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).

In my next post I will analyze the trends in performance of the Big 4 agencies. Is it possible to predict my income from the microstock business?

Related posts:
10,000 Downloads from iStockphoto
Microstock Earnings – First 30 Months
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

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

iStock. BME, a steady growth during last 6 months, #1 with almost 50% of my microstock income. I reached the silver canister level in August (2500 downloads) and my weekly uploading limit increased from 15 to 20 pictures. I have a chance to resubmit some old pictures now. 22 new pictures added. $1.03/ download.

Shutterstock. A better performance than in July, but still well below the April or June. I reached $3000 total earnings in August, so my payment rate increased from $0.33 to $0.36 for subscriptions and from $2.48 to $2.70 for on-demand pictures. 33 new pictures added.

DreamsTime. ~15% down from July earnings. 30 new pictures added.

Fotolia. Better performace than in July which was pretty bad. 22new pictures added.

StockXpert. BME, still going strong with a lot of contributions from from Photos.com and JupiterImages subscriptions. Reviews and payments seems to take much longer time than it used be …

123rf. Slow!

Big Stock Photo. Better than in July.

CanStockPhoto. Earnings seem to stay on the same level: one big sale through PhotoSearch and a few $0.30 subscription sales. 2nd payout.

Featurepics. 2 small sales … Will I reach my first payout this year?

Veer. Almost 500 pictures accepted. My acceptance rate is above 80%, however, they rejected practically all my best selling pictures as not suitable for stock.

The 3D Studio. Some photographers reported pretty good sales there. I uploaded 100+ pictures: thousands of views, zero sales.

agency	portfolio size	downloads (EL)	earnings	% earnings	RPI
iStock	847	529	545.51	48.2%	0.644
Shutterstock	1362	582	271.34	24.0%	0.199
DreamsTime	1071	107	$92.25	8.1%	0.086
StockXpert	1315	143	$67.80	6.0%	0.052
Fotolia	892	73	$56.30	5.0%	0.063
Big Stock Photo	1260	28	$37.00	3.3%	0.029
CanStockPhoto	1201	19	$26.75	2.4%	0.022
123rf	1274	28	$16.69	1.5%	0.013
Veer	497	9	$14.65	1.3%	0.030
Featurepics	1333	2	$9.00	0.7%
	1599 total	1520 total	$1133.04 total		0.709

Some other bloggers are reporting monthly earnings from microstock:
Microstock Diaries … Microstock Experiment … NiltoMil … jrtb … MeLastMohican’s Blog …

My latest stock photos on Dreamstime

Related posts:

• 13 Months of Microstock Photography Earnings: August |September | October | November | December | 2009 January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August
• How to Evaluate Performance of My Microstock Portfolio?
• A Reverse Look at Microstock Sales from My iStock and Shutterstock Portfolios
• 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, Panthermedia, CanStockPhoto.

iStock. BME. IS is returning to #1 position in my earnings . 45 new pictures added. $1.04/ download – better than in the previous month. 755 downloads left to reach the silver canister (2500 downloads).

Shutterstock. 3 EL. A better performance than in the previous month, but still below the April BME. 70 new pictures added. $362 left to reach my next milestone here, $3000 in total sales.

DreamsTime. BME. Good sales, but my effective acceptance rate dropped down below 50%, i.e., I am submitting selected pictures only, and they take only 64% from them. 38 new pictures added. “Too many shots of the same item or from the same series” is the rejection theme.

Fotolia. BME. My acceptance rate is improving slightly. They even accepted some of my backgrounds. 53 new pictures added.

StockXpert. BME. 40% came from Photos.com and JupiterImages subscriptions (more than 20% less than in May).

123rf. Slowly going down in earnings since April BME.

Big Stock Photo. BME. Review time is much faster since they introduced upload limits.

CanStockPhoto. One big sale through PhotoSearch and a few $0.30 subscription sales. I reached the first payout. Unfortunately, PayPal is charging a fee from their deposit.

Featurepics. 2 small sales …

Panthermedia. 400+ images in my portfolio. 1 sale in June. I reached the payout of 40+ euros with 4 sales. They sent it to PayPal. When it will arrive?

agency	portfolio size	downloads (EL)	earnings	% earnings	RPI
iStock	773	357	$372.95	35.7%	0.482
Shutterstock	1269	699(3)	$360.28	34.5%	0.284
DreamsTime	980	83	$91.40	8.8%	0.093
Fotolia	833	69	$65.06	6.2%	0.078
StockXpert	1222	115	$61.60	5.9%	0.050
Big Stock Photo	1163	45	$42.50	4.1%	0.037
123rf	1184	33	$24.05	2.3%	0.020
CanStockPhoto	1106	10	$22.50	2.2%	0.020
Featurepics	1230	2	$4.20	0.4%
	1492 total	1829 total	$1044.54 total		0.700

June was my 19th month in microstock with $6266 of total earnings.

