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).

RPI (Return per Image) is potentially very useful statistics for a stock photography portfolio. However, there is a lot of controversy around it. Some microstock contributor consider RPI completely worthless. Others are using to predict future earnings from microstock or to estimate how many pictures they need to add to a portfolio to reach a certain level of earnings. There is also a common belief that RPI has to go down with a growing portfolio.

RPI as any other statistics to be meaningful must be based on a sufficient number of data. So, it is not a really reliable for a small portfolio or for an agency with low sales. There is certain irony here, since it would be the most useful when we just starting submitting to microstock.

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 for each agency, e.g., the average size of your portfolio.

To derive the total RPI for my portfolio I am using the total number of pictures prepared for microstock. After 3.5 years of my microstock adventure I have around 3400 pictures in my stock portfolio: 64% in iStockphoto, 82% in Shutterstock, 60% in Dreamstime and 64% 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 Letfovers, Deposit Photos, Panther Media, StockFresh, FeaturePics)

This is a supplement to the previous posts discussing trends in 3 years of my microstock earnings and contributions from different agencies.

Let’s look at the growth of my portfolio in iStockphoto, Shutterstock, Dreamstime and Fotolia. These are my 4 top microstock performers providing 88% of income. I submit pictures regularly preparing between 50 and 100 new files each month.

The gray line above represents a number of all pictures (jpg) produced for microstock including rejects, multiple versions and files which were not submitted. So, this is a measure of my work and efforts rather than a number of files available for stock. I used that number as a reference to derive RPI (return per image).

After 3 years I have quite different portfolios in various agencies. Shutterstock has the highest number of my pictures (2269 by the end of October 2010). Nowadays they accepted almost all pictures. Dreamstime with 1,761 files takes the 2nd place. However, my DT portfolio is growing slower during last year than in other agencies due to their review policy (“too many similar pictures”).

My numbers for IS (1628) and Fotolia (1614) look quite similar, but those portfolio are quite different. FT accepts most pictures rejected by DT. My landscape and industrial pictures rejected by FT are usually selling in IS. It is interesting that the IS portfolio contains some unique pictures which were not accepted by SS, DT or FT.

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

I started my adventure with microstock photography with submitting pictures to iStockphoto in November 2007 and, later, to other agencies. Today, I just reached the golden canister level at iStock. The picture below crossed that milestone of 10,000 downloads.

Nowadays, iStock dominates my microstock sales providing more than 40% of earnings with a portfolio of ~1300 pictures.

I am getting more upload slots, 25 instead of 20 per week, which is nice. I don’t think that I am really ready to upload more pictures to iStock, but the process will be more convenient. I am not sure if there are any other benefits of reaching the gold level in my case, i.e., not an exclusive photographer.

Some milestones in my iStock performance during last 2 and half years:

Related post:
Microstock Earnings – First 30 Months

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.

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.

A little milestone in my microstock photography: the 1000th download from my iStockphoto portfolio. I have 652 pictures online there after 16 months of submitting. My total earnings from iStock are $1,055.52 which makes just about $1 per sale.