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Earnings from Microstock Photography – 3 Year Trends

Marek — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 17:31:27 +0000

My adventure with microstock photography started in November 2007. For the first two years I used to report my monthly earnings from microstock in this blog. Nowadays, I am less obsessed with my statistics focusing more on producing new pictures. However, my 3 years in microstock is an occasion for a statistical summary.

Total Earnings and Portfolio Additions

I am submitting my pictures to 12 microstock agencies. 88% of my income is coming from the top 4: Istockphoto, Shutterstock, Dreamstime and Fotolia (see Big 4 in My Microstock Portfolio).

Above, I am showing my total monthly earnings from all agencies (thick yellow line – left axis) and monthly addition to my portfolio (gray bars – right axis) over the span of last 3 years. I divided growth of my earnings into three periods and added trends into my graph (linear approximation).

1st year (green line). Building my portfolio. Slow, but consistent, growth of earnings $19/month.
2nd year (blue line). More rapid growth of my earnings at $96/month. The only time period where I can see the response of my earnings to the increased number of pictures submitted.
3rd year (red line).. Slowing down … $50/month. More month to month fluctuations.

Let’s look at trends in the individual microstock agencies (the same scale is used in the graphs below).

iStockphoto

Portfolio: 1628 files. iStock was my first microstock agency. Submissions used to be restricted by a weekly upload limit. However, recently they increased that limit. At the same time I reached a gold canister level. So, right now, 30 images/week is usually more than I can prepare for submission. Acceptance rate ~75%.

I experienced a rapid growth of sales at iStock during 2009. Recent earnings are fluctuating, but are still growing. iStock provides 40-50% of my microstock income.

My sale commission at iStock will drop from 20% to 18% in January 2011 and, generally, perspectives for an independent contributor don’t look great there.

Shutterstock

Portfolio: 2269 files. I entered Shutterstock relatively late. It took me 4 attempts to get accepted. The first year was great and SS was my top earner for a longer while. During the last 1.5 year my earnings are fluctuating from month to month, but still shows a slow growth and are somewhat responding to the number of uploaded pictures. My portfolio at SS is the largest among the top 4 agencies. Almost all my pictures are getting accepted.

Dreamstime

Portfolio: 1,761 files. My earnings are growing with some fluctuations and Dreamstime provides around 10% of my total microstock earnings. However, I don’t really expect to increase that percentage. My overall acceptance rate is about 73%, but my effective acceptance rate during last year is only 50-60%. Too many photos/illustrations on the same subject or from the same series. or Image subject is too specific or niche-oriented are popular rejection reasons. I don’t submit all my pictures to DT any more. I feel that I am losing a lot of potential sales at DT.

Fotolia

Portfolio: 1614 files. FT provides about 7-8% of my microstock earnings. A slow growth. Overall acceptance rate ~63%. It seems to be improving recently. I don’t think it is due to any change in FT review policy. I simply submit more product and concept images and less landscape and nature ones. FT accepts all DT rejects.

Of course, this just one side of my microstock photography business – earnings from sales. Expenses and my labor time is another side. In previous posts I discussed a business model I am trying to implement. It may be time to review it.

What’s next?

Further growth? Reaching plateau? Switching to another activity? Looking for some more meaningful photography projects?

Can I use my numbers to make any predictions of my future microstock earnings? So far, I have seen a rather smooth growth of my income.

Related posts:
Big 4 in My Microstock Portfolio
Am I Really Making Money from Microstock Photography ? Part 1 and Part 2
My microstock referral links for photographers:
Dreamstime, ShutterStock, BigStockPhoto, 123RF, FeaturePics, Panthermedia, CanStockPhoto, DepositPhotos, Graphic Leftovers

Am I Really Making Money from Microstock Photography ? Part 1

Marek — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:47:54 +0000

I started my microstock adventure two years ago in the end of November 2007. I am regularly submitting pictures to 7 agencies (iStockphoto, Shutterstock, Dreamstime, Fotolia, StockXpert, Bigstockphoto, 123RF), and when I have time to a couple more.

