Exclusivity can be on different levels.

Exclusive at iStock means you CANNOT sell RF images anywhere but iStock.

Dreamstime and Fotolia have both photographer exclusivity, meaning all your images are uploaded to Dreamstime and only Dreamstime (or Fotolia or whatever site) and image exclusivity, meaning that single image can only be uploaded at site X.

That said however, it is also interesting to know the potential RPI of a site if all images were online. iStock for example generally has a very good RPI when calculating just with the images online. If a photographer calculate with all the images they have created for microstock, the iStock RPI gets reduced significantly.

Excellent post! It is very illuminating to take the time and consider your true returns like this. I think it is important you try and express RPI on a per annum basis to make comparison and understanding easy, however as you say it is an elusive number to try and pin down!

It is true also that when you factor your costs and time in it can be a real eye opener but as Holgs states you are hopefully building an asset that will continue to bring you revenue even when you aren’t still working on it. Unfortunately none of us know what the future holds so an accurate estimate of return for your investment over your portfolios productive life is hard to make. However having a decent idea as to the reasonable RPI you can expect can help you manage costs knowing what is sensible to spend in creating new images.

Alex

I’ve also noticed that a lot of the more established photographers are slowing the rate of uploads – but I’d attribute this more to boredom and concentrating on other projects while a relatively stable income keeps flowing in. That’s the category I’m in at the moment – I’m finding plenty of time to take photos, but they never seem to make their way online!

I suspect another factor is that many are diversifying their income sources, and focusing on creating portfolios or services in other segments or markets.

For new photographers it seems to be getting harder to compete with portfolios that are already established.

I think this is why some of the more popular microstock shooters with blogs aren’t adding new images or have abandoned earlier goals.

I think you’re going to make more money doing almost anything other than microstock, though I’m still out there ocassionally adding images after starting in May this year. I’ll be interested to see what price you come up with for time/hr. For me I have a feeling that I’d make more working as a babysitter or packing supermarket shelves.

I have the largest portfolio with SS: ~1500 pictures accepted.

All graphs above are made for monthly values, i.e., RPI=$0.84 is for October 2009.

RPI for the entire 2 year period can be calculated but with some assumptions concerning the portfolio size. It would be $6.14 using the current number of pictures or $12.30 using a rough averaged size of the portfolio during that time, i.e., 1800/2.

RPI is always calculated somewhat arbitrary. I think that its value is not so important, but its trend is. As long as it is rising, I am doing OK.

Any other suggestion, comments or questions? The 2nd part is almost ready.

If I understand correctly the $.84 RPI is for 1,800 images and is over a two year period. When you get around to listing expenses it would be interesting to know the expenses on an annual basis and the income on an annual basis. Obviously your income has gone up in 2009 compared to 2008, but I suspect you still haven’t shown a profit compared to the total amount invested.

In order to produce 1,800 accepted images you have also worked pretty hard at producing stock images. It would be interesting to have an approximate figure as to how many hours you spent to produce and upload those images.

Can’t wait for part II