Author Topic: $ 0.00077 Lowest Earning on Istock (new record $ 0.00001) (Read 46937 times)

Microstockphoto · « **Reply #25 on:** July 03, 2017, 02:15 »

we're talking about streaming a photo, right? this is a photo displayed somewhere for a short period of time? its like spotify, royalties are low as well because it is just streaming music, there is no physical download. is there any information on the earnings sheet how long an image was streamed?

CJH Photography · « **Reply #26 on:** July 03, 2017, 10:37 »

Quote from: namussi on June 21, 2017, 06:55

Some money is better than no money. :-(

Not if you're cannabalizing earnings with the same images elsewhere.

CJH Photography · « **Reply #27 on:** July 03, 2017, 10:41 »

Quote from: Sammy the Cat on June 29, 2017, 16:30

Quote from: SpaceStockFootage on June 29, 2017, 10:44
Quote from: Sammy the Cat on June 29, 2017, 08:23
Quote from: namussi on June 21, 2017, 06:55
Some money is better than no money. :-(

What! You are kidding right?!

You're saying that no money is better than some money? You are kidding right?!

You just love to snipe don't you

So you would be happy to get $ 0.00077??

Stop being a dick

If you do that 100 times, it comes to almost $.08. What is minimum payment at iStock? If you never make payout, this is still no money. I deleted most of my files and they closed my account-I think I left one just as a placeholder in case things ever improved.

graphicV · « **Reply #28 on:** July 03, 2017, 11:16 »

I agree with you all on Istock, but since january, my RPD is close to 0.6$. On SS is 0.55$. And RPI on Istock is close to 0.3$. Compared to SS which is about 0.2$. I do not know, feelings are mixed up, but numbers do not lie.

stockastic · « **Reply #29 on:** July 03, 2017, 11:42 »

Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'
You gotta have somethin' if you want to be with me
Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'
You gotta have somethin' if you want to be with me

I'm not tryin' to be your hero
'Cause that zero is too cold for me, Brrr
I'm not tryin' to be your highness
'Cause that minus is too low to see, yeah

Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'
And I'm not stuffin', believe you me
Don't you remember I told ya
I'm a soldier in the war on poverty, yeah
Yes, I am

Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'
You gotta have somethin' if you want to be with me
Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'
You gotta have somethin' if you want to be with me

You gotta have somethin' if you want to be with me
You gotta bring me somethin' girl, if you want to be with me

- "Nothing from Nothing", Billy Preston

YadaYadaYada · « **Reply #30 on:** July 03, 2017, 12:55 »

Quote from: ShadySue on June 27, 2017, 11:23

Quote from: dragonblade on June 27, 2017, 10:47
On one of my latest sales reports, I received $0.00 for one of my images. What's up with that? Is IStock giving away some of our content for free?
No, it's been explained over on the forums, which have all been rearranged in the past 24 hours, so good luck on finding it there, and on an email we received months back*.
You should find another sale for the same file, which is the real sale.
(Actually, I think it was discussed on msg a while back, *probably late Feb/early March after the first of the new sales reports in which many of us had these $0.00 reports).

No kidding, you're right. The way I see things, every change IS makes is to hide more or take more from us, there's never anything that's better for us when they get done.

namussi · « **Reply #31 on:** July 03, 2017, 22:47 »

Quote from: CJH Photography on July 03, 2017, 10:37

Quote from: namussi on June 21, 2017, 06:55
Some money is better than no money. :-(
Not if you're cannabalizing earnings with the same images elsewhere.

But how do you know that you are cannibalising such images?

Justanotherphotographer · « **Reply #32 on:** July 04, 2017, 03:58 »

Quote from: Microstockphoto on July 03, 2017, 02:15

we're talking about streaming a photo, right? this is a photo displayed somewhere for a short period of time? its like spotify, royalties are low as well because it is just streaming music, there is no physical download. is there any information on the earnings sheet how long an image was streamed?

Hats off to IStock for having the nerve to pull this one.

It really is nothing like streaming music. Stock photos are a business to business thing not a final consumer thing. There are far less paying customers for images than for music. Anyone who has ever shopped for microstock RF images knows typically you are using them for one campaign or similar anyway, so you may as well be "streaming" them i.e. a "streaming" customer is often getting the same use out of it as anyone else, we are just getting paid a fraction of a fraction of a cent while Getty gets to pocket an ongoing subscription fee from the customer. It's a win, win, lose as usual.

