Monday, July 4, 2011

Q1/Q2 microstock results



Dear readers, you will see some changes in MicrostockExperiment earning reports: I decided to stop my month to month reporting to go ahead with a   quaterly update  as it is less time consuming and add more visibility. To make it easier to read, I  only include the % earnings from my main photo agencies which are Shutterstock,Fotolia,Dreamstime,Canstockphoto,123RF,Veer and Istock.


Microstock photo results Q1               

Microstock photo results Q2







Some interesting conclusions can be drawn  from these  charts:
  • Shutterstock confirms its dominant position taking around 40% of the earnings.
  • Despite regular uploads, Istock % decreased  two fold between Q1 and Q2 and accounts  now for 10% of the earnings (Istock did lost its leading position early 2010).
  •  Dreamstime seems to benefit from the fall of IS and is  now ahead of IS.
  • Fotolia is quite stable but now barely ahead of DT which a big change compared to 2010.
  • Amongst  the small players, Veer has been dissapointing in Q2.

If these trends are confirmed in Q3,  there  will be no incentive at all to upload to IS as non exclusive contributor. It  will interesting to monitor as low  IS can go as it is 4th out of 7th at the moment.


 Media distribution Q1



 Media distribution Q2

Looking at the  split between, photo still accounts for more of 80% of total earnings, video was quite stable between Q1 and Q2 whereas audio had a nice increase from 4 to 7%.