Quote from: RacePhoto on December 20, 2010, 15:23

Interesting reading. I'm especially impressed with the full timers incomes and the six people over $100K a year. I still assert that the people on this forum represent the top microstock shooters, or at least the top 5% are represented here. Nice work!

Amusing will be the 19% IS exclusive and if that changed with the new programs there.

Average is distorted by the small number of people, 1.5%, who are way over and above the rest. I suppose you could do median income and come up with something?

One of the things that makes it difficult for you to produce good numbers, is the variety of efforts. The breakdown based on "full time" was a good one. Maybe you can do something based on number of images online? (or did you do that already)

As I've pointed out, if I delete all my non-selling images, my RPI goes way up!   It's getting a little complicated for the survey, but personally, if I only add up sold images and figure what the average download income is, I have a nice number to look at.

But assuming that people are not cooking the books, number of images online on agency X and income for agency X, then number of images for agency Y and sales for agency Y... Etc. will give you some really strong information on not only agencies but also sales for individuals. Example I have 250 images on "Crapstock" and earned $2.50 in total sales for the year, the RPI is 1 cent per image annually.

Yeah, some interesting thoughts.

It would be fun to look at the stats for everyone with over 1000 images for example.  Like you said, the few people with over 100,000 in income are brining the average way up, but at the same time the few people with income under $1000 are also brining the average way down.

I am also interested to see if iStock's recent actions will have any effect on the exclusive %

Interesting result. I think averages are very misleading (100k plus, for example, could be anything up to a million, and maybe it is for someone, but it is being counted as being exactly 100k), another way to look at it would be to see where the point is that there are the same number of people above the figure as below it. That figure is 20,000 and I think that is probably a reasonable reflection of what a fairly effective full-timer can expect, without being hugely productive and commercial.

Some of the 100k+ returns may represent the work of several people in a factory, which should not be compared with individual contributors if you want a clear idea of what is reasonably achievable. Maybe an "individual or factory" question could be in the next survey.

I think most iStock exclusives who post opinions do so in the iS forums, not here. Several quite well-known people on iSTock have asked where they can find independent discussion groups, so it seems awareness of MSG is far from universal. Do the returns from the iStock  exclusives produce significantly different means and averages than those of the independents? That's very important, because it might give us an idea for the first time which is most lucrative - independence or exclusivity. It's a pity the iS sample isn't bigger.

On the other hand, I don't think the sample is large enough for anyone to draw any conclusions from whether the 19% of exclusives increases or decreases in the next survey. The 30% of full-timers is even less meaningful, as it translates into about 23 people, If three or four of them just don't bother to take part next time the shift in percentages would look impressive (maybe down to 24%) but would not actually mean anything.