Sunday, February 05, 2012 11:58

Posts Tagged ‘images’

July 2011 Earnings Breakdown

Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011

After almost record last month I did not expect much from current result. Still it was 4th best month overall and 3rd best on SS. DT bounced back from the bottom, it was best month for them this year. 123RF was on the other hand having 2nd worst month of this year. FT was also down and IS almost repeated result from last four months. SXP continues to disappoint and it was beaten by CSP. Veer and BS added few sales this month.

Jully 2011 July July/June RPD
SS

61.40%

96.50%

0.65

DT

12.11%

180.15%

0.69

123RF

9.64%

40.60%

0.59

FT

4.81%

67.92%

0.43

IS

4.77%

94.47%

1.03

CSP

3.14%

0.95

SXP

2.08%

89.29%

0.25

Veer

0.93%

0.93

BS

0.63%

95.00%

0.63

YM

0.33%

1.00

FP

0.17%

0.50

90.95%

0.63

 

2011 July Microstock

2011 July Microstock

June 2011 earnings breakdown

Wednesday, July 6th, 2011

With couple more dollars it would be the best month of this year thanks to strong performance from SS and 123RF. For the later one it was actually best month this year. These two delivered almost 80% of total revenue. Rest of the top 5 was around 15% and way below last month’s results. SXP is slowly falling into non-existence. ThinkStock earning are roughly 20% of what SXP used to be.

Comparing RPD we again see increase at SS and 123RF and drop on 4 other top agencies. Since on most of the sites I do not have enough volume to properly judge these numbers I can only talk about trend here. Also I am trying to get out from partner programs on IS which immediately caused huge jump in RPD there since subs from ThinkStock are no longer reported for them.

May 2011 May May/Apr RPD
SS 57.87% 132.17% 0.65
123RF 21.59% 134.67% 1.49
FT 6.44% 95.86% 0.50
DT 6.12% 71.68% 0.81
IS 4.59% 90.05% 1.01
SXP 2.11% 84.85% 0.25
CS 0.69% 300.0% 1.13
    97.58% 0.72
June 2011 Microstock

June 2011 Microstock

CEL sold on 123rf

Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011

For quite long time I have not seen any extended license sold on 123RF. This time it is a photo of Polish Easter babka I had made couple years ago.

Easter Babka

Easter Babka

Babka is a spongy yeast cake that is traditionally baked for Easter Sunday in Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and Western Russia

May 2011 earnings breakdown

Thursday, June 2nd, 2011

My total earning from all agencies went up 30% in comparison to April which I did not report here because of my trip to my homeland. It was quite a surprise to find out that it was also best month overall this year. It was mostly because unexpected extended licenses from Veer. It also shows how week are my sales at other agencies. It is so easy to grab second spot if there are extended licenses sold. SS was first as usual but it is quite interesting how others are trending. 123RF keeps going up every month and this one was actually best in current year. FT peaked in April and May was slightly worse but still way better than at the beginning of this year. DT also had best month this year. SXP is just so unpredictable. I am not even sure if they are able to count sales properly since every month when it is time to report they post and change result couple times. On other fronts I see almost no movements, I can sell a few photos a month or none.

 

May 2011 May May/Apr RPD
SS 42.72% 90.84% 0.53
Veer 16.81% 16300.00% 11.41
123RF 15.64% 165.17% 0.76
DT 8.33% 183.68% 0.86
FT 6.55% 88.61% 0.60
IS 4.97% 116.74% 1.30
SXP 2.43% 117.86% 0.25
CSP 1.19% 1350.00% 1.25
BS 0.74% 125.00% 0.63
MSP 0.38% 100.00% 065
CS 0.22%   0.25
    130.20% 0.71

 

Microstock 2011-05

Microstock 2011-05

March 2011 earnings breakdown

Friday, April 1st, 2011

Total earning went down 13% comparing to record breaking last month so I would say it is not bad at all. Usual leader SS also got less than in February but it is much better than at the beginning of this year. Most surprising are results from DT and FT. FT got 62% better results and DT 16% better. If I look back, last month, DT was 109% better than in previous month and FT was 50% better. It looks like both are growing. 123RF on the other hand is slowly declining. For a first time in many months it is not on a second place. When I look at further positions there is very little going on. IS is declining because of lower number of subscriptions sold on ThinkStock.  I still do not have many hopes about SXP and CSP with few sales per entire month. Conclusion is similar to the one I got month ago, stick to top agencies.

