microstock photography
I prepared 77 new pictures for microstock in June extending my total portfolio to 1492 pictures. It means that I am slowing down a little bit in shooting for microstock. Fortunately, I don’t see a summer slow down in my earnings. For the first time I reached more than $1000 of monthly earnings!
iStockphoto and Shutterstock provide 70% of my microstock earnings with IS moving to the first place. Adding income from Dreamstime makes almost 80% of earnings, so it’s clear where my focus should be.
I added back a column with RPI (return per image) to my earnings table below. However, my total RPI is calculated now using a total number of my microstock pictures, i.e., pictures prepared for microstock sitting in my computer. RPI = $0.70/image seems to be pretty low, but my goal is to increase that number. Keep in mind that my production costs are also really low.
iStock. BME. IS is returning to #1 position in my earnings . 45 new pictures added. $1.04/ download - better than in the previous month. 755 downloads left to reach the silver canister (2500 downloads).
Shutterstock. 3 EL. A better performance than in the previous month, but still below the April BME. 70 new pictures added. $362 left to reach my next milestone here, $3000 in total sales.
DreamsTime. BME. Good sales, but my effective acceptance rate dropped down below 50%, i.e., I am submitting selected pictures only, and they take only 64% from them. 38 new pictures added. “Too many shots of the same item or from the same series” is the rejection theme.
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After 18 months I have my portfolios in 8 agencies with some regular earnings. These portfolios differ in size and, also, in content. The differences will grow in time. I expect to to have two times more pictures with SS than IS soon.
My microstock earnings in May were still growing (+10%), but I see a slowdown.
April was a good month for my microstock photography - 22% increase of earnings in comparison to March. BME in Shuterstock, iStock (the last two weeks were great), Dreamstime, Fotolia, and 123RF. I managed to increase my average microstock portfolio from 859 to 942: 106 new pictures in SS, 70 in DT, and 46 in IS.
Let’s take another look at my microstock earnings from iStock and Shutterstock. Time on a horizontal axis in the two pictures below has double meaning: time of uploading (submitting) pictures or time of downloading (sales).
A little milestone in my microstock photography: the 1000th download from my iStockphoto portfolio. I have 652 pictures online there after 16 months of submitting. My total earnings from iStock are $1,055.52 which makes just about $1 per sale.
Lee Torrens at Microstock Diares mentioned that microstock is up and his March earnings report confirms that. However, I got somewhat mixed results from my portfolio.
Great month in microstock! First time I made more than $500 in earnings. 46% increase in comparison to January. BME in Shutterstock, iStockphoto, Dreamstime, Fotolia and StockXpert.
I started my microstock adventure over a year ago with submitting pictures to iStockphoto.
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