Author Topic: May 2014 earning results (Read 12887 times)

Mellimage · « **on:** June 03, 2014, 02:47 »

opening this thread, just in case anyone has and wants to report anything.

Ron · « **Reply #1 on:** June 03, 2014, 03:20 »

Pants

bunhill · « **Reply #2 on:** June 03, 2014, 03:45 »

Quote from: Ron on June 03, 2014, 03:20

Pants

vests

Mellimage · « **Reply #3 on:** June 03, 2014, 03:53 »

I had another BME due to two ELs at Stocksy. SS was alright (one EL), the others flat or below average

Stocksy 80%
SS 12%
DT 3.1%
123rf 2.4% (my last month with them, deleted my port after being paid less than 10USD for an EL and discovering that images i deleted last year are still being sold)
FT
2.4% - slightly above my WME...

photostockad · « **Reply #4 on:** June 03, 2014, 05:20 »

SS - 32%
Alamy - 17%
Veer - 11%
Fotolia - 10%
IS - 9%
123RF - 8%
DT - 7%

ethan · « **Reply #5 on:** June 03, 2014, 05:37 »

Small pair of socks

Ron · « **Reply #6 on:** June 03, 2014, 06:18 »

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pants

Mantis · « **Reply #7 on:** June 03, 2014, 07:26 »

Video sales helped push up my income but so did a big last minute sales on SS. Dreamstime hit over $200 two months in a row, but based on history I expect it to go back to the $15O to $175 level.

Istock came in a little above but that was due to one el and two video sales. Next months PP reporting will determine the month, could be a good month on IS or normal if PP is low again.

FT managed to make me $100 but again had a rare el.

Dt blew
Pd blew
Sf blew
CanStockPhoto blew

borg · « **Reply #8 on:** June 03, 2014, 08:28 »

Quote from: Ron on June 03, 2014, 03:20

Pants

Socks

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #9 on:** June 03, 2014, 08:31 »

Worst month for seven years, or so.

stockmarketer · « **Reply #10 on:** June 03, 2014, 09:25 »

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on June 03, 2014, 08:31

Worst month for seven years, or so.

I'm starting to think it's GAME OVER.

I've been a rose-colored glasses contributor for years, insisting that a smart contributor could buck "the wall" and fend off the ever-mounting wave of competition by carving niches, focusing on what sells, etc.

But it's finally hit me that it's a futile effort.

No matter what I do, it's clear that the number of new contributors churning out millions of images a month will crush me.

I've increased my output. I've sharpened my skills. I've grown my port by something like 30% in the past year. All to end up exactly where I was last year, nearly to the dollar... and it's been a constant struggle just to tow that line, staying up well past midnight to complete my daily quota of uploads, just to go asleep and wake up in 6 hours to start the next batch. Futile.

It appears this is what most if not all veterans of microstock are experiencing these days. Baldrick. Laurin. Lisa. Is there anyone out there who has been doing this successfully for years who has been able to grow, or at least not go backwards?

For a while I blamed it on negative actions from a few agencies. You know which ones. Now I realize that those players aren't the root cause of the stagnation. It's the competition, growing exponentially, that has become impossible to overcome.

I'm going to keep at it a while longer, closely watching my numbers until I reach a point of asking "why bother anymore?"

It's finally hit me that this isn't a question of if, but when.

Ron · « **Reply #11 on:** June 03, 2014, 09:58 »

It seems there was a negative Nancy svcking on a lemon who couldnt appreciate some lighthearted feedback on the subject and voted everyone down.

In case you didnt understand, May was pants, in other words, it sucked, hope you feel better now.

pancaketom · « **Reply #12 on:** June 03, 2014, 10:35 »

I thought it was worse than it was - actually a bit better than April (which seems to be the new but lower than before normal). DT was quite good and Alamy woke back up but was still below the average from 2012.

wordplanet · « **Reply #13 on:** June 03, 2014, 12:52 »

Surprisingly BMY on DT, iS and Alamy, $3 under BMY on SS but WMY overall because I had no direct stock photo sales from my own site, which had been on the rise for me all year. Four sales on Alamy in May - nice to see it moving up. Big improvement on all the sites since April.

Looking forward to starting to work with other agencies such as Spaces and looking into other traditional outlets for my work.

I think that finding a niche on specialized agencies and finding good traditional outlets for your work is the only way to go these days. It's a lot more work and uncertainty in some ways than just uploading as much as possible to the same old agencies, but overall I think it's the only way to deal with the fact that even if you can add a few thousand images a year to the micros, it's not going to give you the kind of results you saw a few years ago. I think that diversifying is really the way to go.

Hoping that the FB deal on SS and whatever deal DT is working on actually work out for the best and show us all better returns. But I'm hedging my bets.

dbvirago · « **Reply #14 on:** June 03, 2014, 13:51 »

Above average, but not great.

What kind of pants? I'd say Khakis from Costco

wordplanet · « **Reply #15 on:** June 03, 2014, 14:21 »

Quote from: dbvirago on June 03, 2014, 13:51

Above average, but not great.

What kind of pants? I'd say Khakis from Costco

My thought was jeans with holes in the pockets

Sean Locke Photography · « **Reply #16 on:** June 03, 2014, 15:00 »

Well, it was a good month, relatively speaking. 2nd BME on Stocksy. 2nd BME on Shutterstock.

