The end of the year is coming soon and I wanted to share some trends I observed for my portfolio since 2009. I uploaded regularly (every month) but less in 2012 compared to 2011 and a lot less compared to 2010 to focus on footage and right managed pictures.
Earnings variation among my top 5 photo agencies between 2009 and 2012
2010/2009
2011/2010
2012/2011
Shutterstock
+40%
+11.5 %
- ?
Fotolia
+111%
-19.6 %
- ?
Dreamstime
+2%
+10.1%
- ?
Istock
-26 %
-43 %
+ ?
123RF
+61%
+61%
+ ?
Note: no uploads to Istock in 2010 and 2012.
Shutterstock (1570 images) is still my number one agency since 2009 with very stable earnings and taking now close to 50% of my total microstock earnings (the figure was 30% in 2010).
Fotolia (1808 images ) and Istock (522 images) portfolio value peaked in 2010 and 2009 respectively with
no sign of recovery.
Dreamstime had a very slow progression over the years (1511 images)
Surprisingly, 123RF (2098 images) still managed to increase value but is still far
away from Shutterstock.
Amongst the low earners, YAYmicro (2196 images) and Mostphotos (2097 images) are doing the
best. Stockfresh, Photodune, Veer are dissapointing.
Complelety dead (at least for me): bigstockphoto, Panthermedia, Crestock, Zoonar.
Conclusions:
Shutterstock and 123RF were able to increase portfolio value despite not uploading much the past two years. In addition, Shutterstock is still able to sell pretty well some
of my pictures uploaded in 2007 and 2008.
Istock and Fotolia experienced a dramatic downfall for over 2 years now due a less favorable search engine placement and technical platform problem.
Competition is getting tougher in microstock as databases are getting bigger and bigger (Shutterstock has now more than 21 millions pictures on line (compared to 9 millions at the end of 2009).
This leaves some answered questions for 2013:
Will the gap between Shutterstock and other agencies grow bigger following their successfull IPO in October 2012?
Will successfull footage agencies like Pond5 be able to get some market share in 2013?
What agencies will close the door in 2013?
If Jon Oringer reads me, will Shutterstock increase commissions in 2013 ?:)
I will updated this post at the end of the year but you can follow my updates on Twitter. You can also join my facebook photo page here. I put some referral links if you interested to join the agencies below
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%.
April photo sales were 25% down from last March which follows the trend observed also last year. Audio and video had another BME, both combined taking 30% of total earnings.
Photo
Shutterstock finished number one, very far from its BME, followed by Fotolia and Dreamstime. One good surprise came from Mosphotos with a BME finishing number 6 amongst all agencies.Istock still gloom and doom, 40% down from April 2010.Overall, photo sales are 18% up compare to April 2010.
Video
Another BME with 3 clips sold at Pond5, 2 at Clipcanvas and one (also the first) at CSP.
Audio
Best month ever with Pond5 taking most of the earnings.
Stay tuned for more blog updates in May and in the meantime, you can follow my updates on Twitter. You can also join my facebook photo page here.
Earnings show a slowdown from previous month although the big4 are still holding with respectable earnings. No video sales to report so royalties are split between photo (97%) and audio (3%).
Reporting by media
Photo
Once again Shutterstock takes the first place with plenty of OD sales. Not too far behind is Fotolia with a new BME and third Dreamstime only few dollars away from a BME thanks to a special 100% royalty day. Although earnings for the big4 photo are growing, Istock is 300% down compared to last year.
Video
No sales this month which is a first for this year.
Audio
Audio sales represent a bit more than 3% of total earnings with most sales coming from Pond5.
As usual, stay tuned for more blog updates in December and in the meantime, you can follow my updates on Twitter. You can also join my facebook photo page here.
The end of the year slow down did not kick in yet as earnings this month were very close to numbers in September which was my best month of this year. Photo is always the best earning media (89%) followed by video (7.5%) and audio (3.5%).