Every month I am posting here a microstock earnings report with nice graphs like that one above. Usually, I can show a positive growing trend in my earnings. A few other microstock photographers and illustrators also share their sale numbers in a similar manner.

However, this is not a full story. We do not see here any information how much of expenses and labor is invested in producing images for microstock. Is it just a hobby providing a supplemental income or business? Am I really making any money here?

I will try to answer these questions. Let’s start with including expenses to a popular measure of portfolio productivity – RPI (return per image).

You can simply calculate your RPI for a given agency by dividing amount of sales in a given month by size of your portfolio. The above graph show my RPI for four selected agencies. These numbers may be useful to analyze trends or for comparison with other photographers.

However, I would like to have a single number to characterize my entire microstock production. It is a little bit tricky and arbitrary to derive a single RPI for multiple sites.

After 2 years I have quite different portfolios in various agencies. My iStock portfolio is the smallest one due to uploading restriction. Fotolia portfolio is not much larger (my acceptance rate in only 58% there). Shutterstock has the highest number of my pictures. It is interesting that my IS portfolio contains some unique pictures which were not accepted by SS, DT or FT.

I don’t think it is a good idea to add RPI numbers derived separately for my pictures at different sites. My first appraoch was to use a size of hypothetical averaged portfolio as reference (just an average from 7 agencies – khaki color thick line above).

Finally, I figured out that it is really not so important what and where was accepted. It really matters what I actually produced for microstock. So, now I am looking for all jpg files in a microstock folder on my hard drive (thick gray line). These include pictures which were not submitted for some reasons and pictures which were not accepted anywhere. I also have a few duplicate versions, e.g., pictures resubmitted after corrections.

I believe a total number of pictures prepared for microstock better represent my efforts than the “average” portfolio concept. Of course, it results in a lower RPI as shown above.

However, I do not worry too much how low or high is my RPI. My goal is to increase RPI together with the growth of my microstock portfolio. I cannot explain a peak in my RPI around April 2008. However, after a stagnation period during 2008, RPI is showing upward trend during the entire year of 2009.

During 2 years I produced nearly 1800 pictures for microstock. My recent RPI is $0.84 per image and growing.

In the second part of this post I will introduce my microstock expenses and adjust the above RPI accordingly. We will see if there is any profit left. I will also try to answer a question how much an hour of my work is worth here. Hourly rate of a microstock photographer? It doesn’t mean that I have found a definite answer …

Related posts:

13 Months of Microstock Photography Earnings: October | November | December | 2009 January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October
My Favorite Camera and Lens for Microstock Photography
My Microstock Pie – Earnings Split by Agency
How to Evaluate Performance of My Microstock Portfolio?
A Reverse Look at Microstock Sales from My iStock and Shutterstock Portfolios
My microstock referral links for photographers:
Dreamstime, ShutterStock, BigStockPhoto, 123RF, FeaturePics, Panthermedia, CanStockPhoto.

My Favorite Camera and Lens for Microstock Photography

Marek — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 20:39:02 +0000

I started selling my pictures through microstock almost two years ago in November 2007. Today, I have about 1800 pictures in my stock portfolio. Since I am using Adobe Lightroom 2 to catalog all my pictures, I can easily sort them according to camera and lens. It provides some interesting statistics. Sometimes, the camera EXIF data are lost, so these numbers are not completely accurate.

Let’s look at cameras first.

Canon EOS 10D: 50 pictures (2.7 %)
I started submitting pictures to microstock with my first digital SLR camera.

Canon EOS 40D: 1500 pictures (81.5%)
Very quickly, I upgraded my old 10D to Canon 40D and this camera still remains my microstock work horse. Shortly after, I bought the 40D, a new model, Canon 50D was introduced.

