Author Topic: 2013 Full Survey Results Published (Read 10616 times)

leaf · « **on:** March 04, 2014, 11:13 »

Here's the link
http://blog.microstockgroup.com/2013-microstock-industry-survey-first-look/

What are your thoughts? It's interesting to see how many people are investigating self hosted.

spike · « **Reply #1 on:** March 04, 2014, 12:03 »

How many hours a week do you spend on Microtock?
Maximum: 140

What? That's like 20hr/day.

Did you exclude obviously illogical outliers from the statistics?

cthoman · « **Reply #2 on:** March 04, 2014, 12:05 »

Somebody unseated me for most illustrations. They must have been busy last year 18k images in a year is impressive.

This is probably the most interesting and scary stat:

What percentage of income came from your top grossing site?

Average: 67.2% {52.3%}
Median: 53% {50%}

Uncle Pete · « **Reply #3 on:** March 04, 2014, 12:08 »

Judging from the standard poll on the site - on the right. I'm wondering how that iStock Exclusive number is created. Not by you, but there must be 50 people answering and the value hovers just below 300.

How many photos average? Illustrations mostly, photos, or both... It's just so much higher and far above anything else, I'm wondering who's doing that and with what?

Other positive from the poll: (I'm impressed!)

Is microstock your primary source of income (over 50%)?
Yes: 28% {31%} [24%] (25%)
No: 72% {69%} [76%] (75%)

However it brings a question about the question, or answers. Family household income or individual income. Lets say I'm a stay at home Dad and no other employment, and I make money on Microstock. That's my only source of income. Thus part of the 28%

Other hypothetical: I'm a student, I live at home. I have no other job. I'm part of the 28%

It's picking but I believe an important qualification. Is it more than 50% of your "Household" income?

The Average $16,000 and Median $3,000 for this group would dispel most of this question, it's higher than some extra people who just happened to make nothing. But I'd guess with the wording changed, the average and median income, for full timers and primary income, would go up and the percentage of people would go down, slightly.

Oldest person, did we get someone new or did he skip a year?

Lets hear it for a piano man!

spike · « **Reply #4 on:** March 04, 2014, 12:11 »

Leaf, is it possible that we see something like this (http://blog.microstockgroup.com/microstock-income-vs-portfolio-size/) for the 2013 dataset?

A normal and a "zoomed in" (to the bottom left) version of this dependency could be very insightful.

tickstock · « **Reply #5 on:** March 04, 2014, 13:13 »

cthoman · « **Reply #6 on:** March 04, 2014, 13:20 »

Quote from: tickstock on March 04, 2014, 13:13

Didn't take the survey this year, also stopped entering monthly numbers. For me the most important question is whether or not it's best to be exclusive and getting a better understanding of that is not really helped by the survey results. Maybe some of the info is interesting but I don't see it as being very useful for making decisions. I hope next year this can be addressed if it can't be from this year's survey.

I'm not sure if you are ever going to get anything too specific that would help you make a big decision like that. It's more about general trends and seeing those with more concrete numbers and stats.

tickstock · « **Reply #7 on:** March 04, 2014, 13:23 »

cthoman · « **Reply #8 on:** March 04, 2014, 14:00 »

Quote from: tickstock on March 04, 2014, 13:23

Quote from: cthoman on March 04, 2014, 13:20
Quote from: tickstock on March 04, 2014, 13:13
Didn't take the survey this year, also stopped entering monthly numbers. For me the most important question is whether or not it's best to be exclusive and getting a better understanding of that is not really helped by the survey results. Maybe some of the info is interesting but I don't see it as being very useful for making decisions. I hope next year this can be addressed if it can't be from this year's survey.

I'm not sure if you are ever going to get anything too specific that would help you make a big decision like that. It's more about general trends and seeing those with more concrete numbers and stats.
I think it shouldn't be too difficult. RPI against portfolio size for instance. Comparing what the average nonexclusive with 10,000 images makes per image to what an exclusive with 10,000 images makes would be helpful wouldn't it?

It would be interesting to see. I'm not sure if it would be any more helpful than anything else. Contributors vary so wildly that I don't think any stat would help me predict how my portfolio would perform. Other than basic generalities like this place is good or this place is bad. Even that is questionable.