Reporting by media
Photo
Shutterstock is leading again this month with a new BME (helped by 2 EL) followed by Fotolia with a BME also. Istock is third this month performing a bit better than usual. Dreamstime is not to far off a BME as well.
Video
Two sales this month including one at Pond5 with a $50 commission and one at Istock with $5 commission, no need to comment on this one:) No sales at Revostock and Clipcanvas. Since Isyndica is not around anymore and because of my slow connection speed, I upload my clips to Pond5 only.
Audio
With a bit more than 3% of total earnings, audio had another BME this month with sales at Pond5 and Revostock.
As usual, stay tuned for more blog updates in November and in the meantime, you can follow my updates on Twitter. You can also join my facebook photo page here.
As expected, sales picked up as often microstock sales reach a peak in September and this month was not exception being a BME in both Photo and Audio. Compared to last year at the same period, microstock photos sales are up 30% which is in line with the increase of my portfolio size.
Photos is still the main earner with 86%, following by video (11%) and audio (3%). A lot of things happened this month: Isyndica distribution platform is closing down:( This service will be greatly missed and I want to thank personally Sebastien and Hugo for their hard work and for having raised new standards in media distribution platform technology.
Another big news this month, is coming from Istock which decided to cut down commission for non exclusives from 20 to 15% . I personally stopped sending pictures to Istock 4 months ago now and I do not plan resuming uploads there. If you are an exclusive contributor and looking to give up your crown I can recommend the following five agencies: Shutterstock, Dreamstime, and Yaymicro (interesting 3rd party program) and Stockfresh (a venture from previous Stockxpert's owners).
Reporting by media
Photo
Shutterstock finished far ahead of all sites with a record number of on demand sales, finishing close to a BME. Second was Fotolia, only few cents from a BME and 3rd was Veer helped by three extended sales. Istock was number 4 with a dramatic decrease in earnings of 100% compared to September 2009.On a positive note I had my first sale at Alamy this month, hope more will follow:)
Isyndica Analytics screenshot
Video
Pond5 had a BME with sales making most of my video earnings this month.However, no sales at Revostock, Shutterstock and Clipcanvas....
Audio
Audio represents only 3% of total earnings but had its BME this month with 4 sales at Pond5 and 1 at Revostock.
As usual, stay tuned for more blog updates in October and in the meantime, you can follow my daily updates on Twitter. You can also join my facebook photo page here.
After a slow first half, microstock photo earnings ended up being 26% higher than last year. Video sales were dissapointing and audio sales were stable giving the following splits between medias: photo (96%), video (2.6%), audio (1.4%).
Photo
Only few dollars away from March 2010 BME... Veer took the number one spot this month due to their Dash for Cash program. Shutterstock finished second (1EL) and Fotolia third. Istock is 4rd with sales still much lower than last year. Dreamstime (1EL) made a nice recovery from last month only $ 1 away from Istock.
It is time for an update of my post of last year post regarding microstock commissions. I added 6 new agencies to compare and lower and upper limit commissions.
To sum it up, sales commission will depend on: amongst over on the type of sales (subscription or credit), image size, agency or photo exclusivity, contributor or photo ranking.
Once again these numbers are not universals but are related to my ranking, exclusivity and my photo equipment: I have a 10MP and 12MP cameras, a bronze level at Fotolia with some exclusive photos there, some level 2 images at Dreamstime, sold more than $ 500 worth of pictures at Shutterstock but less than $ 3000.
These are the highs and lows I registered for 2009 (extended licenses are excluded from the list):
Shutterstock : between $0.33 (subscription) and $2.48 (on demand sale). Same numbers than last year.
Stockxpert (subs opt-in) : between $0.3 (stockxpert, photos.com, jupiterimages subscription) and $5 (L size, pay per download stockxpert) . Up limit dropped from $7 last year due to the discontinuation of photos.com credit sales this year, drop from $0.5 on the lower limit because I opted-in for subscription sales.
