Microstock RPI (Return Per Image)
I’ve been following Comparing RPI and STR of stock photographers with some interest. I think tracking an approximation of the RPI is interesting information, just not sure how useful it is. I say approximation of the RPI because I don’t think many, if any, microstock photographers calculate it right (me included). Unless there’s some software program out there to do it for you it’s just too time comsuming to do (as a programmer I should take this opportunity to write a program).
This isn’t too big of a stretch but lets assume I have a portfolio of the 2 images below. As you can see the image of the horse is on three sites, IStockphoto, ShutterStock and Fotolia. It’s the exact same image from my portfolio, just for sale via three different avenues. The stop sign is available only on Shutterstock.
These two images account for $4.50 of my microstock earnings. That is an RPI of $2.25 (note: I did pick my two best sellers). Now if I add up all my portofolio sizes, Shutterstock: 2, IStockphoto: 1, and Fotolio: 1 it appears that my portfolio size is 4 giving an RPI of $1.125, significant lower than what I would say it actually is.
I currently contribute to 7 different microstock sites and not every image is accepted at every site so keeping track of this the way I would like quickly becomes unwieldy. Hence the reason it gets calculated the way it does. Most RPI calculations also don’t take into account the rejected images. The photographer thinks the image is good enough but it gets rejected from every site! Is that image in the photographers portfolio?
I think portfolio age and upload/acceptance rate also play into the RPI. If you let the images out there and quit contributing hopefully your RPI will increase as the images continue to sell. Uploading images would have the opposite effect. My Shutterstock portfolio is currently 39 images, if I achieve what I hope to achieve I’ll double that in the next month or so. All those new images will start out with an RPI of $0.00, pulling down my overall average.
I do still think the RPI is an interesting number to calculate. It along with the STR (sell through rate) is some measure of how your portofolio is doing.
Allen