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Microstock Photography Earnings – March 2009

Marek — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:21:41 +0000

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. My revenue went up almost 14% in comparison to February. Taking into account that March is 10% longer than February and my portfolio is still growing in size about 8-9% every month, the March performance was actually lower than February.

Microstock earnings and payments from March 2008 to March 2009

I managed to increase my average microstock portfolio from 776 to 859: 98 new pictures in SS, 78 in DT, and 49 in IS. So, my submissions were a little bit higher than in February.

Shutterstock with one extended license performed as expected providing 50% of my earnings. I have now more than 1000 pictures in the SS portfolio.

iStock went down a little bit, but its good performance in February was due to one EL. A single EL has still significant impact on the performance of my small portfolio.

Dreamstime sales were also down with the end of month really slow. Site upgrading? I had problems with pictures uploading.

Now good news. All my smaller players (SXP, FT, BSP, 123RF) were up and reached their BME in March. StockXpert moved to the 4th place in my portfolio and it looks promising (reaching payout every month).

No sales at Featurepics. I started to upload pictures to CanStock and got one $0.30 subscription sale from about 400 images online. Another $0.25 sale at Crestock from 20 pictures I managed to upload there before giving up with them.

agency	portfolio size	downloads (EL)	earnings	% earnings
Shutterstock	1007	750 (1)	$309.41	49.9%
iStock	629	96	$116.95	18.9%
DreamsTime	827	57	$54.28	8.8%
StockXpert	995	89	$48.4	7.8%
Fotolia	665	55	$37.40	6.0%
Big Stock Photo	922	26	$34.5	5.5%
123rf	965	18	$19.05	3.1%
	859 average	1091 total	$619.63 total

March was my 16th month in microstock with $3631 of total earnings.

March was also time for me to work on 2008 taxes. I don’t have a lot of net income from microstock photography since most of my earnings were reinvested in equipment. However, I have some other streams of income from internet which help this business running.

Some other bloggers are reporting monthly earnings from microstock:
Microstock Diaries … Microstock Experiment … NiltoMil … jrtb … Driftless Ramblings … bankizdjec.pl … MeLastMohican’s Blog … Probably Due To Network Congestion

My latest stock photos on Dreamstime

Related posts:

13 Months of Microstock Photography Earnings:
2008 February | March | April | May | June | July | August |September | October | November | December | 2009 January | February
What Sells in Microstock? My List of Picture Bestsellers
How to Get Accepted by ShutterStock? Don’t Give Up!
My microstock referral links for photographers:
Dreamstime, ShutterStock, BigStockPhoto, 123RF, FeaturePics.

Microstock Photography Earnings – February 2009

Marek — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 13:16:01 +0000

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 managed to increase my average microstock portfolio from 698 to 776: 94 new pictures in SS, 77 in DT, and 46 in IS. So, my submissions were a little bit lower than in January.

Microstock earnings and payments from February 2008 to Febraury 2009

The most notable feature of February was a revival of my iStock earnings. Even without that one EL the growth would be impressing. I wonder if iStock earnings will stay in that level.

123RF was the only agency with decreased earnings in February. Also, no sales in Featurepics.

In December I made an experiment and was submitting my pictures to Crestock. 10% acceptance rate! I managed to get accepted 22 pictures before I gave up. I had one sale in February: $0.25.

February was my 15th month in microstock with $3012 of total earnings.

agency	portfolio size	downloads (EL)	earnings	% earnings
Shutterstock	909	689	$260.49	47.8%
iStock	580	92 (1)	$131.92	24.2%
DreamsTime	749	61	$56.70	10.1%
Fotolia	599	43	$33.20	6.1%
StockXpert	887	82	$30.30	5.6%
Big Stock Photo	837	26	$23.00	4.2%
123rf	872	15	$9.30	3.1%
Featurepics	892	0	$0	0.0%
	776 average	1008 total	$544.91 total

My latest stock photos on Dreamstime

Related posts:

13 Months of Microstock Photography Earnings:
2008 January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August |September | October | November | December | 2009 January
What Sells in Microstock? My List of Picture Bestsellers
How to Get Accepted by ShutterStock? Don’t Give Up!
My microstock referral links for photographers:
Dreamstime, ShutterStock, BigStockPhoto, 123RF, FeaturePics.

Scoop of Nuts, Grains, Beans, Seeds, Berries, …

Marek — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:06:59 +0000

“Scoop” is one of my recent and outgoing stock photography projects. I am shooting different grains, beans, berries and other stuff on a small, wooden, vintage looking scoop, isolated on a white background. I got a quite big collection and I am not done yet. The pictures below are linked to my FeaturePics portfolio. The only problem with this project is that I have to consume all this stuff. No problem with snacks or cereal. I am cooking quite regularly a buckwheat kasha, but I need to find some recipes for beans and lentils. I guess birds in my backyard will help me with millet and wheat in winter time.

wooden scoop	roasted buckwheat	hard red winter wheat	fish oil capsules	brown flax seeds
maple sugar chunks	Tibetan goji berries	black turtle beans	mung beans	red kidney beans
fuchsia flower	Anasazi beans	hazelnuts	sunflower seeds	muesli cereal
pennies	black eyed peas	dog food	Christmas shoping	popcorn and corn
pumpkin seeds	Hawaiian alaea salt	French green lentils	red lentils	green lentils
Brazil nuts	candies	dried cranberries	garlic cloves	chickpea
hulled millet	sweet brown rice	trail mix	raisins