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:

• Reaching the First Fotolia Payment with the Idylwidle Dam Picture
• Reaching 250 Downloads from iStock with the Devil's Backbone Picture
• What Sells in Microstock? My List of Picture Bestsellers
• How to Get Accepted by ShutterStock? Don't Give Up!
• How to Make Dollars from Cents in Microstock Photography

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:

• 250 downloads (bronze canister) from iStock
• first payment from BSP ($30.50)
• first payment from Fotolia ($50.00)

agency	portfolio size	downloads (EL)	earnings	return per image	sell-through rate
iStock	248	75	$66.64	0.26	31.1%
Shutterstock	276	216	$54.25	0.20	76.1%
DreamsTime	237	23	$17.00	0.07	13.5%
Big Stock Photo	266	10	$13.00	0.05	-
Fotolia	229	14	$8.34	0.04	20.0%
123rf	294	5	$3.53	0.01	-
StockXpert	257	5	2.10	0.01	-
FeaturePics	175	0	0.00	0.00	-
total		318	$164.86

Some other bloggers are reporting monthly earnings from microstock:

• Microstock Diaries
• Microstock Experiment
• NiltoMil
• jrtb
• Driftless Ramblings
• bankizdjec.pl
• Photographing the Earth, one millimeter at a time ...

Related posts:

• Reaching the First Fotolia Payment with the Idylwidle Dam Picture
• Reaching 250 Downloads from iStock with the Devil's Backbone Picture
• Microstock Photography Earnings for
  May 2008, April 2008, March 2008, February 2008 and January 2008
• What Sells in Microstock? My List of Picture Bestsellers
• How to Get Accepted by ShutterStock? Don't Give Up!

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:

• Reaching the First Fotolia Payment with the Idylwidle Dam Picture
• Reaching 250 Downloads from iStock with the Devil's Backbone Picture
• Microstock Photography Earnings for
  May 2008, April 2008, March 2008, February 2008 and January 2008
• What Sells in Microstock? My List of Picture Bestsellers
• How to Get Accepted by ShutterStock? Don't Give Up!