In June 2011 I posted 3 year trends in return per image (RPI) from my microstock portfolio. How it looks 6 month later? Here is an update for 2009-2011 years.

How RPI is calculated

Calculating RPI is straightforward for a single agency – just divide earnings from sales by the number of pictures in your portfolio there for a given time period, e.g., a month. It is getting more complicated when you are submitting pictures to multiple agencies. You cannot calculate RPI separately for each agency and then add those numbers together. That would be mathematically incorrect. You need to use the same number of pictures as reference for each agency, e.g., the average size of your portfolio.

I am submitting pictures to multiple microstock agencies. To derive the total RPI for my portfolio I am using the total number of pictures prepared for microstock. This way I can use RPI to compare performance of different agencies. My RPI depends obviously on the acceptance rate. So, the agency, which regularly rejects my pictures as too similar or duplicates, has a lower RPI in my system. The “similarity” issue is a major problem in the case of Dreamstime and to a much lower degree of iStockphoto.

After 4 years of my microstock adventure I have around 3800 pictures in my stock portfolio: 68% in iStockphoto, 83% in Shutterstock, 59% in Dreamstime and 66% Fotolia counting just the 4 top agencies. I do not analyze separately other agencies with lower sales, instead I am looking at total sales from them as “others” (Bigstock, 123RF, Canstock, Veer, Graphic Leftovers, Deposit Photos, PhotoDune, Panther Media, StockFresh, FeaturePics, Yay).

My adventure with microstock photography started in November 2007. 3 years in microstock is an occasion for a statistical summary.

iStockphoto, ShutterStock, Dreamstime and Fotolia are considered nowadays a Big 4 among microstock agencies. Indeed, they bring together between 80 and 90% of my earnings from microstock photography. After 32 months of submitting the size and content of my portfolio at different agencies are quite different: iStock – 1425 pictures, Shutterstock – 2024, Dreamstime – 1586, Fotolia – 1392.

The above graph show percentage of my earnings from the Big 4 agencies and other mictostock sites during last 2.5 years. I plotted quarterly values to smooth out month to month fluctuations.

I started to submit my pictures to iStock in November 2007 and that agency dominated my earnings until I got accepted by Shutterstock. Then, Shutterstock took a lead for a year so. In the beginning of 2009 my sales at iStock started to grow and today iStock in my number 1 with 40-50% of all microstock earnings. Is it a permanent trend? My sales at iStock are slowing down despite of reaching a gold level which allows me to submit more pictures.

Dreamstime is holding number 3 in my microstock earnings with a pretty steady contribution of about 10%. The number 4, Fotolia, shows some growth recently.

All remaining microstock agencies contribute currently about 12% to my income. I can divide them into two groups: (1) agencies with regular payouts every month or every second month (BigStock, 123RF, CanStockPhoto, Panther Media) and (2) agencies where need several months or a year to reach payout level (Veer, FeaturePics, DepositPhotos, Graphic Leftovers).

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.

My profit (after expenses) from microstock photography stayed at the same level of $1000 during the last three months of 2009 year. It happened to be my microstock goal for 2009. However, I was rather lucky in December.

I produced a similar number of pictures for microstock as usual (~65), but mostly during the second half of the month during Christmas time. Earlier in December I spent a week at American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting at San Francisco. Of course I was shooting pictures whenever I could, but I doubt if a visitor to San Francisco can shoot anything what hasn’t not been shot before. Anyway, I extended a little bit my San Francisco portfolio. It was fun.

Sales in all of my microstock agencies except one went down in December. The most dramatic sale reductions happen in Dreamstime and Shutterstock even with a couple of ELs. BigStockPhoto showed a slight increase but well below its BME.

The situation was saved by iStockphoto. It was showing a slight increase of revenue with comparison to November. Then, a day before Christmas, I got a nice gift in the form of three extended licenses. This put IS out of scale and, now, I have problems with my performance graphs.

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 …

I spent much less time on microstock in August than usual. I added only 40+ pictures to my portfolio. Nevertheless, I reached to important milestones at iStockphoto and Shutterstock, and a new BME in total earnings.

Summertime and microstock sales are slow. I added 61 new pictures to my portfolio in July, but my earnings dropped down by 9%. My RPI was down from 0.70$/image to 0.61. This is my total RPI derived using the number of all my pictures prepared for microstock (not pictures accepted in any particular agency).

IS continued to climb and is definitely my #1 earner. DT was also growing. SXP stayed at the same level despite of uncertain future of that agency. Earnings from SS with only one EL dropped down by 25%. FT experienced even more dramatic decrease in earnings.

July was my 20th month in microstock with $7215 of total earnings.

This month my earning report is shorter than usual since I am just leaving for a week of vacations away of computer and submissions to microstock. I will be paddling in the Missouri River 340 race – 360 miles nonstop from Kansas City to St Charles. This year I am taking Surfrigger, my outrigger canoe, for the race.

I will try to shoot some travel oriented pictures for stock when driving from Colorado across Kansas to Missouri and back. However, during the race I will have only my “paddling” camera, waterproof Pentax Optio W30, so I would be shooting mostly for my Paddling with a Camera blog.

13 Months of Microstock Photography Earnings: June | July | August |September | October | November | December | 2009 January | February | March | April | May | June

Yesterday, I reached 1000 pictures in my Dreamstime portfolio with this image of green peas from my garden. It feels like just a few days ago I was shooting quite different picture of the same peas. A stormy spring in Colorado with a lot of hail was not very kind for my garden.

Today, I requested my 7th payout from Dreamstime, so it looks like this microstock agency is working pretty well for me. It is on the third position in earnings after iStock and Shutterstock.

However, the growth of my Dreamstime portfolio slowed down during last few months. My effective acceptance rate dropped down below 50%, i.e., I am submitting selected pictures only, and they take only 64% from them. “Too many shots of the same item or from the same series” is the rejection theme. It seems that for some inspectors the main picture subject is not important. The same prop (e.g., my wooden scoop) may be a reason for a rejection.

Here is how my Dreamstime portfolio compares to some other microstock sites. ShutterStock accepts almost everything what I submit. The size of my iStock portfolio is kept down by their uploading limits, but my acceptance rate stays the same at 75-80%. My Fotolia portfolio is also quite small due to rather low acceptance ratio. It used to be really low last year, but improved during recent months.

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.