Istockphoto : between $0.19 (XS size) and $3.36 (L size). Upper limit is up this year from $2.70 last year:)
Fotolia : between $0.31 (subscription) and $4.99 (L size, exclusive). Lower commission dropped from $0.36 last year. I however expect for the upper limit to be lower since my commission for exclusive photos dropped from 52% to 32% in 2009! You have now to be 100% exclusive to get a 49% commission (bronze ranking)...
Dreamstime : between $0.30 (subscription) and $3.75 (panoramic image maximum size, level 1). $3.32 (level 2 image, maximum size). Up from $2.70 last year for the upper limit.
BigStockphoto : between $0.5 (small) and $3 (panoramic image, extra large). Up limit was $2 last year.
Crestock : between $0.25 (subscription) and $1.5 (S size). Up limit up from $1 last year
123RF : between $0.36 (subscription) and $4.94 (Mega High XL TIFF). Up limit up from $4.5 last year
New agencies:
Canstockphoto: $0.3 (Fotosearch subscription) and $19.80 (Fotosearch regular)
Cutcaster: $4.70 (XXLarge)
Yaymicro: $3.69 (S size) - $7.38 (L size)
3DStudio: $2.40 (Small) - $7.20 (large)
Scanstockphoto: unique commission at $1.46
Fotomind: $0.9 (full resolution)
In the light of last year numbers, few conclusions can be made:
Fotolia is the agency with the more disparity between lower and higher commissions ($0.31 to $4.99).
Sales commissions are the highest for the new agencies, unfortunately sales volume is still very small:(
The difference between higher and lower commissions increased compared to last year (from $7.3 to $19.61).
Agencies where my commissions are stable: Shutterstock,bigstockphoto
Agencies where my commissions are raising:) Istock, Dreamstime,crestock,123RF
Agencies where my commissions are dropping :( Fotolia, Stockxpert
Looking at my average monthly sales commission (including extented sales) for the first nine months of the year, it actualy increased this year to $0.74 from $0.58 last year.
See you in a year to see if these numbers are moving up or down......
There was a bit of reshuffling in my top 6 this month as 123RF and BSP were forced out by a new player....
1.SS 2.IS 3.DT 4.3DS 5.SXP 6.FT
August was a good month considering the period of the year and it even end up being my BME, beating last May by few dollars. I had 3 EL this month (1 EL at SS and 2 EL at DT). SS claimed back its number one spot from IS, DT made a new BME.
I will write a few words about an agency I started submitting to called the3Dstudio. It is an established marketplace selling 2D and 3D products since 1996 that just opened a stock pictures section. 3DS has been receiving a lot of attention due to the fact that pictures go immediately on-line for sale and because of the generous 60% commission they redistribute to photographers (they also allow you to fix the price of your pictures). More importantly, customers are actually buying stock pictures! Uploading pictures at 3Dstudio is quick and reliable and I was able put online more than 1400 pictures this month, 3DS being my largest collection right now. Stats speak for themselves since on its first month, 3DS made more that FT and SXP, where I have been uploading for 2 years .... If you want also to join the3Dstudio, you can use my referral link below, they even have a good referral program:)
Veer marketplace was a big dissapointment this month with only 1 view and ... no sales . I do have less than 100 pictures on-line there so I need to send more before drawing some conclusions.... Midstock sales brought my earnings just above the $500 mark this month:)
I am looking forward to September with, maybe, a new BME ? You can follow me on Twitter for daily updates of my microstock adventures:) To finish this update, if you want like me make your uploading less painful and see your live stats use Isyndica ! My Isyndica stats for this month can be found below along with a detailed Excel spreadsheet.