March 2011 March Mar/Feb RPD
SS 59.56% 83.61% 0.58
DT 10.27% 116.55% 0.63
FT 8.69% 162.28% 0.56
123RF 8.37% 83.43% 0.60
IS 4.53% 48.73% 0.94
SXP 2.86% 33.70% 0.25
CSP 2.31% 403.23% 1.25
BS 1.29% 140.00% 1.17
Veer 1.29% 3.50
YM 0.74% 1.00
CS 0.09% 125.00% 0.25
87.12%

 

2011 March Microstock

2011 March Microstock

February 2011 earnings breakdown

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011

My total earning from all agencies went up 53%, that great when you do not compare how each agency performed. Also comparing to January which was pretty bad start of the year means that it is only coming back to normal levels. SS as usual was number one with second best month ever. DT and FT rebound from very low results I have been observing for last couple months. 123RF is still slightly below average which is enough to score second place. IS is again showing its aspirations to claim fifth spot which was grabbed by SXP combined results from last 3 months showing as earned in February. Mentioned partner program on IS and SXP seems to be a total disaster. Not only they are always behind the schedule but also numbers are not looking too good. Accounting error again? Maybe they simple cannot provide volume of subscriptions comparable to SS. I opted out on IS and I will watch it only on SXP (no other option is possible). RPD is slightly up but again not as good as in couple last months of last year. What about others? I got nothing to say here. Everything below top 6 is just statistical error. I am uploading only to agencies that produce some result every month.

February 2011 February Feb/Jan RPD
SS 64.87% 182.58% 0.80
123RF 9.13% 74.43% 0.66
DT 8.02% 209.85% 0.70
SXP 7.73% 0.25
FT 4.88% 150.57% 0.60
IS 3.94% 73.66% 1.17
BS 0.84% 500.00% 0.63
CSP 0.52% 67.39% 0.52
CS 0.07% 7.69% 0.20
153.54% 0.66

 

Microstock 2011 FEB

Microstock 2011 FEB

 

January 2011 earnings breakdown

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

It looks like this year’s start was quite slow. All top 5 agencies results, besides 123RF, were below expectations. My total earning went down 25% from December. Unfortunately IS partner program result are always late so I might be missing half of earnings there. It’s interesting that IS got usually one of the highest RPD when only earning reported are from main site when I add lots of 25 cents subscriptions from ThinkStock RPD drops to one of the lowest. SXP failed to post results from November, I guess I have report them in February. We got huge mess here. I can only hope Veer would generate more to cover losses I got at SXP. I do not have many expectations for any other sites. Results are at most random to see any potential.

2011 JAN Microstock

2011 JAN Microstock

January 2011 January Jan/Dec RPD
SS 55.15% 83.26% 0.46
123RF 19.05% 148.27% 0.81
IS 8.30% 65.72% 1.33
DT 5.93% 50.99% 0.60
FT 5.03% 101.26% 0.74
Veer 2.37% 433.33% 1.52
CS 1.36% 1040.00% 1.30
CUT 1.35% 1.29
CSP 1.20% 5.45% 0.58
BS 0.26% 25.00% 0.50
74.97%

Top 15 images

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011

I have been submitting to microstock agencies for 32 months and still I am feeling like very serious hobbyist. Starting with my collection of landscape and travel shots I learned that it’s not most profitable niche in microstock. Your images got buried in a pile million images from all over the world. Still my two best earners are representing this category:

NYC

NYC

Mission San Francisco de Asis

Mission San Francisco de Asis

Later I realized that microstock best images are actually model released photographs. I was not ready to throw money and hiring models so I decided to shoot me and my family.

Father having fun with his daughter on the beach.

Father having fun with his daughter on the beach.

Mother is feeding little girl

Mother is feeding little girl

When you have infant at home your travel options are limited but still I was able to get some sales from the stuff I did before.

Lake Tahoe

Lake Tahoe

Then your child start walking which again opens possibilities for exploring outdoors together.

Assisted walking

Assisted walking

You cannot go very far so your are happy that old stuff still sells.

Hang gliding

Hang gliding

You start visiting places like museums and aquariums.

Chrysaora fuscescens

Chrysaora fuscescens

It seems like my other subjects never got much traction. Still I am mostly selling my old collection of nature and travel shots.

Lake Shasta Caverns

Lake Shasta Caverns

Racetrack Playa

Racetrack Playa

Bodie, California

Bodie, California

Bixby Bridge

Bixby Bridge

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park

Big Sur

Big Sur

Inca trail

Inca Trail

2010 in microstock

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

Portfolio size.

It is getting harder to get images accepted in every agency nowadays. All my top 5 agencies rejected much more images than before. Only Fotolia seems to have higher than average acceptance rate. I am sending exactly same images to all sites     and images are randomly accepted or rejected. Most of these agencies sit on millions of images so I expected they will keep rejecting more images to save on storage costs.

