2010 in microstock

Portfolio size.

It is getting harder to get images accepted in every agency nowadays. All my top 5 agencies rejected much more images than before. Only Fotolia seems to have higher than average acceptance rate. I am sending exactly same images to all sites     and images are randomly accepted or rejected. Most of these agencies sit on millions of images so I expected they will keep rejecting more images to save on storage costs.

	2010	2009
Shutterstock	3555	2668	887	33.25%
123RoyaltyFree	6105	5297	808	15.25%
IStockPhoto	297	213	84	39.44%
Dreamstime	2250	1906	344	18.05%
Fotolia	1919	990	929	93.84%
StockXpert	2211	2201	10	0.45%
YAYMicro	4993	4970	23	0.46%
BigStockPhoto	1064	610	454	74.43%
CanStockPhoto	2638	2015	623	30.92%
Veer	982	522	460	88.12%
Crestock	502	467	35	7.49%
Cutcaster	1399	1399	0	0.00%
FeaturePics	4629	4629	0	0.00%
MostPhotos	2868	2868	0	0.00%

Earnings.

Overall, I earned 43% more than in previous year. Not every agency contributed to this result. Shutterstock continues to earn over 50% of my royalties. 123RF is balancing around 15% as it was before. I lost around 10% of income since Getty purchased StockXpert. Images transferred to ThinkStock earn only 2% in comparison to 12% before this change. Also Dreamstime went down from %14 to 8%. On a bright side Fotolia keeps generating errand 5% and IS gives additional 8%. Few smaller sites that did not give any results in 2009 start generating sales which are usually very weak but combined give around 9%. I am not feeling well about depending mostly on income from two agencies. Dreamstime high rejection rates and lower sales make me think that they might next one that is going to sink. I am hoping that somehow Fotolia, CanStockPhoto and Veer would continue to build up momentum. Another question is IStockPhoto. Obviously they start generating me some income but at the same time they drastically lowered contributors royalties so next year might be not as good as it looks now.

Downloads.

The only agency that provides me with some sort of volume is Shutterstock. Others from top 5 are roughly 2/3 of it combined.  Volume is one thing but more interesting factor is how much agency pays for each image sold. For me RPD is usually below $1. Ironically agencies which give better RPD do not generate enough sales. I started suspecting that RPD is inversely proportional to sales :-)

	Sales		RPD
SS	2820	56.18%	$0.60
123RF	563	11.22%	$0.96
IS	419	8.35%	$0.67
DT	325	6.47%	$0.78
FT	258	5.14%	$0.64
SXP	212	4.22%	$0.25
YM	205	4.08%	$0.75
Veer	109	2.17%	$0.73
CSP	47	0.94%	$1.15
BS	30	0.60%	$0.80
CS	25	0.50%	$0.35
FP	5	0.10%	$0.15
CUT	2	0.04%	$2.28
MSP	0	0.00%	$0.00

Goals for 2011.

1. Keep trying to improve results on Shutterstock


2. Make serious effort to increase portfolio size on IStockPhoto


3. Continue to upload to Veer


4. Continue to grow on Fotolia


5. Test if it is worth uploading to Dreamstime with growing rejections and declining sales


6. Verify if there is a sense uploading to 123RF. Right now portfolio is huge but sales are stagnant.


7. Keep trying more with video.

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