Quite a few sales from my Symbiostock site - it surpassed my Photoshelter site for the first time. Not sure how people are getting there, as I'm no SEO master, but they are.

captain · « **Reply #17 on:** June 04, 2014, 21:59 »

SS:
53% Vs 2013
-6% Vs April 2014

Jogga0 · « **Reply #18 on:** June 05, 2014, 04:33 »

Best month since Aug 2012, encouraged by SS, Alamy and P5

HerMajesty · « **Reply #19 on:** June 10, 2014, 05:05 »

Quote from: stockmarketer on June 03, 2014, 09:25

I'm starting to think it's GAME OVER.

Pretty much my thoughts this year. I've been with SS, my biggest earner, since 2006 and I was able to increase my earnings up until this year. So far it looks like it will be the first year with a drop in earnings for me. As you, I'm unable to keep growing my port at the same pace the whole market grows. Currently Shutterstock adds ~200-250 thousand images every week. I used to have very few images with no sales. Now, at least half of my new images get no downloads whatsoever (and mind you this is with almost 300 'followers' ). I can't even imagine how hard this must be for someone starting right now.

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #20 on:** June 10, 2014, 05:27 »

Quote from: HerMajesty on June 10, 2014, 05:05

Quote from: stockmarketer on June 03, 2014, 09:25
I'm starting to think it's GAME OVER.
Pretty much my thoughts this year. I've been with SS, my biggest earner, since 2006 and I was able to increase my earnings up until this year. So far it looks like it will be the first year with a drop in earnings for me. As you, I'm unable to keep growing my port at the same pace the whole market grows. Currently Shutterstock adds ~200-250 thousand images every week. I used to have very few images with no sales. Now, at least half of my new images get no downloads whatsoever (and mind you this is with almost 300 'followers' ). I can't even imagine how hard this must be for someone starting right now.

That's actually a positive for us. It must be eight or nine years since I first pointed out that as the return per image falls the incentive for the creation of new images also falls, making it less attractive for competitors to enter the field. At some point, the market should stabilise as the flow of new images starts to dry up. Maybe we are approaching that. I'm certainly feeling less of an incentive to upload than I used to.

I'm a bit concerned in case Dollar Photo Club is behind some of the earnings decline in the last few months. It's impossible to know, of course, but if it is starting to undermine earnings it is potentially disastrous.

gostwyck · « **Reply #21 on:** June 10, 2014, 06:01 »

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on June 10, 2014, 05:27

I'm a bit concerned in case Dollar Photo Club is behind some of the earnings decline in the last few months. It's impossible to know, of course, but if it is starting to undermine earnings it is potentially disastrous.

I'm virtually certain that the DPC is still very much in it's infancy and is having a negligible effect on sales elsewhere thus far.

When I opted my port out of the DPC I compared my sales on FT before and after having done so. There was no noticeable difference in volume. If sales on DPC been significant then the effect of opting out should have been obvious.

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #22 on:** June 10, 2014, 06:03 »

Quote from: gostwyck on June 10, 2014, 06:01

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on June 10, 2014, 05:27
I'm a bit concerned in case Dollar Photo Club is behind some of the earnings decline in the last few months. It's impossible to know, of course, but if it is starting to undermine earnings it is potentially disastrous.

I'm virtually certain that the DPC is still very much in it's infancy and is having a negligible effect on sales elsewhere thus far.

When I opted my port out of the DPC I compared my sales on FT before and after having done so. There was no noticeable difference in volume. If sales on DPC been significant then the effect of opting out should have been obvious.

Thanks for the info..... so, sales are just bad, then.

HerMajesty · « **Reply #23 on:** June 10, 2014, 06:45 »

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on June 10, 2014, 05:27

That's actually a positive for us. It must be eight or nine years since I first pointed out that as the return per image falls the incentive for the creation of new images also falls, making it less attractive for competitors to enter the field. At some point, the market should stabilise as the flow of new images starts to dry up. Maybe we are approaching that. I'm certainly feeling less of an incentive to upload than I used to.

It would be a positive thing if the huge increases in content were coming from people starting out in this business. There was this Russian site that gathered data on port sizes and number of new contributors and I remember that the number of new people joining Shutterstock was falling already in 2011 and 2012. I'm afraid that a large part of the new content is coming from teams and companies that were able to make use of the economy of scale and will be able to take larger and larger chunks of the market.

Cesar · « **Reply #24 on:** June 10, 2014, 08:09 »

about two weeks ago i inserted in search bar in fotolia word woman and new ( last week )
12.000 images, first 10 pages relevance were mostly from 4 contributors!!

I think contributors that make less 2000 images per year should have bigger ponder then factory images.

we have ideas, we think, we are artist, for image factory is only important, model is one hour singer, next hour with shopping bags,....

there is no way i could pay model in my country and earn some money, no way!

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Author Topic: May 2014 earning results (Read 12887 times)

Mellimage

Ron

bunhill

Mellimage

photostockad

ethan

Ron

Mantis

borg

BaldricksTrousers

stockmarketer

Ron

pancaketom

wordplanet

dbvirago

wordplanet

Sean Locke Photography

captain

Jogga0

HerMajesty

BaldricksTrousers

gostwyck

BaldricksTrousers

HerMajesty

Cesar

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