I know a lot of readers were concerned when I said I was going into food photography. Why the change?  I told you then and I will say it again – I’m OBSESSED with food now! I’ve made some healthy recipes, lost a few pounds and will keep shooting food.  I LOVE this job!  These images are all shot in the last week.  This is our 2nd, 3rd, and 4th food shoot.  We’re still learning but hopefully you like em!  Actually, hopefully stock photo buyers like em!

Hi & welcome back! NiltoMil is officially off and running again – I’m keywording, submitting, pushing images and then working on shooting some new today.  I’m going to be pushing some older images even though I know they won’t sell as well as I’d like simply because I want the momentum to begin NOW not in a month when I get new stuff edited.

I’m ready for 2010!  January will be a very poor month since I’m starting so late but February should show some recovery.

In the last 6 months when I was mainly gone:

• Shot weddings – and we have 4 other photographers who shot during that time as well.
• Sold my house/bought a new house – a fixer-upper.  We’ve been working on it almost everyday since Nov 20th for 12+ hours per day.
• Delved into the food styling/preparing/photo world.  I’ve read almost every post on Still Life With, Matt Bites, and many other foodie blogs.  I’ve devoured four entire food photography books including Rinder/Smith’s new book and Lou Manna’s classic.
• Redesigned our business brand
• Traveled to Maine, twice.  Traveled to NYC.

Now that I’m back my goal is to create an income that will pay my mortgage first, other bills later.  Our mortgage is $680.  This is an achievable goal that I do have to reach for. I’ll do a more extensive goals post in the next week or so but that’s the start of it.

Current BME: $575.46, July 2008

Let me quote myself.

I am not going to stick around and pretend to be something I’m not.  Too many people set goals and fail to reach them, yet still continue the journey unfazed.  I often share my experiences and ideas in hopes of helping you.  If I can’t help myself first, I can’t help you.

If I fail to reach both goals (10k images, $25k for the year) by 12/31/09, NiltoMil.com will close for good whether I continue to shoot microstock or not.

At this point in the year it is obvious that I will not reach 10k approved images OR $25,000 this year.

I am modifying what I wrote above.  I am not going to destroy or delete Nil. I am going to stop posting earnings, stop posting ideas until they are working better.  I AM going to keep Nil up for the archives and the posts that often get referenced.  I AM going to continue to put up posts of interest to me – whether that’s of interest to anyone else or not.  My journey will continue.

I need to help myself first.  I need to figure out the steps I should be taking to reach my goal  and when I do, I’ll be back full force with the full effort I can give Nil.  Until then, expect sporadic updates on what I’m doing, how stock is going and what I am trying to do to improve.

Total Earnings: $440.55

That’s a number I can live with.  Granted it doesn’t get me a lot closer to the “mil” portion of this goal but it also represents an increase over August of $13 and an increase over last Sept of $31.  I upload no new photos, keyworded nothing and submitted not a dang thing.  So an increase in my earnings with no new work is definitely motivating and exciting.

As always my fully detailed results are in my Google Spreadsheet here.

Well, the summer is almost over and I’m almost back to work.  September represents the next-to-last month of me not able to focus on microstock.  That being said I’m always happy if I make a few dollars anyways.

Specific results that are important:

Shutterstock finished +$74 from last month.  I would expect something more in the middle like $160 for October.

Dreamstime was way down but Fotolia was up.  I can’t wait to see what happens with Bigstock since the SS acquisition.

NO BMEs for the first time since I started tracking stats – that’s a little disappointing but gives me some new goals and motivations.  I’d like to have one month set EVERY BME just so I had a guideline to improve from.

Others reporting microstock income:

Microstock Diaries

jrtb

CJ Photography

Driftless Ramblings

PDTNC

MelastMohican

Pixels Away

Bankizdjec

Microstock Experiment

MyStockPhoto

Stock Illustrator

I’d like to address something – the time I spend on microstock.  I think some people who read this blog are slightly confused about me slaving away and getting nowhere.

In July, I added 15 new images to my sites.  That means I worked on it for under 1 hour in July.  I made $500 in July.

In June, I added 150 new images.  About 4 hours of work.  I also made $450.  I’ve now in 2 months made $950 on 5 hours of work.

In May, I added 160 new images.  About 4 more hours of work.  Made $400.

Grand total: $1400 while doing 9 hours of work.

What I need to do in order to increase my earnings is actually work on microstock.  I do need to continue improving – I’m just really starting my second year of being a stock photographer.  I need to upload with momentum – that’s proven very successful.  But I’m not sitting here day after day churning out work that isn’t selling.  I’m just simply not putting in the time.

Why?