YadaYadaYada · « **Reply #33 on:** July 04, 2017, 10:26 »

Quote from: graphicV on July 03, 2017, 11:16

I agree with you all on Istock, but since january, my RPD is close to 0.6$. On SS is 0.55$. And RPI on Istock is close to 0.3$. Compared to SS which is about 0.2$. I do not know, feelings are mixed up, but numbers do not lie.

But how many DLs and how much does each make in total income? RPD is a false statistic is so many ways. My RPD is averaging $20 at Alamy, with one DL a month. Here's the sad part, that's more than I make now on IS since the change. And my iStock RPD is probably 20 cents. I haven't taken the time to do the math, because there are so many .02 subscription sales and the data they give us is almost impossible to evaluate.

Do you have the identical images on IS and SS for that RPI? I don't. For that reason, SS RPI is lower, many more images, but I'm earning more than ever on SS since the change and IS is down to 2007 income.

If I can ever manage my own images again on IS, I'm removing everything except the unsold leftovers. My hope is that some day, they may wake up and care about contributors and a fair commission rate. 2 cent subscription commission on a 10 cent download. Of course people are insulted and leaving.

Yes the fact that Getty has pulled this off and still has people happy to take nearly nothing and smile about what they get, is a masterful play, taking advantage of willing victims and desperate people. Above all, Getty is winning the race to the bottom by a large margin.

graphicV · « **Reply #34 on:** July 04, 2017, 13:36 »

Quote from: YadaYadaYada on July 04, 2017, 10:26

Quote from: graphicV on July 03, 2017, 11:16
I agree with you all on Istock, but since january, my RPD is close to 0.6$. On SS is 0.55$. And RPI on Istock is close to 0.3$. Compared to SS which is about 0.2$. I do not know, feelings are mixed up, but numbers do not lie.

But how many DLs and how much does each make in total income? RPD is a false statistic is so many ways. My RPD is averaging $20 at Alamy, with one DL a month. Here's the sad part, that's more than I make now on IS since the change. And my iStock RPD is probably 20 cents. I haven't taken the time to do the math, because there are so many .02 subscription sales and the data they give us is almost impossible to evaluate.

Do you have the identical images on IS and SS for that RPI? I don't. For that reason, SS RPI is lower, many more images, but I'm earning more than ever on SS since the change and IS is down to 2007 income.

If I can ever manage my own images again on IS, I'm removing everything except the unsold leftovers. My hope is that some day, they may wake up and care about contributors and a fair commission rate. 2 cent subscription commission on a 10 cent download. Of course people are insulted and leaving.

Yes the fact that Getty has pulled this off and still has people happy to take nearly nothing and smile about what they get, is a masterful play, taking advantage of willing victims and desperate people. Above all, Getty is winning the race to the bottom by a large margin.

I agree with you that RPD is wrong in case of alamy, but in my case (Istock vs SS) here is the numbers:
Istock: about $400 - 670 DLs (RPD 0.6)
SS: about $190 - 470 DLs (RPD 0.4)

This is for month May. And for other months since January are pretty much the same math. I have same images on both sites, 50 illustrations less on istock compared to SS.

Because of that, I dont know what to think about Istock... In my case works fine, but...

CJH Photography · « **Reply #35 on:** July 06, 2017, 12:50 »

Quote from: namussi on July 03, 2017, 22:47

Quote from: CJH Photography on July 03, 2017, 10:37
Quote from: namussi on June 21, 2017, 06:55
Some money is better than no money. :-(
Not if you're cannabalizing earnings with the same images elsewhere.

But how do you know that you are cannibalising such images?

You can't really know for sure because we don't have access to that data. Personally, though, I choose not to offer my images at that compensation point.

Brightontl · « **Reply #36 on:** July 06, 2017, 16:29 »

That it is not the main problem.
Return from photos are extremely low.
You have to factor how much time you waste uploading: as an example SS takes me less than an hour per month to upload about 200 photos. I get about $100 with them, it is only just worth doing, and only it because it does go up every month.
Bloody istock is so complex that it takes me 5-6 hours per month to upload there, so if it doesn't give me at least $400, forget it

ComfortEagle2095 · « **Reply #37 on:** July 07, 2017, 19:59 »

Face it, at 2 cents a download you are losing money, not to mention these fractions of a cent "streaming" payouts.

Consider the time it took to take the photo, process it, upload it, keyword it. How many of those 2 cent or less downloads would it take to even pay you a minimum wage?

