April 2010 earnings

Highlights

As you might have noticed, I changed the format of my earnings this month  giving up  tables  for charts. Overall, earnings this month did not increase as they did last year between March and April. It was a slow month with sale commissions 35% down compared to last month and only 1% up compared to April 2009. Royalty percentages for each media are reported below with photo  and audio taking 92% and 3% of the total earnings, respectively.

Isyndica analytics screenshot

You can access 2009-2010 monthly earnings from Microstock Charts here.

• Photo

No BME to report this month.  Shutterstock led  the pack,  Istock earnings dropped 43% compared to last month lagging behind FT. Among  the low earners agencies, it is 123RF who performed the best.

• Video

It was a slow month for footage with only one sale at Pond5 despite the addition of new clips.

• Audio

Surprisingly, audio did not finish far behind video and even had a best month ever.

If you are not a Isyndica user yet, you can take advantage of their 30% off on subscriptions. They also offer free syndication on new uploaded items until the 7th of May. You can use my link to signup  and do not forget to enter the coupon code HAPPYBDAY on the checkout.

Cooliris Express 3D interactive wall review

Cooliris was founded  in 2006 around a simple mission: "Think beyond the browser". They proposed a range of products including:

• Cooliris desktop, a browser add-on with which you can browse, search the web and your desktop using a 3D Wall.

• Cooliris iPhone to search, discover and share photos, videos with your iphone.

• CoolPreviews, a browser add-on to speed  up your surfing experience.

In this post, I use a fourth product called Cooliris Express which allow you to embed on your blog a Flash-based 3D interactive wall containing photos and videos. I made up two walls: one with pictures from my Flickr photostream and one containing videos from my youtube channel. Content was originally uploaded to Flickr and Youtube using the Isyndica platform which allows you to control the size of the syndicated media as well as its protection i.e using a custom or standard watermark.

The nice thing is that your wall is updated as soon as you upload new photos or videos to  Flickr or Youtube.  A share button on the lower right hand side of the wall allow you to share it on Facebook, Twitter,  Myspace, Linkedin and more. The slideshow button button is very convenient as it plays your Youtube videos one after the other.It is not possible however to make a wall with selected photos or videos, it would be a great feature additional feature.

Cooliris Express is a good way to promote your work as a photographer or videographer. You can start  your own wall by clicking here. Did I forget to mention, it is free....

Photo interactive wall



Video interactive wall

Experiment 14: Distributing and selling your audio on microstock

In addition to pictures and HD videos,  I started this month distributing  audio to different agencies. My goal is more to have recordings to support my  pictures and videos than rather to increase my microstock earnings. After looking  for a suitable recorder, I ordered a Zoom H2 from Amazon. The zoom H2 has a low price tag ($150) and a great sound quality, capable recording at 360-degree and comes with a 1GB SD card and earplugs. If you are looking for a more advanced recorder you can have a look at the Zoom H4n.

Wav files recorded at 44.1 kHz 16 bits are accepted pretty much by all agencies although some are taking 48 kHz 16-bit as well. As the Zoom H2 can record at 96 kHz 24-bit, I use these settings and downsample files before submission.
Like with pictures, agencies are looking for noise-free high quality files and Istockaudio even specify that the signal should be in the final range of -4db to -6db.  I use Audacity, a free and open source software, to  remove noise if necessary and amplify my audio files.
Like any submission in microstock, quality is preferred over quantity so sounds with a different twist have more chance to be sold. Keywording is quite different than in video and photo and it is advisable to add words to describe the mood of the file in the metadata.

For information, I put in a table below a list of  agencies I upload to, along with some, I hope, useful informations.  Being an Isyndica user, I take the advantage of their platform to distribute my audio files in few clicks.

I am far from being a sound expert so please feel to post a comment if you find any mistakes on this post. Thanks and happy recording!
If you want to sign up to start selling your audio, feel free to click on my affiliate banners below:

 

December 2009 earnings

Photos

December was pretty good considering that sales dried up in the last week of the month and that I do not have any christmas related pictures on my portfolio. I had quite a few extended licence sales at SS, DT and Veer and the latter was also my only BME this month. Sales at 3DStudio made a come back this month after a three months drought.Istock sales took a dip with less than $100 but still managed to be my second best earning agency and the one with the highest RPI. If my total RPI was quite low this month at 0.51, it is worth mentioning that 0.95 was my all time highest $/dl since I started microstock.

Overall, including referral and midstock sales, my december earnings were just above the $450 mark which is a 100% increase over December 2008.


