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

Tags: microstock, Photography, rpi
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Microstock June 2008 Update

I did okay getting some more images added to my portfolios in the beginning of June, but with preparations for and a vacation at the end of June I didn’t get much done then.  Hopefully in July I’ll be getting some of the stock worthy shots from vacation uploaded.

I have been reading that the summer months are usually a little slower in microstock.  Hopefully I’ll be able to make up for that with additional uploads and have more there for when things pick back up in the fall.

I really want to hit getting images onto ShutterStock.  With only 39 images, which is less than my average portfolio size, it accounts for almost half my overall earnings.  I still want to give some of the other sites a chance but I just can’t seem to get many images accepted Crestock and Dreamstime.

Sites	Portfolio Size	Downloads	Balance	Comments
Fotolia	138	14	$8.25
IStockPhoto	52	6	$7.06
Crestock	11	0	$0.00
ShutterStock	39	71	$17.85	My first week accepted here back in May was better than the entire month of June.  I didn’t get nearly as many pictures on as I would have liked in June though.
Stockxpert	67	0	$0.00	Still trying to figure this site out.  Have gotten several images online, but not working with it effeciently
Dreamstime	14	0	$0.00
123RF	90	1	$0.36
Totals	Avg.58.7	92	$33.52

Here’s a couple other blogs I follow that report their earnings:

Microstock Diaries
Nil to Mil
Pixels Away

Allen

Tags: earnings, microstock, Photography
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Microstock May 2008 Update

I haven’t really done a lot in getting my numbers of pictures increased this month. My big news this month is that I finally got accepted on ShutterStock and StockXpert. ShutterStock has been doing very well for me as you’ll see in the table below, I’ll take ShutterStock over Lucky Oliver any day. I’ve been accepted on StockXpert but haven’t gotten any pictures in my portfolio yet, not sure if I didn’t submit them correctly or if they just are really slow at getting them reviewed. Would have been nice if the initial five I submitted for approval would have gone right to portfolio, but that doesn’t appear to be the way that site works.

In the last couple days I did finally get some more shots together that I will upload, just need to do the post processing and keywording.

I should point out that these numbers are my career TOTALS not just the totals for May. When I get some more consistent downloads and earnings I’ll switch to monthly numbers.

Here’s a couple other blogs I follow, hopefully someday my earnings will rival some of theirs:

Microstock Diaries: Microstock Results for May 2008
Nil to Mil: May 2008 Microstock Earnings
Pixels Away: Microstock Photography Earnings Report for May 2008

Allen

Tags: earnings, microstock, Photography, portfolio
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Compost Experiment

A couple days ago (5/24/08) the boys and I started a new experiment. A while back I got a couple large 55 gallon plastic barrels from a neighbor and I’ve been trying to finalize what I want to use them for. I have quite a list, rain barrel, recycle bins, chicken feed tub, and probably a couple others that I’ve already forgotten. The idea I came up with was to mix the fresh grass clippings and fresh alpaca manure in one of them, similar to a compost tumbler but much cheaper.

The first thing I did was have the boys drill a bunch of holes, don’t know the exact sizes, but somewhere in the range of 1/4 to 3/8, on the sides and bottom. There probably should be more holes but my help got tired or lost interest. We then gathered up the fresh grass and scooped the paca poop. We then layered it into the barrel. I had been hoping to get the barrel half full, but in reality it was full to overflowing. It would probably work better if it was only half full so could get mixed around when the barrel was rolled, but I left it full. The extra grass I sealed into the second barrel that had no holes drilled in it. I did also dump several gallons of water in with the grass clippings and manure. All the water must have gotten absorbed by the grass and manure though since none or very little of it has drained out.

Today (5/26/08), we checked the barrels and the one with the holes in was cooking pretty good. It was composting quite nicely. We actually busted up a couple dozen guinea eggs that I didn’t have room for in the incubator and added them to the mixture. It was actually probably reduced down by about 10% or so already. The mixture will work better if it does get mixed more thoroughly. The boys do enjoy rolling the barrels around. The sealed barrel with only grass has done virtually nothing in the way of composting.

Now that I have some garden planted it sure would be nice to find a way to process the alpaca manure into a more useful compost. I had been just dumping the alpaca manure into the garden and just got it tilled in (no I won’t be doing any root crops this year), but since I’ve started planting in the garden I need to do something else with the poop. What I would really like to get worked out would be to process the manure through a quick composting then process it through a worm bin. I think the output from this process would be a wonderful soil addition, a mixture of vermicompost and regular compost.

I think the next barrel will get used as a big worm bin. Attempting to get it setup as a layering bin, at foot or so of material for the worms and more added on top once that portion has been processed by the worms. I’m just not quite sure how many barrels I’ll need to get going to process the poop from seven alpacas.

Allen

Tags: alpaca, barrel, compost, grass clippings, manure, Vermicompost
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