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Jul 10, 2008 06:11 AM
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Wed - July 9, 2008
Growth of My Microstock Portfolio in 7 Agencies: IS, SS, FT, DT, BSP, 123RF, SXP
I have started my adventure with microstock photography 7 months ago and I am posting monthly earning reports in this blog:
June,
May,
April,
March,
February,
and January 2008.
Perhaps, it would be interesting to look at the growth of my portfolio during that time.
iStock (IS) portfolio serves as a reference. I have a steady growth of this portfolio with the acceptance rate between 65 and 70%. With the 100% acceptance I would have more than 450 pictures on line. I am producing and submitting pictures to all agencies more or less in accordance to iStock upload limit: 15 pictures per week. I was really looking forward to the increased limit of 20 pictures/week after reaching the bronze canister level (250 downloads), but they "temporarily" down sized that higher limit back to 15. I started to submit pictures to Shutterstock (SS) and and StockXpert (SXP) much later than to other agencies. I needed 4 attempts to get accepted by SS and 5 attempts to get into SXP. My acceptance rate in Big Stock Photo (BSP), 123RF and, also, in SS and SXP after the initial applications is much higher than in iStock. Dreamstime (DT) and Fotolia (FT) behave quite differently. Initially, it was easy for me to get my pictures accepted there. However, the number of rejections is growing in these two agencies. It is, especially, true for Fotolia specializing in "type of photograph" rejections and a very inconsistent reviewing process. As the result, my FT portfolio is the smallest one among 7 agencies. Anyway, the above plot represents a lot of learning, a lot of hard work, and some experimentation, e.g., with Polaroid image transfers, scanner art, and HDR images.
Related posts:
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Tue - July 1, 2008
Microstock Photography Earnings Report for June 2008
June was a quite busy month for me with a lot of new pictures added to all microstock portfolios. iStock and Shutterstock earnings showed some growth providing 73% of the total income. However, the return-per-image is still declining: 0.33, 0.29, 0.26 from IS in April, May, June, and 0.28, 0.21, 0.20 from SS, correspondingly. There were some movements in my low earners with Dreamstime and Big Stock Photo earnings showing visible increase. No extended licenses last month. A few milestones was reached in June:
Some other bloggers are reporting monthly earnings from microstock:
Related posts:
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Wed - June 25, 2008
Reaching the First Big Stock Photo Payment with the Horse Abstract Picture
Another little milestone in my microstock photography: reaching the first payment in Big Stock Photo. After six months I have got 267 pictures in my BSP portfolio and 32 sales reaching the $30 payout limit. So, sales are pretty slow, but growing from month to month.
The $30 earnings line was crossed by this horse abstract picture. It is one of very few pictures in my microstock portfolio which was not shoot by DSLR camera. It was taken with my waterproof point-and-shoot paddling camera, Pentax Optio W10. It was rejected by iStock due to artifacts, its commercial values was too low for Shutterstock, but it was sold already twice at BSP. Related posts:
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Sat - June 21, 2008
Reaching the First Fotolia Payment with the Idylwidle Dam Picture
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It took me more than six months to reach my first $50 payment from Fotolia. My Fotolia porfolio was doing pretty well till the end of April with a growing number of sales. Then, it went into a complete crash with just a few of downloads in May and June. I do not expect the next payment any time soon.
Some numbers about my Fotolia portfolio after 6+ months and 250 downloads:
The $50 earnings line was crossed by the picture of Idylwilde Dam Spillway shot in a deep and dark canyon of the Big Thompson River above Loveland, Colorado. I am shooting a lot of water related pictures including dams, spillways, irrigation ditches, sewage pipes, etc. They are usually promptly rejected by Fotolia. This is perhaps the only one from that series accepted for some unknown reason. The picture was rejected by iStock due to artifacts, it was not colorful enough for Dreamstime, but it is selling very well on Shutterstock. Related posts:
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