Videos

No sales to report this month and I am still building my portfolio, uploading videos to six agencies although their distribution is far from being even. Clipcanvas is my largest library so far with over 100 videos on line, the other five having less than 50. I am getting a lot of views at Istock with only three clips but reviews are painfully slow.

Isyndica screenshot

Earnings table (US dollars)

2009 goals

As far as my 2009 goals, the main one which was to make $500 a month with microstock pictures was reached once in September and the months after that were also close to this number. some of them will be only be reached sometime in January like the commission increase to $0.36 at SS and the silver rank at Fotolia. I also managed to increase my portfolio to more than 1000 pictures on most agencies but missed my 500 portfolio target at Istock. I had 3 more pictures with flames at IStock as expected. Midstock sales are still a bit lower than I was expected although they represented 20% of my total sales in October 2009.

Submit Footage Clips to Shutterstock and make $$$!

November 2009 earnings

Photos

November was on track for a BME until the first half of the month, but the second half was noticeably slower and I ended up finally with a second BME. Only one BME to report at CSP with Istock finishing first, ahead from SS (despite 15 OD sales) and FT. Sales were dissappointing at SXP and DT (with RPD decreasing for the third consecutive month). I am still on the process to upload my entire portfolio at Veer and I am glad to report my first sale there. So overall, my earnings reached almost $600 this month when I include midstock sales and referrals.
A slowdown is expected in December so unless a EL sales spree happens, I will probably keep September in my records as 2009's BME with $508.82.

Video

No sales yet but I managed to increase my portfolio at Pond5 (54) and Clipcanvas (91). I have also 39 clips accepted at Shutterstock, 9 at Revostock, 5 at AlwaysHD and 1 at Istock (this clip was pending for a month in the queue...).One of my clip was on the front page of Clipcanvas for a week but unfortunately it was not sold once :( I noticed that video previews looked much better at Clipcanvas than they do at Pond5...

Update: I just found out that my first HD clip (720p) was sold on Clipcanvas at the end of month. I received for this sale a commission of 30 €. You can see this clip here.

Stay tuned for more blog updates in December and in the meantime, you can read my daily updates on Twitter.

Daily sales graph - Isyndica screenshot

Earnings table (figures in USD)

Submit Footage Clips to Shutterstock and make $$$!

October 2009 earnings

Photos

Although I did not have any BME in any of the microstock agencies this month and only one EL (Cutcaster), October ended up being my second BME overall. IS finished ahead of SS and FT was third well behind in term of earnings. SXP did pretty well and BSP quite stable. It looks like that sales finally dried out at 3DS which is a shame because it is my largest portfolio with 1500 + pictures. The review process ended up working against them maybe....
My pictures went live later in the month at Veer so it is a bit too early to predict sales there and where it will rank among my other agencies.
I have now more than 1000 pictures online at Shutterstock and on almost all other agencies except BSP and IS.
My total microstock earnings this month are just below $500 but if I add to this midstock, it pushes my earnings close to $600.

Videos

No sales yet to report but I am still building my portfolio and learning. So far, my largest portofio is at ClipCanvas with 52 videos and my smallest at Revostock with 9 videos which tells you immediately where is the fastest to push pictures. Pushing videos is definitely more time consuming than pictures because there is no IPTC system, yet...

I was dissapointed so far with my experience at SS and IS because of issues with ftp processing and very slow reviews.
Pond5,AlwaysHD, revostock, Clipcanvas are doing a much better job and it is not surprising since they have more experience in this field.
Isyndica platform was very helpful since I had to upload my 5GB of footage only once....
If you want to see the videos I have on sale so far you can have a look here.

I will see if I can push my microstock earnings pass the $600 mark in November before the traditionnal slowdown of December and the slow recovery of January.Stay tuned for daily updates on my twitter!

Submit Footage Clips to Shutterstock and make $$$!

September 2009 earnings

Tweet


September was a new BME and for the first time my microstock earnings (minus referrals) were above $500 which was initially my goal in 2009. SS had a BME this month (with 2EL and 9 OD sales) , the first one since June 2008 but IS is still number one this month (with 1EL sale), beating SS by only $1...

Another BME to report at BSP with a first EL sale and another BME at SCP with just regular sales which is quite encouraging. Amongst the newcomers, 3DS had a noticeable slow down this month with only two sales and Veer earnings graph is desesperatly flat.... No sign of life at YAY and Cutcaster either...