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: June | July | August |September | October | November | December | 2009 January | February | March | April | May | June
• How to Evaluate Performance of My Microstock Portfolio?
• A Reverse Look at Microstock Sales from My iStock and Shutterstock Portfolios
• 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, Panthermedia, CanStockPhoto.

Shutterstock. 37.6% of earnings (was ~50% in April). The first decline in earnings since August 2008. Number of downloads was at the same level as in April, but only two ELs and much fewer downloads on demand. The average earnings per download dropped from $0.53 to $0.46. 86 new pictures added (almost all accepted). $722 left to reach my next milestone here, $3000 in total sales. 2 or 3 months?

iStock. 30.6 % or earnings (was 22.5% in April). BME and a big one! Will IS catch up with SS? 53 new pictures accepted, i.e., more than in DT. A lot of sales from a couple of pictures uploaded in May. Mostly X-small sales, but in average $0.89/download.

DreamsTime. BME. Good sales, especially, in the end of May. Only 45 new pictures added. A lot of rejections: “Too many shots of the same item or from the same series”. “This is a very well covered subject in our data base or the subject of your image is too specific”. I am not submitting all my pictures to DT any more. Nevertheless, my acceptance ratio dropped down to 63%.

Fotolia. Lower earnings than in my April, but still almost at a payout level every month.

StockXpert. BME. 64% from subscriptions.

123rf. Slightly lower earnings than in April which was BME.

Big Stock Photo. Earnings lower than in April, but sufficient for my monthly $30+ payout. March’09 was my BME.

CanStockPhoto. BME. One big sale through PhotoSearch and a few $0.30 subscription sales puts CSP into the same income league as 123RF and BSP. I added CSP to my earnings graph.

Featurepics. No sales.

Panthermedia. 350+ images in my portfolio. 1 sale in May.

agency	portfolio size	downloads (EL)	earnings	% earnings
Shutterstock	1199	687(2)	$314.06	37.6%
iStock	728	286	$255.90	30.6%
DreamsTime	942	92	$85.60	10.3%
StockXpert	1163	111	$49.20	5.9%
Fotolia	780	56	$44.62	5.3%
CanStockPhoto	1039	7	$29.55	3.5%
123rf	1121	55	$29.03	3.5%
Big Stock Photo	1103	35	$27.00	3.2%
	1002 average	1329 total	$834.96 total

May was my 18th month in microstock with $5221 of total earnings.

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: May | June | July | August |September | October | November | December | 2009 January | February | March | April | May
• A Reverse Look at Microstock Sales from My iStock and Shutterstock Portfolios
• 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, Panthermedia, CanStockPhoto.

Shutterstock. ~50% of earnings. BME with 3 ELs, but the actual number of downloads was lower than in March. I see more and more older pictures in my sales as illustrated by my recent analysis.

iStock. BME. Last two weeks were very good. Effect of Best Match 2.0 ?

DreamsTime. BME. Still on the 3rd place due to several sales in the last day of the month. Increased number of rejections: Too many shots of the same item or from the same series. Unfortunately for me, a scoop of rice and a scoop of wheat or other grain is the same subject according to DT inspectors.

Fotolia. BME. The same high rate of rejections as usual, but much better sales. It is my smallest portfolio, except IS.

StockXpert. A little lower earnings than in March. 57% from subscriptions.

123rf. BME. They usually accept everything, but, recently, requested a property release for my watercolor painted backgrounds. A complement? Am I getting recognized as an artist? Or just silly inspector?

Big Stock Photo. Earnings lower than in March, but sufficient for my monthly $30+ payout.

CanStockPhoto. I uploaded most of my pictures there, but so far I have got only a few $0.30 subscription sales.

Featurepics. No sales.

Panthermedia. I started to upload some of my microstock pictures two months ago. Submission is quite time consuming and sometimes doesn’t work. ~70% acceptance rate. 290 pictures online. So far, 2 sales, ~14 euros total.

agency	portfolio size	downloads (EL)	earnings	% earnings
Shutterstock	1113	683(3)	$363.54	48.1%
iStock	675	153	$170.01	22.5%
DreamsTime	897	74	$61.81	8.2%
Fotolia	735	60	$49.49	6.6%
StockXpert	1038	97	$44.70	5.9%
123rf	1203	40	$31.67	4.2%
Big Stock Photo	1038	34	$31.00	4.1%
CanStockPhoto	941	9	$3.15	0.4%
	942 average	1150 total	$755.29 total

April was my 17th month in microstock with $4386 of total earnings.

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 March | April | May | June | July | August |September | October | November | December | 2009 January | February | March
• A Reverse Look at Microstock Sales from My iStock and Shutterstock Portfolios
• 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, Panthermedia, CanStockPhoto.

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.

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.