2010 2009
Shutterstock 3555 2668 887 33.25%
123RoyaltyFree 6105 5297 808 15.25%
IStockPhoto 297 213 84 39.44%
Dreamstime 2250 1906 344 18.05%
Fotolia 1919 990 929 93.84%
StockXpert 2211 2201 10 0.45%
YAYMicro 4993 4970 23 0.46%
BigStockPhoto 1064 610 454 74.43%
CanStockPhoto 2638 2015 623 30.92%
Veer 982 522 460 88.12%
Crestock 502 467 35 7.49%
Cutcaster 1399 1399 0 0.00%
FeaturePics 4629 4629 0 0.00%
MostPhotos 2868 2868 0 0.00%

Earnings.

Overall, I earned 43% more than in previous year. Not every agency contributed to this result. Shutterstock continues to earn over 50% of my royalties. 123RF is balancing around 15% as it was before. I lost around 10% of income since Getty purchased StockXpert. Images transferred to ThinkStock earn only 2% in comparison to 12% before this change. Also Dreamstime went down from %14 to 8%. On a bright side Fotolia keeps generating errand 5% and IS gives additional 8%. Few smaller sites that did not give any results in 2009 start generating sales which are usually very weak but combined give around 9%. I am not feeling well about depending mostly on income from two agencies. Dreamstime high rejection rates and lower sales make me think that they might next one that is going to sink. I am hoping that somehow Fotolia, CanStockPhoto and Veer would continue to build up momentum. Another question is IStockPhoto. Obviously they start generating me some income but at the same time they drastically lowered contributors royalties so next year might be not as good as it looks now.

Downloads.

The only agency that provides me with some sort of volume is Shutterstock. Others from top 5 are roughly 2/3 of it combined.  Volume is one thing but more interesting factor is how much agency pays for each image sold. For me RPD is usually below $1. Ironically agencies which give better RPD do not generate enough sales. I started suspecting that RPD is inversely proportional to sales :-)

Sales RPD
SS 2820 56.18% $0.60
123RF 563 11.22% $0.96
IS 419 8.35% $0.67
DT 325 6.47% $0.78
FT 258 5.14% $0.64
SXP 212 4.22% $0.25
YM 205 4.08% $0.75
Veer 109 2.17% $0.73
CSP 47 0.94% $1.15
BS 30 0.60% $0.80
CS 25 0.50% $0.35
FP 5 0.10% $0.15
CUT 2 0.04% $2.28
MSP 0 0.00% $0.00

Goals for 2011.

  1. Keep trying to improve results on Shutterstock
  2. Make serious effort to increase portfolio size on IStockPhoto
  3. Continue to upload to Veer
  4. Continue to grow on Fotolia
  5. Test if it is worth uploading to Dreamstime with growing rejections and declining sales
  6. Verify if there is a sense uploading to 123RF. Right now portfolio is huge but sales are stagnant.
  7. Keep trying more with video.

December 2010 earnings breakdown

Sunday, January 2nd, 2011

December is one of this “shorter” months, because people are just too busy with holidays all over the world so I expected lower than usual sales. It was just 96% of November results so I consider it pretty successful. As usual SS is over 50% of my earnings and 123RF would be second if I did not score one extended sale at CSP. All my other typical top 5 agencies continue to slide down with earnings. FT continue to have a hiccup, one month they do well next one it is very bad. DT barely made average result and IS was below expectations. Anything else is just a statistical error and makes me thinking about focusing only on my top 5 agencies. SXP got an accident this month, first they reported that they sold 10x more than in in the rest of the year this month, then they shut down the site and wiped out results to prevent people from cashing their money. Until now no results from November has been not posted.

2010 December Microstock

2010 December Microstock

Reviewers were very busy with cleaning their backlogs which must be explanation of much higher then usual rejection rates across the board. RPD was up everywhere so it makes me think that it is inversely proportional to number of downloads :-)

2010 December Microstock Trend

2010 December Microstock Trend


Dec Dec/Nov RPD
SS 52.00% 92.94% 0.58
CSP 17.29% 14066.67% 3.52
123RF 10.08% 111.51% 0.72
DT 9.14% 94.69% 0.77
IS 5.21% 41.31% 0.91
FT 3.90% 53.04% 0.58
YM 1.02% 2.50
Veer 0.43% 13.04% 1.05
BS 0.82% 57.14% 2.00
CS 0.10% 50.00% 0.25
Total 96.57%