Luckily, sales at Panthermedia and SmugMug brought my monthly earnings just above the $600 mark.


As I mentioned in my previous post, I started contributing to footage agencies in September by sending HD clips to Shutterstock, Pond5, Revostock, Clipcanvas. My application is still pending at Istock and AlwaysHD. I immediatly wrote off Fotolia from my uploading list due to their low price policy. I will start disclosing my footage stats only next month since a lot of my clips are pending approval at the moment.
The Isyndica platform was very useful to upload these huge HD clips and I can still decide to distribute them later on in few clicks to Stockxpert and Canstock if their footage sales are taking off.

Will October will be another BME? I hope so and you will find daily updates on my Twitter account.

Is microstock still open to hobbyst photographers ?

Competition is fierce in the microstock industry between agencies but also between photographers. In this article, I will try to answer the following questions : who is responsible of lowering or raising barriers of entry for hobbyst microstockers and is there a scope for them to make some money ?

• Camera manufacturers

Camera manufacturers played a big role in the inception of microstock business model giving access to DLSR to a large number of people. As a reminder, back in 2002, the 14MP Kodak DCS Pro14n had a price tag of  $ 4,995 ! Today, a entry level DLSR kit or a high end compact is the minimum required to get into the microstock market as a photographer and represents an investment of about  $1000.

Few full time microstockers are getting an edge using top end DSLR (Canon EOS5 MarkII 21MP, Nikon D3X 24.5 MP) or digital medium cameras (Hasselbal H3D-II-39 39MP, Phase One P65+ 65MP).

• Agencies
  

Leading agencies as Istockphoto and Shutterstock are doing an initial evaluation, like an entry exam if you prefer and it looks like that this exam  got more difficult the past few years.It is quite easy however to get into some of the new agencies as they do not have initial review but sales volume is low.

• Knowledge and time
  

A less obvious barrier of entry is the knowledge that photographers need to acquire about the microstock industry, photography and post-processing techniques. All the information is widely distributed on blogs, forums and social networks but processing this knowledge can be time consuming and time is by definition a scarce resource for hobbyst photographers….

• Internet access
  

Microstock photographers share their time between shooting, research, processing, keywording and uploading pictures. As far uploading concerned, lot of photographers are taking an initial strategy to distribute their pictures to multiple agencies (up to 20 or more) to see which ones are working for them. Beside time, uploading to multiple agencies be an issue with a slow internet access and become a barrier of entry. Some solutions came up recently to get around this issue like the Isyndica platform which allow multichannels distribution by uploading the photo once to their server.

• And now, the money side of things……
  

Even is money is not the main focus of hobbyst photographers, they can rely on it to finance new equipment. If it was possiblle few years back, you should not expect now to make a lot of money with only few hundreds of pictures on line.....

Initially microstock agencies advertised themselves as a quick money scheme: according to them you just have to upload your vacation pictures from your harddrive.

Things are certainly very different now as the quality of pictures increased considerably. Recently, some agencies took the step to promote special collections within their database (Istock Vetta, 123RF EVO, Fotolia Infinite) but getting into these collections is almost impossible for hobbysts. Agencies are usually putting some size restriction on images and we can imagine that in the near future they will list a recommended or required list of cameras like it is done already by Alamy and Getty Images.

Full time microstockers are not only improving the overall quality (technical and creative) of pictures but also producing a large quantity of pictures making it more and more difficult for hobbysts to compete. If a hobbyst can produce up to 100 pictures a month, full time photographers can produce thousands….

With a low volume of production, it looks like that that the only way to make some money is actually to produce pictures in one or more selected niches.

• Conclusion

Leading agencies and full time microstockers raised the barriers of entry for hobbysts. Even if photography equipment to get into microstock is affordable and web distributors like Isyndica exist, it appears more and more difficult for hobbyst photographers to get accepted from leading stock agencies and therefore make some money. Time and knowledge are also serious barriers of entry. However microstock is definitively a good learning experience and a chance to interact with an active and diverse community which is priceless:)

Also, every year few hobbysts made it full time and make a living out of their passion so I would say that everything is possible !

This article reflects of course my own opinion and I welcome every constructive comments!

Barriers of entry in microstock

August 2009 earnings

Highlights

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.

July 2009 earnings

Highlights

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......

Earning figures in USD

Isyndica stats screenshot

June 2009 earnings

Highlights

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.


Figures in USD



June 2009 earnings (Isyndica screenshot)



June 2008 earnings (Isyndica screenshot)