Here my top 6 agencies this month ranked by decreasing monthly earning:
1.IS 2.SS 3.DT=SXP 4.FT 5.123RF=BSP 6.CSP
No BME to report this month but it was more or less on the same level than the previous one with SS continuing losing ground against IS, DT and SXP. Microstock earnings were 14 % higher compared to July 2008 earnings despite the fact that some of my portfolio doubled in size. With midstock sales this July actually ended up being slightly better than June just above the $ 400 mark. For the third consecutive month, IS is my strongest agency and if it was not for some OD sales, SS woulld have been very close to DT and SXP this month. After encouraging early sales reported by some photographers at the new Veer Marketplace I decided to join and started uploading my portfolio. Hopefully sales will help offset a soon expected drop of earnings at SXP......
My top 6 agencies this month ranked by decreasing monthly earning:
1.IS 2.SS 3.FT 4.CSP 5.DT 6.SXP
A small decrease in earnings was observed compared to May (which was my BME) mainly due to the fact that I did not have any EL. For the second consecutive month IS is ahead of SS and I expect this difference to increase in the coming months. Shutterstock is at an all time low with a RPI of only 0.1 despite six on demand sales this month. Fotolia did better than normal, with just enough earnings to rank number three. With a new BME, Canstockphoto is not far behind followed by Dreamstime.
Stockxpert is on the decline and I do expect this to continue when the subscription scheme Jupiter/Photos cancellation will be kick in. 123RF,SCP and BSP have still low sales and no sales to report on new agencies YAY and Cutcaster:( I got few sales at Panthermedia though which pushed my earnings very close to $400 this month.
I changed quite a bit my workflow this month using Isyndica platform which I found very useful especially when using a limited broadband access. Although SS and IS are not reported yet, a screenshot below shows respective earnings for the months of June 2008 and June 2009. I found also Deepmeta very useful to submit to IS and I hope to get to 500 pictures online in the near future. The $ 500 milestone is within reach but I don't see it happening before September.
Like last year, May sets up a new high for microstock earnings.The most strinking development is that after 24 months, SS lost its number spot to Istock. Two BME to report at IS and SCP this month and a record of $ 0.77 per dl. I joined Isyndica this month to make my uploading task easier and spread pictures to more agencies . It will be interesting to see if it will help reach my long expected $ 500 target. I will blog on this subject later on.
Microstock one by one
IS. Put all other agencies in the dust this month and sets the record for the most money made by one agency. Even without the 2 EL, IS would have end up ahead of SS. RPI=0.51
SS. 9 OD's sales and just above $ 100 this month . Earnings down 20% compared to last year with 500 more pictures online ! Growing earnings at SS appear quite limited for the future.... SS represented this month only 25 % of my total earnings compared to 37% last year.
FT. Back to number 3 spot but still on the same flat line despite continuous uploading....
SXP. Down from last month but overall satisfying earnings. It looks like that since Getty got on board some files were desactivated because of IP problems. I noticed that some reviews were not very consistent this month.
DT. Big drop this month , looks like level 2 and level 3 images are not selling anymore.....
BSP and 123RF: quite far from DT in term of earnings with RPI of 0.01......
Less than 1 % of earnings:CSP, CT (got my 1st payout :)
This month sets a new high for my microstock earnings just above the $ 400 mark (previous was in May 2008). Several sales contributed to that: 3 extended sales at SS,FT and DT (my first one), a first fotosearch credit sale at CSP. All this translated to 3 best months ever at DT,SXP and CSP and a new record of $ 0.76/dl in average. If 2009 follows the trend of last year sales, I expect May 2009 to be as good or better but we shall see...
Microstock agency ranking by $
Shutterstock: 1 EL and 4 OD's sales this month, 1 zero sale day. It looks very difficult to increase earnings at SS despite a rather large number of new pictures added this month.
Istock: Very similar to last month, but it always slow to growth my portfolio: upload limit combined with slow review and high rejection rate. Should take over SS one of this day if I manage to get more best sellers (my best seller made alone exactly $ 214.97 in one year with 164 dls).
