Where are my monthly microstock earnings reports? I stopped posting them … December 2009 was the last one. I was busy shooting recently. And, those monthly graphs got a little bit boring. However, I am going to write some more general posts on trends in microstock photography from my own perspective.

I am trying to follow my microstock business model as described in my earlier posts: Am I Really Making Money from Microstock Photography ? Part 1 and Part 2. I treat microstock photography as a part time job (1/3 of my time = about 60 hours/month) and I tried to keep all related expenses below 30% of total sales.

How that business model works for me in practice? I ended the 2009 year with a little bit more than 40% in expenses due to a new Canon 5D/II camera with two lenses I bought by the end of the year. My expenses should go down to 30% when looking together at 2009 and the first half of 2010. However, I am not sure if my 30% model is sustainable in a long run unless I significantly increase my sales.

60 hours per month? Well, I am sure I am doing some overtime … I could record hours spent at my home table top studio and in front of a computer, but it would be difficult to clearly separate my part time microstock photography from pictures shot just for fun during paddling or hiking (some of them are ending up in my microstock portfolio).

I gathered 30 months of data including sales estimates for May 2010. So, let’s look at some trends.

Trends in my microstock sales from November 2007 to May 2010:
green bars – monthly additions to my portfolio, thick yellow line – total monthly sales,
green, blue and red lines – linear approximations of sales (trends)

Green bars in the above graph represent my work invested in microstock – monthly additions to my portfolio. These are all jpeg pictures processed for microstock including rejects. Thin yellow line shows my total monthly earnings. I approximated that curve with segments of a straight line to show some trends. I can see three distinct periods.

1. Green line – 10 months from February 2008 to October 2008. Slow, but steady growth at about $19/month. In March of 2008 I got accepted to Shutterstock, so I was submitting to all major microstock agencies. At that time, I was producing around 40-60 pictures every month.

2. Blue line – 12 months from November 2008 to October2009. It was a year of more rapid growth in my sales: $96/month. I believe it was a delayed response to the increased number of picture submissions. Between September 2008 and June 2009 I was making from 80 to 120 pictures every month. My earnings were dominated by Shutterstock, but iStock contributions were growing and passed SS in June 2009.

3. Red line – 8 months from November 2009 to May 2010. Slowing down in total sales! $45/month. IS is still growing, but SS sales showing a stagnation since BME in October 2009. I am producing and submitting fewer pictures during recent months, only about 60 per month. But, wait a minute! My pictures are not supposed to be better now? I am spending a similar amount of time shooting and processing with improved skills, a better camera, more expensive props …

Well, I will not try to make any predictions here. Next, I will show some trends in different agencies. iStock dominates my earnings nowadays. OK, but now, back to shooting!

Not many photographers are ready to reveal their financial data, but maybe you could share one piece of information. What percentage of microstock earnings do you spend to cover your expenses including investments in photo equipment?

My latest stock photos on Dreamstime

Some related posts:
Am I Really Making Money from Microstock Photography ? Part 1 and Part 2.
December earnings report
My microstock referral links for photographers:
Dreamstime, ShutterStock, BigStockPhoto, 123RF, FeaturePics, Panthermedia, CanStockPhoto, Graphic Leftovers, Deposit Photos

Two years ago in the middle of November 2007 I started my adventure with microstock photography by submitting a few pictures to iStockphoto, and then to Dreamstime, Fotolio, 123RF and Bigstockphoto. It took me much longer to get into Shutterstock (4 attempts) and StockXpert (5 attempts).

On November 28th, 2007 I got my first sale at iStock just 8 days after uploading this picture of a hot air balloon shot a few weeks earlier at the Hot Air Balloon Harvest in Greeley, Colorado.

Here are my first two posts related to microstock (I moved them from the old blog):
Starting Microstock Photography
Polaroid Transfers for Microstock?

These two years passed really fast …

To proceed further I need make some assumptions and guess estimates.

After two years of microstock photography I consider myself the part-timer. I have half time in a regular job and some other streams of income in a self employed mode. It means that I can share different expenses between my self employed activities. I am not planning to work a full time for microstock.

I do not keep records of my hours spent on microstock. That wouldn’t be fun … My estimate is that I am working about 60 hours per month, i.e., 1/3 of my time. I am doing this quite regularly shooting a 3-4 times per weeks and processing and submitting a few pictures almost every day. No special shooting campaigns or “power weeks.”

I am analyzing here 23 months from December 2007 to October 2009. To build a portfolio of 1748 pictures I needed 1380 hours. It results in about 46 minutes per picture.

After months of experimentations my stock photography is focusing now on a table top subjects and concepts in my home office/studio. I enjoy a lot of outdoor activities (paddling, hiking, biking) usually with a camera. However, sales of my “recreational” pictures are too low to justify counting these trips into expenses and labor time related to microstock. However, I take into account time needed to process these outdoor pictures for microstock submissions.

Some short trips are planned specifically for microstock shooting. It is sad that shooting a local sewage outlet is much more profitable from microstock perspective than visiting Rocky Mountain National Park or other scenic destinations in Colorado where I live.

I keep my shooting costs very low. No model fees, cheap, often eatable, props. Two years ago I bought a new camera, Canon EOS 40D, with two lenses, a diffusion tent and couple of lights (see My Favorite Camera and Lens for Microstock Photography). Last month I upgraded to Canon 5D Mark II.

So, my microstock expenses are mostly related to camera equipment and some software (Photoshop, Lightroom). It is important to note what I am not including here: computer, internet access, home office expenses (these are covered by my other income streams).

