Happenstance Photography
7/28/2009
  Recent Sales, 7/28

One of my old, and silly, shots had a sale today at Shutterstock. This is a just a simple close up of a lampshade, taken in a hotel room, way back in August 2007:

I was taking shots around the hotel room, decided to try this, and lo and behod, it was accepted!! And has continued to have the occasional sale! This silly little shot is in my Top 20 at SS, in terms of number of sales. I also made a version with the color shifted to blue, and it has some sales also. And those hotel room shots have been strong performers for me overall. Go figure!

 
7/01/2009
  Microstock Photography - June 2008 Graphics
Yes, I'm an engineer. And that means I keep statistics. Here's a couple of graphs showing recent microstock performance. Now if I could just figure out what they MEAN.....


Above graph is total $$ sales per month, all sites combined. The red line is the 12-month rolling average trendline. Overall sales are pretty even, which is not too bad considering how little effort I've put into microstock over the past 6 months.

I have 6 sites where I'm "active". One of the things I track is what percent of business comes from the two biggies, compared to all the rest. In a perfect world, I'd like to see somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of my businees coming from the others. Not sure why, but that's what I'd like to see.
Anyway: Sales breakdown for June:
IS: 38.9% of sales
SS: 32.3% of sales
SX: 7.3% of sales (tie)
123RF: 7.3% of sales (tie)
FT: 7.3% of sales (tie)
DT: 6.8% of sales


 
6/03/2009
  ShutterStock - Where Do the Dollars Come From?
I did a quick analysis of earnings from ShutterSTock over the past 2.25 years:


Clearly, the bulk of earnings come in drips and drops, those tiny "25 a Day" sales (which used to be $0.25 per image, but now are $0.33). I've only had a couple of Enhanced sales, but they add up quickly (at $28.00 per). The On Demand sales are kind of new, it will be interesting to see how much they increase in ratio with time...

Not sure how other, more dedicated, microstockers measure up, but I'm going to ask at the Yahoo group...
 
6/01/2009
  Microstock Sales - $/image
All sites, combined:

Just looking at StockXpert:








 
  Microstock Sales
This is a graph of my overall sales in microstock since I started, I February 2007.


 
8/28/2008
  Back In the Game
Seems I've been too busy lately to upload to the microstock site. Other than sending existing images to StockXpert, I haven't uploaded in 2 months!! I finally sent 4 inages in to my main sites earlier this week. All 4 were accepted at ShutterStock, 123RF and StockXpert. Still waiting on iStock (they're always the slowest to review). So, here's my latest:




 
8/22/2008
  Found Photo
One of the disappointing things about microstock is that we seldom know where are images end up, or what they're being used for. But every once in a while we find one. I was recently doing some poking around, using a little program called Tin-Eye, and I discovered one of my images being used as a book cover!

I don't know for sure, but I think the image was bought from iStockPhotos. Possibly from Shutterstock:, the image is available at both places. Here's the original:



- - -

 
8/07/2008
  More of StockXpert
Well, I've been on StockXpert a bit over a week, and the sales have started!! Nothing to stunning, but pretty respectable given the size of my portfolio. I still only have 107 images there, but got a bit distracted by my daughter's wedding last weekend. Gotta get back to uploading!!


I created my first lightbox at SX today, with power system images:

 
7/29/2008
  Stockxpert
Yep, I recently joined yet another microstock site. Stockxpert was recommended by several folks I know from one of the Yahoo groups I'm in, and I figured to give it a shot. I've been building my portfolio 5 images at a time, starting with images aleadey approved at other sites. No sales yet, but it has only been a couple of days.

This shot is from under the Rt. 19 bridge crossing the New River gorge, in WV. It hasn't been a big seller, but I still like it!

 
7/25/2008
  Down The Drain?
One of the first sites I was with was iStock. Over my 18 months at microstock, it has been a strong overall performer, generally #2. BUT... for a while it was growing great, even challenged to be my top site a few months. Then it seemed to reverse, and lately has been drifting closer towards #3. Dumping monthly sales data into a spreadsheet confirms my perception.

This graph shows $/month, with a 6th order polynomial trendline for reference. Pretty ugly. But why? Well, not to be paranoid, but they've been putting a big push towards getting contributors to become exclusive, to submit only to them. Part of that push includes things like limiting uploads from non-exclusives, different review process for exclusives, and skewing their search engines to show images from exclusives first, giving them more visability.

I'll continue to work with them, they still perform well for me. And I'd still recommend them to anyone looking at microstock (though not with as much enthusiasm). But the tone of the business relationship has certainly changed.
 

"Happenstance: “Chance or a chance situation, especially one producing a good result”

Photography: "the art or process of producing images on a sensitized surface by the action of radiant energy and especially light"

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Name: LSqrd
Location: Southwestern, Illinois, United States

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