Stockxpert: For the first time in a while, credits sales were largely superior to subscription sales and a single image leads to a BME due to a favorable ranking in the search engine towards the middle of the month. It will interesting to follow up on this one !
Dreamstime: My first EL there and quite a lot of regular downloads made a BME. Working towards a 1000+ pictures portfolio there.
Fotolia: Despite constant uploading my earnings in FT did not really change in over a year: low search engine ranking ??? If it was not for a EL, FT would have been at the bottom...
Canstockphoto: A nice fotosearch sale the last day of the month :) Hope to have 1000 + pictures on line soon.
123rf: An average month at 123rf, it is the first agency where I have 1000+ pictures on line.
Low earners this month with 1% or less of total sales are BSP, SCP and CT (I am 50 cents shy from my first payout there....). No sales to report at YAY and Cutcaster.
I've been experimenting lately with infrared photography as I did previously with HDRand see if eventually such pictures are accepted and sold on the main microstock agencies.
How does it works ?
Light is an electomagnetic radiation with visible light made of wavelenghts in the 400-700 nm and infrared light in 700-1200 nm range (near infrared). Longer wavelenghts will fall in the range of mid-infrared and far infrared (used in thermal imagery) just before the microwaves.
The IR filter placed on top of the lens blocks most of the visible light and let near infrared hit the CCD. Unfortunalely, IR sensitivity is decreased quite a lot by the hot mirror placed on top of the CCD sensor which job is to protect it :(
Why infrared photography ?
Mainly because it gives a dramatic, surreal effect to the pictures. Foliage and grass have the property to reflect infrared radiations and appear much brighter in IR giving an ethereal white glow (in some pictures grass can be mistaken with snow). Different foliages have different IR reflectance as well as foliage affected by disease or insect infestation. Blue sky and water will appeardark. Shadows can be interesting in IR with more subtle nuances. Depending on the light, textures can be revealed in more details as well. Skin also can give interesting tones.
Challenges in IR photography
Focusing and depth of field
In IR, focusing is different than in visible so producing sharp images can be tricky. If you are lucky your lens have a IR focus mark on it. If not the technique is to take several shots at different focus distance preferably with a small aperture. An universal technique is to use the hyperfocale distance but once again you will have to experiment before to found the settings for your camera.
Exposure
Because the IRfilter is very dark, indications given by the camera cannot be trusted and most of time several seconds exposure are needed. I used typically 2 to 15 seconds exposure time so a tripod is necessary. On the positive side, long exposure can give interesting results on water and clouds for example.
Equipment
You will get variable results with IR photography as it depend to what extent your CCD sensor is IR sensitive: most manufacturers add a IRblocking filter (also called hot mirror)in front of the CCD ! It looks like that few year back the protection was not so high…..
Also it depends on the lens : some lenses are known to cause flares or hotspots in the pictures making them not usuable at all….
My gear
I am pleased with the Canon Powershot G9 so far using a Hoya R72 filter onthe 58 mm Lensmate lens adapter. To obtain longer exposures, I select the ND function on (3stops) and/or put a ND4 filter (2 stops) on top of the R72.
As its name suggests, the Hoya filter blocks wavelenghts below 720 nm. The cut-off actually follows a curve a 50% is blocked at 720 nm so the filter let pass through a tiny amountof visible wavelenghts.
Although quite expensive, a lot of digital cameras can be modified to remove the IR filter in front of the CCD and make it possible to take handheld IR pictures.
10 steps workfow
Here is my workflow using Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom started with the raw file. It tend not go for the usual B&W processing to keep some blue sky.
Open Raw with LR2
Set color temperature 2000, tint -50
Remove noise Luminance 60
Chromatic aberration : all edges
Export as jpeg or tiff
In CS3 swap red and blue channels: red 0 blue 100, blue 0, red 100
Image--> adjustements levels blue and green
Image ---> curves define gray point
Import in LR2 adjust hue/saturation on the different channels to get the desired results.
