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!

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

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...

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.

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:

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:

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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:

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!

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.

Goin' Racin'

I'm off to the races this weekend, for the NASCAR Nationwide series race at Gateway Intenational Speedway, here in the STL area. We went to the Craftsman Truck race last year, and had a great time. I even managed to get a photograph for the world of microstock!

This is an "editorial" image, meaning that there's copyrighted / trademarked information, without an associated model / property release. That limits the uses, but this image has still sold. No way was I going to try and clone out all of the logos!!

Latest Downloads @ Shutterstock

My last 3 at my best site:

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The Clocktower at Riverfront Park, Spokane Washington (this one is "editorial")

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In the woods, in the Inland Northwest (Idaho)

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Just east of Chicago, from one of the interstate "Oasis" rest areas. This is probably my best seller when combining all sites.

Calendar

I've been thinking (for several years) about putting a calendar of my images. Finally, the other day, I pulled together a dozen shots from my microstock submissions, and sent them off to my favorite processing lab: Mpix. They did a (predictably) wonderful job, it looks great. Much better than the samples I've seen at places like OfficeMax, Kinkos and Wal*Mart.

Here's what I used:

Jan- Feb-

Mar- Apr-

May- Jun-

Jul- Aug-

Sep- Oct-

Nov- Dec-

Locations: January - Charleston Falls, near Dayton, OH. February - Land Between The Lakes, Western KY. March - Pontiac, IL. April - West Alton, Missouri. May - Niles, OH. June - New River Gorge, WV. July - Funk's Grove, IL. August - Bellflower, IL. September - Edwardsville, IL. October - Highland, IL. November - Seattle, WA. December - Land Between The Lakes, Western KY.

Merry Christmas 2007

Ah, the joys of microstock... This is one of my images (not available through microstock) combined with a tree from 123RF, and some text in Photoshop Elements....

Jackpot!!

Shutterstock always displays your 3 most recent sales. When you get three in a row, people call it a "jackpot". You know, like a slot machine??

Variations

It is interesting to see how different versions of the same image perform at microstock. For example, here's two shots, taken (and uploaded) at the same time, different orientation:

Silly little photos, but what the heck, huh?? But back to the question: How have they performed?? The horizontal version has 6 sales (at SS), the vertical has 5. Looking at a more popular photo shows similar results:

In this case, the horizontal version has 13 sales (at SS), the vertical has 15... So it would seem to pay to do both versions. I've not done so well at that, it'll be something I need to remember.

UPDATED: I checked my numbers more closely. I only have 5 sets of images at Shutterstock where I included both Horizontal and Vertical layouts. The sales breakdown remains pretty close. How close????

Horizontal = 51% Vertical - 49%

So, the logical conclusion is that we can double our sales potential by shooting both formats. While I'm sure life doesn't work quite that simply, it is clear that providing more options to our customers is smart!

Top 5 Sellers, All Time

I've been doing microstock for almost 11 months now, here's my overall top selling images, based on total dollar earnings from all sites combined: