One of the things I like about the microstock world is the openness and helpfulness of everyone. Now I just saw this, a video post from Yuri Arcurs about how he shoots. It appears that this is the first of what is going to be a series of posts. If you don’t know who Yuri is, you will, if you’re at all involved in microstock photography.
Allen
Tags: microstock
Posted in Photography | No Comments »
Didn’t do as poorly as what I had thought this month. Only loaded a couple images into ShutterStock and IStockphoto. My computer is currently getting rebuilt so that hasn’t been very helpful either. Hopefully I didn’t lose many pictures.
| Site | Portfolio Size | Downloads | Earnings | Comments |
| Fotolia | 148 | 5 | $8.85 | Sold another EL accounting for $6.60 of the total |
| IStockPhoto | 86 | 5 | $7.48 | |
| Crestock | 21 | 0 | $0.00 | Still nothing, Didn’t even try to get my portfolio sized increased in Sept |
| ShutterStock | 85 | 13 | $3.25 | Added the 10 new photos at the beginning of the month but nothing since |
| Stockxpert |
107 | 4 | $0.60 | |
| Dreamstime | 34 | 1 | $1.78 | |
| 123RF | 121 | 1 | $1.29 | |
| Totals | Avg.86 | 29 | $23.25 |
Here’s a couple other blogs I follow that report their earnings:
Microstock Diaries
Nil to Mil
Pixels Away
Captured Little Moments
Allen
Tags: microstock, microstock earnings, Photography
Posted in Photography | 5 Comments »
It looks like this should be the month I switch over to reporting only monthly earnings. I almost doubled my entire previous earnings with 48 downloads raking in $27.85, giving me a total from microstock of $61.37. Guess I wont be getting any new camera equipment for a while. I would like to cover some of cost of the Nikon 18-200 VR lens I bought recently. The way the earnings are being made across several sites makes it look like I’m still several months from a payout.
The horse picture I refered to in my post Microstock RPI (return per image) actually accounts for a large portion of this months earnings. It was 2 of the 3 downloads from Stockxpert for $6.50 and several downloads on ShutterStock. The other big picture for the month was another animal shot, namely our wonderful alpaca cria that was born recently. The head shot was the EL from Fotolia and the only download for the month from IStockPhoto. And I didn’t think alpaca shots would sell very well!
Overall I’m really pleased with my results for the month. I’m still working out a workflow that will hopefully allow me to get some more consistent uploads, especially to SS, but to also build my portfolios on the other sites. Verizon finally made DSL available in my area so it’s a big help actually having broadband at home and not having the take the files to work an upload them. Actually one of my goals now is to get my microstock earnings to cover the cost of it on a monthly basis.
It’s still July somewhere but I think I’m pretty safe to post this a couple hours before midnight at the international dateline. Maybe some one from Hawaii will buy one in the next couple hours and I’ll have to edit the post.
| Sites | Portfolio Size | Downloads | Balance | Comments |
| Fotolia | 144 | 2 | $8.25 | I doubled my balance here with only two sales. Got my first EL which accounts for $6.60 of the total. |
| IStockPhoto | 55 | 1 | $2.10 | |
| Crestock | 21 | 0 | $0.00 | The only thing that changes as this site is my portfolio size. |
| ShutterStock | 54 | 42 | $10.50 | Didn’t nearly as many new ones on here as I had hoped. |
| Stockxpert |
99 | 3 | $7.00 | Still trying to figure this site out. Have gotten several images online, but not working with it effeciently |
| Dreamstime | 14 | 0 | $0.00 | |
| 123RF | 110 | 0 | $0.00 | |
| Totals | Avg.71 | 48 | $27.85 |
Here’s a couple other blogs I follow that report their earnings:
Microstock Diaries
Nil to Mil
Pixels Away
Captured Little Moments <– Just found and added
Allen
Tags: earnings, microstock, Photography
Posted in Photography | 2 Comments »
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
Posted in Photography | No Comments »