Export as jpeg
Microstock and IR photography
Although not popular, IR pictures can be found in most agencies. As the time of writing, a search with ''infrared landscape'' and ''infrared buiding'' as keywords returned 545 and 117 pictures on Shutterstock respectively.Very similar search came up on Dreamstime with 537 and 128 images. Istockphoto is very pickup about IR pictures: ony 137 hits returned for ''infrared landscape'' and 45 for ''infrared building’’ !
The most challenging is to have IR pictures accepted as they tend to be noisier and less sharp and downsizing from 12 to 5 MP can help the picture to pass the inspection.
Despite a high rejection rate, I managed to have some IR pictures accepted at Shutterstock (29), Dreamstime (31), Fotolia (9), 123RF(46). However it seems quite impossible to get those kind of pictures accepted at IS which is reflected by the low amount of IR picture on their database.
As far as sales concerned, two of my IR pictures are in my 10 most popular pictures at SS, I had 9 sales so far on DT but 0 on Fotolia.
IR can be combined with HDR or panoramic stitching to produced spectacular pictures but of course noise has to be kept low somehow. Here is one example below:
A good solid month with a bit more than $ 300 earned with microstock alone, not far from my BME in May 2008. Midstock added another $43 to the total. No BME this month but all big agencies performed well especially IS. Earnings are well up compared to last month and March 2008 with a new record of $ 0.7/dl in average. If it was not for 1 EL and 9 OD's sales, Shutterstock would have lost its number spot to IS this month. I had also one day with no sales.....
DT ranked third this month followed closely by FT and SXP. SXP looks like more and more like SS since most sales are from subscription. So far it looks like that my increase in earnings is coming from IS,DT and SXP. On the other hand, FT, BSP, 123RF earning curves are flat despite regular uploads..... I had my first download at Snapvillage for $ 15, I've completely forgot about this one......
Compared to March 2008 in ():
Total earnings: $ 325.76 ($ 209.51) Pictures sold: 445 (402) Average $/dl: 0.73 (0.52) Global RPI : 0.82 (0.78)
For the time since I started microstock, my earnings were lower by few dollars compared to the same month last year. On a positive side, I had my first sale and Cutcaster and two new sales at YAY. A good surprise came this month from midstock agencies taking a bit more than 25 % of total earnings including Panthermedia with 32 euros sales in total. Total earnings with midstock brought this month earnings above the $ 300 mark. I found Panthermedia to be a consistent seller in term of sales and type of pictures sold so I encourage to submit there and see what pictures of your portfolio they accept like I did.
Compared to February 2008 in ():
Total earnings: $ 238.33 ($ 239.18) Pictures sold: 435 (379) Average $/dl: 0.55 (0.63) Global RPI : 0.46 (1.06)
Microstock one by one
Shutterstock . Less than 30% of microstock earnings this month way down compared to February last year. It is the first time since I joined Shutterstock that I did not reach a payout.... Only 2 OD sales this month
Istockphoto. Earnings slighty better than last month with a RPI of 0.16 the highest of all the microstock agencies
Fotolia.Number 3 only because I sold a bunch of old and ugly pictures for 0.5 credit each
Dreamstime. One of the most consistent agency this past months in term of earnings and very close to a BME. Above average rejection rate this month though.....
Stockxpert. Earnings are in the normal range this range although a lot of sales came from subscriptions.
A lot of action in low earners this month: 4 BME to report at Crestock, Yaymicro,Cutcaster and Scanstockphoto.
123RF and BSP joined the rank of the low earners this month but all of them made a non negligeable 15 % of earnings. . I had my first sale in 7 months in CSP as I uploaded my entire portfolio there after the Fotosearch acquisition.
