollars away from my $ 200 target. +8 % growth and + 20 % including midstock. % earnings between agencies is starting being more balanced now since I have steady sales not only at SS and FT but also IS,123RF,DT and SXP. So overall a BME with BME at IS,123RF,SXP and LO.

Ranking $: SS>FT>IS>DT>123RF

Ranking performance: SS>IS>FT>SXP>DT

Ranking $/DL: SCP>FT>BSP>SXP>IS

Microstock one by one


  • SS (-22%). Still the highest earner but it was a disappointing month; sales did not really follow the trends of previous months since with a bit more than 200 pictures now, I was expecting to make around $ 110 this month. New uploads did not really sale like hot cakes as previously observed. Global performance down form 54 to 35 %. 200 + portfolio this month.
  • FT (+32%) Better than last month despite no having EL. For 5 months now FT in my number 2 earner but IS and DT are getting closer and closer. Like IS FT put in place new prices so logically earnings should go up if customers do not download too much the new XS size.600+ portfolio this month.
  • IS (+128%) BME. More downloads and more $ due to the new price structure put in place at the beginning of the month. This was reflected in the $/dl: 0.79 per picture sold ($ 0.65 in December) .For the first time I sold more pictures than the number on line. Very good performance of 29% not too far from SS this month.
  • DT (-19%). A slight decrease in earnings this month. A significant decrease in $/Dl down from 1 to 0.67 due to an increase in sub sales (4/20 this month, 0/17 in december). The new keywords feature in place is quite interesting and it was in my case very relevant to the pictures downloaded. Approval rate of 68 % this month.
  • 123RF (+83%).BME. Almost beat DT this month, I have few pictures who sell very well there. 400+ portfolio this month
  • SXP (+46%). BME. A slight increase this month. I opted out for the subscription sales and did not see any detrimental effect on sales. On the negative side, slow and inconsistent reviews.
  • LO performed better than usual with 7 sales this month and take 3 % of the earnings.
  • Slow sites (less than 1% of sales each): BSP,CSP,CT. I am disappointed to have only 0.25 c sub sales at CT I wish they had a system to opt out like SXP. I started contributed to scanstockphoto as well this month and sold one picture for 1 Euro.


Midstocks agencies

I am now on Mostphotos (280 pics), Zymmetrical (15), Panthermedia (7) and Zoonar (1).I had my first sale this month at Mostphotos (€ 12.5). I like the easy upload there and the fact that pictures are on line immediately. If you want to register with my referral link please do so here.

Panthermedia an already well established german midstock agency is now available in English. Commission is 30% for pictures already on microstock sites. Note that IPTC is now currently available. Depending on picture size and assuming you have 30 % royalty you will get between 1.5 and 24 Euros in your pocket. For extended license the maximum you can get is 72 Euros. If you do register please not that Panthemedia is divided in two entities: Stock Agency (SA) and Photocommunity(PC). Join SA is the cheaper option to sell pictures and only cost 0.35 euros to cover for the Paypal setup fees.
Here is my referral link below if you are interested to join:

PantherMedia - Fotocommunity und Bildagentur für lizenzfreie Fotos



Zoonar is another midstock agency based in Germany. Pictures can be sold as discount, standard or premium rates. With the 50 % commission offered, you can expect to get between 15 and 85 Euros if the original size of your picture is downloaded. A desktop application called Zoonar media manager allows you to upload conveniently entire folder of images. Please note that the minimum size of pictures to upload is 6MP. However upsizing is allowed (up to 1 MP) if it does not create too much artifacts.
If you want to register with my referral link please do so below:
Zoonar

Miscellaneous stats

  • 425 pictures sold (281 on SS)
  • Days without sales: 0
  • Best day: $ 17.58 (23/01)
  • Most pictures sold in one day: 27
  • Average per download: $0.42
  • Global performance : 88.71 %


Detailed earnings Figures in USD. Note: 100 % global performance is defined by a portfolio with an average of sales of $ 1 per picture.









1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have posted my numbers from the second month in microstock:
Earning Results for January 2008

My portfolio is still too small to make any statistically significant conclusions, but it may be of some interest for somebody just starting or thinking about it.

Encouraging results from iStock, disappointing from everywhere else.

Marek