March earnings

Highlights

For the first time since I started this blog, I had a drop in earnings of 14% but I am still above the $ 200 mark. Three BME at FT, SXP and 123RF and an EL at FT. Regarding midstock this month only one sale of $ 7 to report at Zymmetrical which is not bad considering it was a small size.

Some news in the microstock world this month: SXP and 123RF followed IS and FT in the increase of prices which is good news for contributors. SS is expected to implement a raise next month and it was the subject of a lot of discussion across the forums.
I will be interesting to follow SS this year to see if they will stick to the subscription model: a lot of photographers noticed a significant drop in sales at SS this year. I observed this also despite having from 0.25 to $ 0.30 and the upload of new pictures.
Because SXP in their new price structure include a XXXL size I am still opting out for subscription. I did the same at Snapvillage and decided for the time being to put all my pictures at $ 50 treating SV like midstock not microstock. However I do not have any sales to report it there.

Microstock one by one

• SS (- 19%). A significant drop in sales this month despite a raise at $ 0.3/dl early this month. It looks like SS is slowing declining , hopefully the coming new price structure will compensate some of it. Global performance down to 32 % which is the lowest since I starting uploading there.
  

• FT (+13%). BME. A good month at FT where the effect of the price increase are still there with an average $/dl close to $ 1.5. Global performance of 9 %.
  

• 123RF (+31%) BME A surprise 3rd place for 123rf. A lot of credit sales with few sales at $ 3.75 which is much higher than all the other sites for a 5MP picture. Performance of 5 % but a good $ 0.89/dl this month.
  

• IS (-47%) IS did not continue its progression of last month after the price increase. Less sales and a slight drop in $/dl explain this result. Good performance of 16%
  

• DT (-38%). Despite the fact the DT is my 3rd largest portfolio among my leading agencies, sales are not really following. I still do not have any level 2 images but the $/dl is not bad at $ 0.85. Performance at 4% so less than 123RF.

• SXP (+85%) BME helped by the new prices in place at the end of the month with the highest $/dl of all the major sites at $1.5 . Performance 7 %

Less than 3 % of earnings
BSP, LO, SCP, CT(1 sale at $ 0.25). No sales at CSP this month

• Big 6 rankings

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

Performance: SS>IS>FT>SXP>123RF>DT

$/DL: SXP>FT>123RF>IS>DT>SS








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

First sale at Zymmetrical !

I wrote briefly about zymmetrical in a previous post: "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''.

Well I just had my first sale there and with only 33 pictures uploaded it is quite encouraging. I sold only a small size but due to the 70% royalty I got $7. To compare, the same picture on line now for 5 months at SS was sold 38 times and generated $ 9.50. I was hoping to sell there one of my pictures which is on the frontpage for several weeks now but it did not happen yet :(
You can use my referral link if you want to join zymmetrical

Here is the lucky image below

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.