If you are happy to just get "something" instead of nothing, your economic reasoning is faulty. You're not getting something -- it's costing you money. Get a job at McDonalds instead. You'll be ecstatic.

angelawaye · « **Reply #38 on:** July 07, 2017, 20:51 »

I believe it is called "opportunity cost" in economics... It is actually costing you money to upload there.

stockastic · « **Reply #39 on:** July 07, 2017, 20:52 »

[wrong thread]

namussi · « **Reply #40 on:** July 07, 2017, 22:03 »

Quote from: ComfortEagle2095 on July 07, 2017, 19:59

Face it, at 2 cents a download you are losing money, not to mention these fractions of a cent "streaming" payouts.

Consider the time it took to take the photo, process it, upload it, keyword it. How many of those 2 cent or less downloads would it take to even pay you a minimum wage?

If you are happy to just get "something" instead of nothing, your economic reasoning is faulty. You're not getting something -- it's costing you money. Get a job at McDonalds instead. You'll be ecstatic.

I have some pix that have no downloads.

And I have some pix that have earned me thousands over the past decade. A handful of them have returned more money than the vast majority of my uploads. And some of them I never thought would do so well.

I can't predict in advance which images will sell like hot cakes. So I accept that postprocessing, keywording and uploading the poor earners is part of the package.

I can't do anything about the time and effort it took me to upload the poor earners.

As for my economic reasoning ... try looking up the sunk cost fallacy on Google. Your reasoning is a variation of that.

namussi · « **Reply #41 on:** July 07, 2017, 22:07 »

Quote from: angelawaye on July 07, 2017, 20:51

I believe it is called "opportunity cost" in economics... It is actually costing you money to upload there.

If you could predict that an individual image would only earn you 0.0000000001 cents over your lifetime, you wouldn't bother uploading it.

Unfortunately you don't know in advance which pix will sell and which won't.

So if you stop uploading because there's a chance you might lose money on any individual image, you will refrain from uploading other images that may make good money unexpectedly.

Pauws99 · « **Reply #42 on:** July 08, 2017, 00:31 »

Quote from: namussi on July 07, 2017, 22:07

Quote from: angelawaye on July 07, 2017, 20:51
I believe it is called "opportunity cost" in economics... It is actually costing you money to upload there.

If you could predict that an individual image would only earn you 0.0000000001 cents over your lifetime, you wouldn't bother uploading it.

Unfortunately you don't know in advance which pix will sell and which won't.

So if you stop uploading because there's a chance you might lose money on any individual image, you will refrain from uploading other images that may make good money unexpectedly.

yes need to look at total time in vs total income out and decide if its worth it for you. If you can use that time more effectively elsewhere then go for it ;-)

sharpshot · « **Reply #43 on:** July 08, 2017, 03:22 »

Quote from: namussi on July 07, 2017, 22:07

Quote from: angelawaye on July 07, 2017, 20:51
I believe it is called "opportunity cost" in economics... It is actually costing you money to upload there.

If you could predict that an individual image would only earn you 0.0000000001 cents over your lifetime, you wouldn't bother uploading it.

Unfortunately you don't know in advance which pix will sell and which won't.

So if you stop uploading because there's a chance you might lose money on any individual image, you will refrain from uploading other images that may make good money unexpectedly.

That's why we need to make a reasonable amount of money from the images that do sell. A thousand of those $0.00077 will make only $0.77. If your best selling images are making less than $1, there's really no point in doing this. It's fine to think that those $0.00077 are rare now but if people just accept this and the other sites start using the same model, we could all be seeing a lot of those earnings in the future. When microstock started, a lot of people selling for much higher prices were angry with us accepting such low prices but it was still possible to make good money with high volume of sales. Now we have the threat of a model that only works with millions of downloads and only the sites will make money from that.

namussi · « **Reply #44 on:** July 08, 2017, 04:01 »

When microstock started, a lot of people selling for much higher prices were angry with us accepting such low prices but it was still possible to make good money with high volume of sales. Now we have the threat of a model that only works with millions of downloads and only the sites will make money from that.

When I started on iStock, images sold for one dollar, and I got ten cents of that.

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #45 on:** July 08, 2017, 05:19 »

Quote from: CJH Photography on July 03, 2017, 10:37

Quote from: namussi on June 21, 2017, 06:55
Some money is better than no money. :-(
Not if you're cannabalizing earnings with the same images elsewhere.

The trouble is, if you remove your image to prevent cannibalisation, there is very little chance that your picture elsewhere will pick up the sale you lost on iS. That sale will go to somebody else - probably on iS, but maybe elsewhere.
Even in the unusual case of your image being truly unique, the odds are probably still against it being found amidst a gazillion files on some other site, amid scores of different sites. And how many pictures are so unique as to not easily be substituted by something else?