Our studio has 4 photographers, we’re currently hiring 2 more and we’re going to do between 40 and 50 weddings this year combined.  We’ll likely do another 150 portraits and next year will come close to 70 weddings/250 portraits.  Our wedding and portrait business has brought in over $100k each year for the last 2 and will do so this year and next as well.  I am also in the midst of building a studio management software for photographers that will track clients, billing, orders, calendaring, expenses/taxes, and task management.  It’s a huge project but one I love doing.

All that to say, don’t cry for me, Argentina.  I’m here, I’m going to continue working on micro when I can.  Right now I’m being torn in 3 directions and this one is the least of my issues.

Very late, I know.  I went to Maine for two weeks near the end of July and was basically non-existent on the ‘net for that time!  Sorry.

July 2009 results

As always the fastest and easiest way to see stats is on the spreadsheet using the above link.  However, I’ll detail a bit of my month in here as well.

July total was $543.49 which was almost up $100 from June ($88!).  I’ll take that result.  However, only DT was a BME.  Shutterstock accounted for a lot of the leap with a gain of $42 over June.  Dreamstime’s $52 gain was the rest.  IS, FT, 123, BSP, SXP were all where I expected them to be.  MostPhotos gained one sale and Canstock continued to do very well for me despite having been so quiet for so long netting another $34.60.

3 month average is down slightly because of the terrible May I had.   6 month average is up $20 but 12 month is right about where it’s been for the whole time I’ve tracked it.  Kind of disappointing.  My results near the point where the goal looks near impossible now.  $6k a year will never get me there.  I need to crank up the earnings or abandon hope.  The two do not make sense together as is.  In the past 14 months, 12 have earned between $400 and 580.  That’s fairly consistent but not high enough by a lot.

Ah June.  Smells of bbq, flowers and sales worth dog poop.

As always my chart (which was done on the 1st btw!) is here.  And for Lee who is self-proclaimed lazy, I’m posting a June chart:

The work … well … let’s see.  For the month I started strong and have had a terrible last two weeks.  I had some personal stuff come up that has interfered with “work.”  I would say for the month I did about 4 days of uploading at about 2  hrs a day so 8 hrs of work.  My income increased from last month by $47 and I earned a total of $455.02. I did no shooting for stock in June and added only about 160 new images to my galleries.  That’s consistent with the time I think I put in.  So my income increased slightly on very little work.  Eh.

Two BME’s – StockXpert continues to burn up the charts, continuing in 3rd on my charts behind only SS and DT.  CutCaster also earned $4.02 breaking the previous high of $3.19.  Heh.   Other notes: Canstock had another Fotosearch DL, the 5th one in 5 months.  I like that.  I have many non-earners that may get permanently removed very soon.

At the halfway point of the year I think it’s important to take a look at where I am.

I’m not shooting enough.
I’m not editing enough.
I’m not uploading enough.

That about sums it up – decent return for almost no work I’ve done but wow, ok.  I am done playing around now.

Total Earnings: $408.01

I knew this month was going to be bad about 1/3 of the way through when I was on my way to possibly a Worst Month Ever.  I didn’t quite get that far down as May finished just over $400 for my 4th worst month since I started tracking in detail.  I’m fairly certain it couldn’t get much worse so I’m looking for a REALLY huge bounceback month in June!

Onto the details.

One BME to report – StockXpert – at $44.50 was my BME.  I didn’t have a $30 Photos.com sale this time, like I did in November, so I’m pleased with that BME.

Canstock was also notable this month – fourth consecutive month over $10 and 3rd of 4 to have over $25.  Considering that in 4 months I have now more than doubled my previous 4 year earnings, I’m very pleased with Canstock.

Shutterstock had a worst month for the last 12.  My momentum was completely gone by the beginning of the month and sales were tanked.  Then we seemed to have some database/sales problem as EVERYONE’s early May tanked.  I’m very sure my new momentum uploading will rebound Shutterstock in a BIG way.  I wouldn’t be surprised for a very large jump here next month.

Dreamstime was also off – about $20-$25 off my average month.  Not good news as I have no idea what caused the drop.  Normally I have at least some explanation but not for this.  Just a seasonal dip perhaps as last May was very low.  I need to continue adding new images to DT as well though.

IStock – well I don’t know why I was at $17 and now I don’t know why I’m back to $4.  Either way if I don’t have more than 100 images online, my months are bound to vary from superb to suck.

Fotolia – after three good months on Fotolia, this month was so bad I had to double check my results and I’m STILL not sure it’s right.  Terrible month here.

123RF was near a BME but not quite.  Bigstock was SmallStock once again with terrible earnings.  Nothing at all on MostPhotos, Crestock, ImageCatalog, CutCaster, Vivo or YayMicro.  Don’t honestly know why I bother with most of those.

As they are throughout the month and at the end of every month, detailed results are available here.