To include monthly expenses in this analysis I will use the following formula:

Now, I can replot my return per image as “net RPI” which includes expenses. For reference my October 2009 numbers are as follows: net RPI=$0.59, average portfolio RPI=$1.01, and entire portfolio RPI=$0.84.

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.

It would be nice to know how much an hour of my time spent on microstock is worth. Hourly rate of a microstock photographer? Is it more profitable to flip hamburgers at McDonald’s or do babysitting as some suggest?

Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to those questions. There is no strong link between amount of work invested at given month and sales at that month. Our pictures are selling with a long delay in time. I was trying to analyze this problem in one of earlier post: A Reverse Look at Microstock Sales from My iStock and Shutterstock Portfolios. If I stop submitting pictures to microstock right now, my pictures will be still selling and make money.

More importantly, you shouldn’t really expect profit when developing a business, i.e., building your microstock portfolio. Taking into account my total earnings from microstock during the last 23 months and my total working time leads to $4.70/hour – not very impressive, perhaps, but it’s growing.

I believe it would be more reasonable to look at the earnings, expenses, RPI in longer time periods than a month: annually or quarterly. However, since I am spending the same amount of time on microstock every month, I can calculated my hourly rate for each month showing profit. $17/hour in October 2009 is around a double minimum wage in US. I will be satisfied if it grows up to $30/hour.

I record all my numbers in an Excel spreadsheet, so I can easily change my assumptions or include additional expenses. I don’t have a business background, so my approach and terminology may be somewhat naive here. I am trying to develop a framework to analyze my net microstock earnings to have some control in what I am doing.

I would appreciate any comments and suggestions. How to improve my approach? What I am missing? If you would like to share your experience we can consider a guest post in this blog.

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 …

• 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.

I started my microstock photography in the end of the 2007 with iStockPhoto followed by a few other agencies (Fotolia, Dreamstime, BigStockPhoto, 123RF). 4 months later I was accepted by Shutterstock, and after another couple of months by StockXpert. This year I started submitting pictures to CanStockPhoto.

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.

How to evaluate performance of my microstock pictures?

You can derive different statistics like the return per image (RPI) for each microstock agency. Some photographers (e.g., Lee Torrens in Microstock Diaries monthly earnings reports) are adding the statistics from different sites together, but this is not formally correct. I was trying to use as a reference in these calculation an “average size” of my microstok portfolio, i.e, a number of files averaged from all working portfolios. However, it is also not such a good idea due to growing differences between my portfolios at different agencies.

My latest stock photos on Dreamstime

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I needed 9 months to reach my first payment from Dreamstime.

The $100 line was crossed by this picture of sunflower seeds on a tablespoon. About $10 in this amount came from referrals. So, if you like to join Dreamstime you are more than welcome to use my referral link.

I have 327 pictures with Dreamstime. My average acceptance ratio is 67% but it is above 80% during last months. This agency provided 8.2% of my earnings from microstock photography. It is my third earner after iStock (40.1%) and Shutterstock (35.5%).

Related posts:

• Microstock Photography Earnings in 2008:
  November | September | August | July | June | May | April | March | February | January
• My microstock referral links for photographers:
  Dreamstime, ShutterStock, BigStockPhoto, 123RF, FeaturePics.
• What Sells in Microstock? My List of Picture Bestsellers
• Growth of My Microstock Portfolio in 7 Agencies: IS, SS, FT, DT, BSP, 123RF, SXP

My latest stock photos on Dreamstime

For beginners it is important how long it may take to reach the first payment. Here is some useful statistics: Date of 1st Payout From Stock Sites together with “Date of 100th Download From Stock Sites”.

I have just reached a milestone in my microstock photography – the first $100 from iStock portfolio. It took me almost 4 months and 81 downloads from 119 picture portfolio. It was also hard work and a lot of learning.

Cleaned sewage flowing out from a water reclamation facility, one of my industrial shots. This is a picture which crossed the $100 line at iStock, It is also selling well at Shuterstock, but was declined by Fotolia due “type of photograph” and by Dreamstime due to “lack of composition.”

The water reclamation facility is near Environmental Learning Center and old Rigden farm in Fort Collins which is usually a real goal of my shooting.


A scoop of roasted pistachios is a real hero this month in my iStock portfolio. This picture got an extended license worth $21 in my earnings.

How are my pictures doing in other microstock agencies? Shutterstock – $43.25, 94 downloads, 69 files (after just 2 weeks), Dreamstime – $22.90, 23, 113, Fotolia $19.81, 27, 122 (after ~3 months). Other agencies (Big Stock Photo, 123RF, Lucky Oliver, Featurepics: just a few dollars or nothing.

Related post:100 Images and $50 Earnings from My iStockPhoto Portfolio

I am celebrating a little milestone in a growth of my iStockPhoto portfolio today.

I just had my 100th picture accepted there. And, also today, I reached $50.39 earnings from iStock portfolio after 3 months on-line. So, I can expect reaching the first payment limit of $100 in a couple of months. I have more than 100 images with other microstock agencies (Fotolia, 123RF, Big Stock Photo and Lucky Oliver), but with much lower earnings. I cannot even predict when I may reach payoff limits there yet.

The last sale at iStock was this picture above: a diversion dam on the South Platte River in northern Colorado – nothing really spectacular, not a bestseller, but it has got a couple of sales already. I am glad to see that my river pictures shot during paddling have potential as a stock material.

I am always caring a point-and-shoot waterproof Pentax Optio W30 camera when paddling, but during recent months I was also taking my Canon EOS 40D. Considering that I paddle and train in a tippy low volume racing kayak it is a little bit tricky. You can find more paddling pictures and movies (mostly from Pentax camera though) in Fitness Paddling and Paddling with a Camera blogs.