EmberMike · « **Reply #9 on:** March 04, 2014, 14:01 »

Quote from: cthoman on March 04, 2014, 12:05

Somebody unseated me for most illustrations. They must have been busy last year 18k images in a year is impressive.

I saw that number and thought it was you. Wonder who it really was...

tickstock · « **Reply #10 on:** March 04, 2014, 14:03 »

leaf · « **Reply #11 on:** March 04, 2014, 14:27 »

Quote from: tickstock on March 04, 2014, 13:13

Didn't take the survey this year, also stopped entering monthly numbers. For me the most important question is whether or not it's best to be exclusive and getting a better understanding of that is not really helped by the survey results. Maybe some of the info is interesting but I don't see it as being very useful for making decisions. I hope next year this can be addressed if it can't be from this year's survey.

It can get interesting and useful when we start to look at correlation or one other question which wasn't easy enough to look at for this blog post. For example, how to the full time istock exclusives compare to the full time non-exclusives.
There was also a question if you changed exclusivity last year and if you saw an increase or decrease in income. Did those going to exclusivity see an increase or decrease. Did those going independent see an increase or decrease. I think those stats would be interesting and useful.

leaf · « **Reply #12 on:** March 04, 2014, 14:30 »

Quote from: spike on March 04, 2014, 12:03

How many hours a week do you spend on Microtock?
Maximum: 140

What? That's like 20hr/day.

Did you exclude obviously illogical outliers from the statistics?

Yeah, I did remove a couple answers with obviously useless data, like a crazy age or months involved in microstock (before internet was invented) I left the high hour rate because it was close enough to something realistically possible. I think 140 is indeed nonsense but not so far out that it would affect the results much.

tickstock · « **Reply #13 on:** March 04, 2014, 14:31 »

leaf · « **Reply #14 on:** March 04, 2014, 14:34 »

Quote from: tickstock on March 04, 2014, 14:31

Quote from: leaf on March 04, 2014, 14:27
Quote from: tickstock on March 04, 2014, 13:13
Didn't take the survey this year, also stopped entering monthly numbers. For me the most important question is whether or not it's best to be exclusive and getting a better understanding of that is not really helped by the survey results. Maybe some of the info is interesting but I don't see it as being very useful for making decisions. I hope next year this can be addressed if it can't be from this year's survey.

It can get interesting and useful when we start to look at correlation or one other question which wasn't easy enough to look at for this blog post. For example, how to the full time istock exclusives compare to the full time non-exclusives.
There was also a question if you changed exclusivity last year and if you saw an increase or decrease in income. Did those going to exclusivity see an increase or decrease. Did those going independent see an increase or decrease. I think those stats would be interesting and useful.
Sorry I didn't see that information in the Survey Results do you mean you have that information it just hasn't been released yet?

Yes. It was a question on the survey. However, I've only published data today that was spit out by the survey software. Direct responses to the questions. Correlation and comparing data sets etc. will come in another post.

tickstock · « **Reply #15 on:** March 04, 2014, 14:36 »

leaf · « **Reply #16 on:** March 04, 2014, 14:38 »

Quote from: tickstock on March 04, 2014, 14:36

Quote from: leaf on March 04, 2014, 14:34
Quote from: tickstock on March 04, 2014, 14:31
Quote from: leaf on March 04, 2014, 14:27
Quote from: tickstock on March 04, 2014, 13:13
Didn't take the survey this year, also stopped entering monthly numbers. For me the most important question is whether or not it's best to be exclusive and getting a better understanding of that is not really helped by the survey results. Maybe some of the info is interesting but I don't see it as being very useful for making decisions. I hope next year this can be addressed if it can't be from this year's survey.

It can get interesting and useful when we start to look at correlation or one other question which wasn't easy enough to look at for this blog post. For example, how to the full time istock exclusives compare to the full time non-exclusives.
There was also a question if you changed exclusivity last year and if you saw an increase or decrease in income. Did those going to exclusivity see an increase or decrease. Did those going independent see an increase or decrease. I think those stats would be interesting and useful.

Sorry I didn't see that information in the Survey Results do you mean you have that information it just hasn't been released yet?