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #46 on:** July 08, 2017, 05:39 »

Quote from: Pauws99 on July 08, 2017, 00:31

Quote from: namussi on July 07, 2017, 22:07
Quote from: angelawaye on July 07, 2017, 20:51
I believe it is called "opportunity cost" in economics... It is actually costing you money to upload there.

If you could predict that an individual image would only earn you 0.0000000001 cents over your lifetime, you wouldn't bother uploading it.

Unfortunately you don't know in advance which pix will sell and which won't.

So if you stop uploading because there's a chance you might lose money on any individual image, you will refrain from uploading other images that may make good money unexpectedly.
yes need to look at total time in vs total income out and decide if its worth it for you. If you can use that time more effectively elsewhere then go for it ;-)

Yup - but, you need to take account of how earnings have changed over time. My earnings per file look OK overall, but the picture is skewed by far, far better days in the past. If I look at EPF for last month it's about 1c per file, so I would need to add 50,000 files to make $500-1,000 a month. That would mean working full time, flat-out for five years just to get not enough to live on. It's simply not worth uploading for that. But there doesn't seem to be much point in pulling down what is already there and getting nothing for it when it's still paying for a few days' groceries.

Pauws99 · « **Reply #47 on:** July 08, 2017, 05:55 »

Another factor is whether by uploading regularly it helps the visibility of all your files thus helping overall income....I think it does on some sites but I'm really not sure. Its all a bit of a gamble really ;-)

sharpshot · « **Reply #48 on:** July 08, 2017, 10:03 »

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on July 08, 2017, 05:19

Quote from: CJH Photography on July 03, 2017, 10:37
Quote from: namussi on June 21, 2017, 06:55
Some money is better than no money. :-(
Not if you're cannabalizing earnings with the same images elsewhere.

The trouble is, if you remove your image to prevent cannibalisation, there is very little chance that your picture elsewhere will pick up the sale you lost on iS. That sale will go to somebody else - probably on iS, but maybe elsewhere.
Even in the unusual case of your image being truly unique, the odds are probably still against it being found amidst a gazillion files on some other site, amid scores of different sites. And how many pictures are so unique as to not easily be substituted by something else?

It seems a lot of images are found by buyers using a google search, then they might stick with the site where they found what they wanted. Now I have zero images with istock, they're more likely to find them on the other sites

I also think the only logical reason for sites to have no QC now is because they do better with google if they have more content, so that's another reason why I didn't leave any with istock. I'm not bothered about the small loss of earnings with istock, I'm sure sticking with them would of lost me more money in the long term.

Brightontl · « **Reply #49 on:** July 08, 2017, 11:16 »

I see things a bit differently, more in term how how much time is spent in uploading, given that the possible gains per upload are extremely low.

I do video and time lapses and for me still images are a by product: from my main activity I am left with around 200 photos every month totally for free.
For a couple of years I did not bother trying to upload them to agencies and left them sleep in my hard driver.
In the last three month I decided to give a try uploading photos to agencies. In order to be worthwhile I need to figure out how much time I spend on it every month and what the income is.
Since I am at the very beginning with it, I have set my target to $15 of income for photo for every hour I spend on it. It is a low amount, but in theory the hourly effort should generate a growing amount as the size of the portfolio increases.
I spend about 10 hours per month preparing and keywording the images, the rest of the time depends on the upload system for each agency.
SS, 123 RF and Alamy demand me no more than 1 hour each per month for uploading, so, as long as I make more than $20 with each of them I keep doing it (of course this amount must reach at least $50 each in one year).
FT takes me 5 hours per month, so, even if it is my second best earner, I am seriously thinking of dumping it for photos, as it take too much time.
The reason why I have never uploaded with istock (even if it could become my best earner in photos) is that I have the feeling that it is by far the most complicated of the lot. My head spins every time I read threads mentioning ESP, Deep Throath, Purple lagoon and other devilish stuff

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Author Topic: $ 0.00077 Lowest Earning on Istock (new record $ 0.00001) (Read 46937 times)

Microstockphoto

CJH Photography

CJH Photography

graphicV

stockastic

YadaYadaYada

namussi

Justanotherphotographer

YadaYadaYada

graphicV

CJH Photography

Brightontl

ComfortEagle2095

angelawaye

stockastic

namussi

namussi

Pauws99

sharpshot

namussi

BaldricksTrousers

BaldricksTrousers

Pauws99

sharpshot

Brightontl

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