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:

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:

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.

November earnings

Highlights

A slight improvement (+15 %) over last month despite few holidays in US and Europe. All major sites had their BME except FT and DT. I started also submitting pictures to two upcoming midstock sites: mostphotos and symmetrical and was accepted on the Photoshelter collection a macrostock agency. A few words about MP and ZM below, I will go back to PS in another post:

Based in Sweden and described itself as “the most democratic photosite ever”, Mostphotos does not review the pictures. Prices at fixed at 25 euros and photographers get 50 %. There is no uploads limit and up to three pictures can be sent by http pretty quickly with automatic IPTC reading (ftp is available as well). People can vote for pictures and competitions are organized.
Some photographers @ microstockgroup have reported sales lately. It is certainly interesting to get paid in Euros for a change…. If you want to have a try at mostphotos you can click here


Zymmetrical is another midstock agency with a pretty sophisticated multilingual platform. Photographers can set their own prices from $ 3 to $100 for the largest size and get a generous 70 % royalty fee. Up to 5 pictures can be submitted by http with a minimum size of 640 pixels. Zipped pictures can be sent by ftp as well. Some photographers @ microstockgroup have also reported some sales. If you want to visit zymmetrical please click on the banner below:



Worth mentioning also, a new version of Prostockmaster is available this month which now includes Stockxpert and Alamy (123RF works again as well). Trial version allows to upload up to 5 pictures a day to 10 sites. It can be downloaded here. Note that for SXP, your password has to have less than 10 characters for PSM to work properly.


Microstock one by one

• SS (+50%) BME. Clear winner once again taking a bit less than 50 % of earnings and another BME due probably to regular uploads all through the month. Performance is up compared to last month with 50 % (0.50 c per picture of the portfolio). It has also the highest downloads to uploads ratio of all sites with 5.27.
  
• FT (-16%) Second again this month but despite uploading new pictures earnings went down and performance is only 7 % this month. It is the largest portfolio with quite a lot of exclusive pictures that is why FT can maintain its position. Like previous month an average of a bit more than $ 1 per picture sold. I have serious doubts about the search engine and some bugs from V2 are still there…. On the good side, rankings are working again.
  
• IS (+54%) BME. It is always quite difficult to get pictures accepted there but performance is up this month to 21 % just after SS. Second also on the UP/DL with a value of 0.86
  
• 123RF (+78%) BME. For the first time, 123RF did better than DT and got another BME. Performance is still low (3%) but sales are more frequent right now.
  
• DT (-43%) Sales went down quite a lot this month. Global performance went down from 6 to 3%. Acceptance ratio: 64 %.
  
• SXP (+15%) BME. Sales are progressing this month with some credit sales and two subscription sales. Reviews are still a bit lengthy but I think it worth staying there. Same performance than DT but gets two times & per download.
  
• CT (+500%) BME. Less then 2 % of earnings but few sales this month made a BME. 100 + portfolio this month. They lowered the minimum payout form 100 to $50.

• The others... I was surprised to get two sales at CSP (I do not upload there anymore). LO Piggy bank is stuck at $2.40: no sales this month despite a portfolio of almost 300 pictures. A new platform is up, we will see what happens in the next coming weeks. BSP still dead as well as SV and FP.
  

Miscellaneous stats

• 377 pictures sold (277 on SS)
• Days without sales: 0
• Best day: $ 10.875 (21/11)
• Most pictures sold in one day: 31
• Top seller made $ 5.75

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

% earning for each microstocks

Best seller november $ 5.75 (SS, new upload)

What's next ?

Investigate few midstock sites and resubmit some pictures on SS and IS. Also work toward the $ 100 a month on SS.