A good month in term of earnings considering the slow start of the month and the fact that I did not have any EL and sales in midtock. Among the 10 agencies, I had only one BME at Dreamstime. RPI went up so does volume of sales from last month. However compared to the same period lastyear, RPI is only half its value and volume of sales about the same despite the fact that I have a larger number of pictures on line.
Compared to January 2008 in ():
Total earnings: $ 265.08 ($ 179.26) Pictures sold: 462 (446) Average $/dl: 0.58 (0.42) Global RPI : 0.48 (0.89)
Shutterstock. A good month above the $ 100 mark again due a large number of OD sales which represent 15 % of the earnings, up from 5-8 % normally RPI=0.17. I had however my first 0 sale day ever this month.
Istockphoto. Sales are getting better again. IS new price structure certainly boosted my earnings.RPI=0.16
Fotolia. Very close to the second position this month and earnings. RPI=0.05
Dreamstime. A BME by few dollars hope it continues this way. RPI = 0.04
Stockxpert. A lot of sub sales this month since I had a only 6 credit sales on 45 sales. RPI=0.03
Bigstockphoto . Dissapointing month with earnings lower than in december
123RF. Dissapointing month as well, a bit better than last month but still far from past performances....
Less than 1%: SCP (no sales this month),CSP,CT
On the midstock front no sales this like I mentioned earlier. I have 500 pictures on line now on YAY and decided to hold uploads now on. I give a bit more time to Cutcaster but still wait for my first sale there. I hope Zymmetrical and Panthermedia will pick up next month....
Stats
Lookstat screenshot January 2009
The trends of this month are clearly visible on this screenshot from Lookstat. FT should be added shortly to the list of agencies and it worth mentioning that Lookstat implemented a new feature this month to track earnings per picture. I will do a post about this later on but it is definitely a very good tool to analysis strengh and weakness of a portfolio.
As expected, a slow month in microstock especially during the second half of the month .Looking at the yearly graph, earnings dropped from September despite adding new pictures which is the opposite of last year. Compared to december 2007 most agencies are down also. This month is the 2nd worst month of the year for earnings, the lowest RPI and $/dl with just below $ 200 for microstock. Quite unusual month as I did not have BME in the big 6 this month. No help from extended sales but a sale a panthermedia brings total earnings to almost $220. I also had my first payout there. Shutterstock was the only agency not be affected this month. I definitely looking forward to january to see an increase in downloads!
Compared to December 2007 in ():
Total earnings: $ 192.47 ($ 163.46) Pictures sold: 383 (446) Average $/dl: 0.50 (0.37) Global RPI : 0.38 (0.90)
Shutterstock. A pretty good month considering the slow down at the end of the year, SS takes almost 50% of the earnings this month. As last, I sold less pictures this december than the one last year but because of the higher commission earnings are few dollars up. On demand sales made up for 5 % of the earnings.RPI=0.16.
Istockphoto. Very similar to last mont with RPI of 0.11 hopefully IS will pick up again next month. Got my first sub sale there for $ 0.19.
Fotolia. A big drop compared to the last two months at Fotolia. Very RPI at 0.02
Dreamstime. A bit slower than last month. RPI 0.02.
Stockxpert. A decrease compared to last month despite my first ppd sales of $ 7.5 via photos.com. RPI of 0.02
Bigstockphoto . Not bad considering the performance of other stocks. RPI 0.01
CT had a BME but still under 2 % of total earning. I tried to resume my uploading but got 100% rejection! I think I will just for my first payout there ! Less than 1%: SCP,CSP
Stats
For the first time, I include this month stats provided by Lookstat that I joined recently. At the moment it allows to track the stats of SS,DT and IS. I had Rahul Pathak , CEO of Lookstats,on the phone recently to give him some feedback. Exciting developments are on the way, the ultimate goal being to move away to the classical Excel spreadsheet. Some features like tracking earning by keywords across agencies would a powerful tool since it very difficult or impossible to do that manually . FT will be added next as well as more flexiblity about the date periods selection.