Others reporting microstock income:

Microstock Diaries

jrtb

CJ Photography

Driftless Ramblings

PDTNC

MelastMohican

Pixels Away

Bankizdjec

Microstock Experiment

MyStockPhoto

Stock Illustrator

Yikes!  Ok, full disclosure I am a photographer in the US so all of this new tax & Shutterstock doesn’t apply to me.  I would bet it applies to many of my friends and readers though so I want to cover this to the best of my ability so you guys get some clear, exact answers in one place.

If you post your questions here, I will do my best to get an answer and post it here as well.  I’ve read all 75 pages of the long thread as well as many of the other threads and have seen a lot of answers already.

Edit to add: Shutterstock just emailed me to let me know that whatever questions you post, we can try and get answers to.

What is the issue?

First, read the original post.

If you are not a US citizen or resident, and you do not obtain an ITIN and provide Shutterstock with a Form W-8BEN, US law requires them to withhold 30% from your earnings. If you are a member of one of our tax treaty countries you will have less withheld, sometimes 0% extra.  If your country is not on the list, you will have 30% withheld for income on Royalties.

Why?

US tax law imposes a 30% withholding tax on US source passive income, such as royalties, that are paid to persons who are not citizens or residents of the United States. US tax law requires the person paying the royalties to withhold the tax and pay it to the US Internal Revenue Service. If the person receiving the royalties is a resident of a country that has an income tax treaty with the United States, the withholding tax may be reduced or eliminated. However, to take advantage of the lower withholding tax US tax law requires that the person receiving the royalty payments provide a properly completed Form W-8BEN. US tax law also requires that the person who provides a Form W-8BEN for this purpose have an ITIN.

A lot of people are wondering “why do we pay this – what benefit do we get in the US?”  The answer, although you won’t like it, is that you get the benefit of selling your work in the US and under IRS tax law, you ARE doing business in the United States if you sell to US companies.

More Details

If you are in a country with no tax treaty with the US, you seem to be stuck paying 30% no matter what.

The payouts going out for May will not be affected but June’s may be affected.

If you wish for your account to be removed, the SS CEO is offering to remove it for you.

Yes, US residents pay their tax – we pay it in April as income tax.  We know you pay yours in your home country too.

At the end of the year, you will get a Form 1042 from Shutterstock.  This can be found here: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1042.pdf  You will know your tax liabilities in the US.

ITIN Info

• ITIN FAQ’s in English
• ITIN FAQ’s in Spanish
• Obtaining an ITIN from Abroad
• Publication 1915, Understanding Your Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (PDF)

So what can we do?

Step By Step Tutorial

Armenia

Australia

Canada

Czechs

Croatia

France

Germany post

Greece

Italy

Latvia

Lithuania

Malta

Malaysia

Mexico

Netherlands

Poland

Russia

Romania

Serbia

Sweden

UK

How to Notarize a passport (copy) info (multiple countries)

A bit of info in Spanish

All questions for Shutterstock about taxes can be directed to their new forum on tax questions.

Again, if you post your questions here, I will do my best to get an answer and post it here as well.  I’ve read all 50 pages of the long thread as well as many of the other threads and have seen a lot of answers already.

Total Earning: $555.49

So April was both a good month and a bad month, depending on your point of view.   The good news is that my earnings rose $5 even with a sizable drop from SS, IS, and FT.  Last month those three combined for $340 while this month just $289.  However, Dreamstime recovered up $13 and Canstock and Bigstock had a BME.

My gallery size stayed very near the same numbers as March as SS went up 27, DT 26 and SXP 72.  So that is mainly the bad news.

The good news is that April marks the first time *ever* I have had three $500 months in a row and both my 3 and 6 month averages are the highest they have ever been.  I haven’t beaten my overall BME yet in 2009 but it is reachable for May.  My 3 month average is up $35 from last month, my 6 month is up $25 and my 12 month is up $26.  While not amazing numbers they are all UP.

Two Best Month Ever’s – the previously mentioned Bigstock and the upcoming Canstockphoto.  Prior to Feb. 1, 2009 I had *total* made rougly $60.70 over FOUR years.  In the last 3 months, I have earned $93.70!  Yes, Canstock is back.  In fact, my 3 month average at Canstock is $22.43 which is my 5th best agency of 18.

As they are throughout the month and at the end of every month, detailed results are available here.

Others reporting microstock income:

Microstock Diaries

jrtb

CJ Photography

Driftless Ramblings

PDTNC

MelastMohican

Pixels Away

Bankizdjec

Microstock Experiment

MyStockPhoto

Did I miss any?  Comment below and I’ll add you for next month!

Don’t be surprised if the overall layout of NiltoMil changes soon – I’ve seen some really great looking sites and I think I know how I want to make this easier for me to post more content.  That would seem to be the goal so I will look into it.

* NOTE: I had to change Canstock stats after this post was release.  At 11:55pm last night I had a Canstock Medium FotoSearch sale for $26.40 which drastically changed some info and resulted in this being my 2nd best month ever.