Pentax Optio W10 and W30: 10 pictures (0.5%)

I use these compact waterproof cameras for paddling, racing, and other outdoor activities to provide images and video clips for my blogs: Paddling with a Camera and Fitness Paddling. These pictures are generally too noisy for microstock. Nevertheless, I am selling a few of them in microstock portfolio.

Unknown camera (scanner): 250 pictures (13.6%). I scanned some of my old Polaroid transfers, watercolor abstracts and some other background textures, played a little bit with scanning 3-dimensional objects. This activity provides some fun and variety into my microstock, but not so much of income. I have been using Epson Perfection 4870 photo scanner for years.

Most of my microstock images were created with Canon EOS 40D camera. Let’s look at lenses I am using with this camera.

Canon EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro: 1150 pictures (77%).
I bought this lens together with my Canon 40D camera. It is my mostly used lens for microstock photography. It works perfectly for macro and product shots in my home office with just 9′ of working space. I used to take it also for outdoor shooting before I got a zoom lens.

Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM: 300 pictures (20%).
It was my second lens purchased for Canon 40D funded from microstock earnings. I am using it as general lens for outdoor photography and in my studio when a wide angle is needed. I take it as a single lens for my paddling, hiking or biking adventures.

Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS: 40 pictures (3%).
A great lens, I love it, and, unfortunately, I don’t use it that much for microstock …
I got it before my microstock time.

Canon EOS 40 D camera with EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro lens are my mostly used tools for microstock photography (more than 60% of my portfolio). The above statistics also shows how microstock changed my photography during last 2 years from outdoor (landscape, nature, sport) to tabletop or rather some sort of photo illustration.

Is it time to upgrade my camera equipment? A full sensor camera?

It looks like I would need Canon EOS 5D mark II camera with EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro lens …

My Microstock Pie – Earnings Split by Agency

Marek — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 16:47:03 +0000

There is always a lot of discussion among photographers which microstock agency is the best performing one, which belongs to the “Big 6″, is it Big 6 or Big 5, 4, … On right there a screen shot of current poll from Microstock Group forum. That discussion is coming to life at least once per month there. It is interesting that microstock earnings split varies dramatically among contributing photographers.

For me it is something like

2 + 1 + ?

I started my miscrostock experience in November 2007 with submissions to iStockphoto followed by Dreamstime, Fotolia, BigStockPhoto and 123 RF. It took me 4 attempts to get into Shutterstock and 5 to StockXpert. Early this year I added CanStockPhoto and 3 months ago Veer Marketplace.

Below I am slicing my pie of microstock earnings between different agencies from which I am getting regular payments. It looks like Veer may be included soon.

My total earnings are dominated by contributions from iStock and Shutterstock which provide 72% of my revenue. These are my Big 2. Adding sales from Dreamstime makes 81%. Should I focus on these three agencies according to 80/20 principle and neglect all smaller players?

How my microstock pie looked a year ago? Above there are split results from the 3rd quarter of 2008. It would be difficult to predict a future performance of my lower earners, but the sale shares of IS and SS looked almost the same as in my total results. However, big changes were coming – SS accelerated and dominated my microstock income for the following three quarters reaching as much as 50% in April of 2009.

The 3rd quarter of 2009 shows already another change. IS moved to the 1st place among my earners in June of 2009 and, now, provides most of my microstock earnings (44% in September 2009). My formula for best agencies is still valid: 2 + 1 (IS/SS + DT). It is not clear which will be the next agency FT or SXP or, maybe, Veer. For sure, we can expect big changes in SXP and BSP.

The last quarter provided 1/3 of my total earnings from microstock phtography. IS, SS and DT brought almost 83% money during that time. What about the remaining 17% ? Well, 17% of my current microstock income doesn’t feel negligible any more. I also believe that my time spent on submitting to multiple agencies is just a very small fraction of time used to shoot and process pictures. I am slowly moving my focus from quantity to quality in my microstock production.