Yes. It was a question on the survey. However, I've only published data today that was spit out by the survey software. Direct responses to the questions. Correlation and comparing data sets etc. will come in another post.

Maybe I'll fill it out then. Do you have a link to the correlation and comparing data sets etc. from last year, I only remember a post like this one.

No, I didn't get one done

This is all the survey data posts I've published http://blog.microstockgroup.com/category/microstock-survey/

cthoman · « **Reply #17 on:** March 04, 2014, 14:41 »

Quote from: EmberMike on March 04, 2014, 14:01

Quote from: cthoman on March 04, 2014, 12:05
Somebody unseated me for most illustrations. They must have been busy last year 18k images in a year is impressive.

I saw that number and thought it was you. Wonder who it really was...

Nope. I'm only at around 22K. The 15250 from last year looks like me.

Quote from: tickstock on March 04, 2014, 14:03

If you are right then I skipped the survey this year because it is inherently pointless with no chance to be useful at all. I think it can be useful but as it is, it isn't. So basically we agree, right?

LOL. I'm a stats geek, so I enjoy it. My operation is too strange and off the norm that I'm not sure I can extrapolate much for myself, but I still like to vote to add my little piece to the puzzle.

mlwinphoto · « **Reply #18 on:** March 04, 2014, 14:45 »

Quote from: tickstock on March 04, 2014, 13:23

Quote from: cthoman on March 04, 2014, 13:20
Quote from: tickstock on March 04, 2014, 13:13
Didn't take the survey this year, also stopped entering monthly numbers. For me the most important question is whether or not it's best to be exclusive and getting a better understanding of that is not really helped by the survey results. Maybe some of the info is interesting but I don't see it as being very useful for making decisions. I hope next year this can be addressed if it can't be from this year's survey.

I'm not sure if you are ever going to get anything too specific that would help you make a big decision like that. It's more about general trends and seeing those with more concrete numbers and stats.
I think it shouldn't be too difficult. RPI against portfolio size for instance. Comparing what the average nonexclusive with 10,000 images makes per image to what an exclusive with 10,000 images makes would be helpful wouldn't it?

I think this would be useful but I also think you have to take into account the contributors subject matter to get a more accurate picture of what's going on. For example, someone with 10,000 lifestyle images is likely to be better off than someone with 10,000 nature images....although since I shoot nature perhaps that's not something I would want to see...

tickstock · « **Reply #19 on:** March 04, 2014, 14:52 »

Megastock · « **Reply #20 on:** March 04, 2014, 19:51 »

No wonder it is hard to succeed in Microstock, we can't even grow our number of months involved by 12 year over year

How many months have you been involved in microstock?

Average: 53 {50} [44] (36)

lisafx · « **Reply #21 on:** March 04, 2014, 22:22 »

Thanks for the info Tyler. One stat I found interesting is that average and median gross incomes rose year on year until 2013, when they started going down. This is a worrying trend in my own numbers, but apparently for others as well. Not really that surprising when you consider all the royalty and price cuts. And those seem to be accelerating in 2014.

Megastock · « **Reply #22 on:** March 05, 2014, 12:00 »

Quote from: lisafx on March 04, 2014, 22:22

Thanks for the info Tyler. One stat I found interesting is that average and median gross incomes rose year on year until 2013, when they started going down. This is a worrying trend in my own numbers, but apparently for others as well. Not really that surprising when you consider all the royalty and price cuts. And those seem to be accelerating in 2014.

If you look at my post above, you can see that the number of months reported being involved in MS only grew by 3, and the number of people who responded for the first time was at least 41% of responders. I think it must be hard to draw conclusions on income growth, when the numbers seem to show that there were more newcomers to the microstock industry responding to the survey. Still worrying that someone such as yourself is still losing ground, of course

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Author Topic: 2013 Full Survey Results Published (Read 10616 times)

leaf

spike

cthoman

Uncle Pete

spike

tickstock

cthoman

tickstock

cthoman

EmberMike

tickstock

leaf

leaf

tickstock

leaf

tickstock

leaf

cthoman

mlwinphoto

tickstock

Megastock

lisafx

Megastock

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