My latest stock photos on Dreamstime

A Reverse Look at Microstock Sales from My iStock and Shutterstock Portfolios

Marek — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 23:21:53 +0000

We all like to monitor and analyze our microstock sales. Usually, we are looking at some graphs showing our earnings as a function of time when our pictures were actually downloaded by buyers. You can find these statistics and graphs at microstock sites. I am also producing these plots for my earnings every months (e.g., see March 2009).

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).

My monthly iStock earnings (red) were growing for the first few months of submitting until June 2008, then we can see a stagnation period until January 2009, and a distinct jump up during last couple of months.

And now green bars – total earnings from pictures submitted during each specific month. At the right (recent months) they are tiny – freshly uploaded pictures have very few sales at iStock. However, they are really big on the left side. During first 3-4 months of submitting I managed to produce a few bestsellers which dominated my sales. There is another smaller maximum in earning coming from my May and June uploads – a couple of other bestselling pictures. Then there is low period in July and August. I was submitting less pictures during my kayak racing season. My summer outdoor pictures don’t sell so well as my home studio productions.

This is a similar graph as the first one but for Shutterstock earnings. Trends in earnings are quite different from iStock.

Red bars show earnings from all sales a given month. So far, I have a nice, better than linear, trend up in Shutterstock. I used to produce new pictures at pace dictated by the upload limit at iStock, i.e., about 15 pictures per week. However, in September 2008, I started to shoot and submit much more pictures to all sites except iStock. These efforts show up. My current goal is 100 pictures per month accepted by Shutterstock and Dreamstime.

Green bars, earnings from pictures submitted at a specific month, reveal more interesting things. Old pictures (on left side) have significant contribution to my total earnings, but not so strong as in iStock.

The earnings from my first month submission look especially good. That was not even a full month. There is a rumor that these initial submissions are getting some preference in Shutterstock search engine to encourage new photographers. It may be true. However, in my case, the reason could also be different. It took me four months to get accepted by Shutterstock, so, during my first months there, I was simply submitting my best pictures shot in the previous few months.

In the middle of this graph we see green and red bars of very similar length. It means that the current sales were coming mostly from newly uploaded pictures. However, this trend is changing during last couple of months. Fresh pictures contribute less and less to the current sales. It is starting to look almost like in iStock.

I repeated the above graphs for a number of downloads instead of earnings, but they showed exactly the same trends.

Let’s look at RPI, return per image, calculated in a traditional way, i.e., earnings at given month divided by number of pictures in a portfolio at that time.

My RPI in both IS (blue) and SS(orange) reached maximum in April 2008, in about 5 months of building my microstock portfolio. Then, it started to decline. In frustration, I even stopped calculating it for my portfolios. Well, that trend was reversed during last months in both SS (October 2008) and iStock (last 2 months).

And now, a different RPI, calculated as a ratio of the total earnings from pictures uploaded at a given months to a number of pictures uploaded. You expect this RPI to grow in time as long as your pictures are selling.

The early submissions to iStock (blue bar on left) are really standing up. I still need to figure out how I managed to produce those strong bestsellers with a very limited numbers of submissions. I suppose that later I focused more on volume submissions to Shutterstock (yellow).

In the middle of 2008, RPI for pictures uploaded to IS and SS look quite similar while in the last 5-6 month RPI for SS is much higher than for IS. Of course, there is still a strong bias in SS sales on new pictures.

I derived above graphs from summary statistics copied from IS and SS websites – total earnings for each picture knowing its upload date. Therefore, in my analysis, I know only the total earnings from let’s say pictures uploaded to IS in January 2008. I don’t know how these earning are changing or decreasing in time. I would need to analyze records of each sale including the sale date, upload date and earnings. It would be interesting to run such an analysis for pictures selected by different criteria like time range of upload, keywords, or just tagged manually. Just a little suggestion for Rahul and Lookstat.

My latest stock photos on Dreamstime