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

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.

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

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.

March was up overall but not a BME.? Kind of sad given a Powerweek in the middle of the month should have spurred new heights but when 50%+ gets rejected you don’t get very far.

Detailed results are here.

So let’s see, Shutterstock still hasn’t gained the momentum I need simply because I’m not consistent enough.? I’m going to make myself cry if this keeps up!? Dreamstime was down $15-20 from my last few months.? Istock was in the right range.

The good news was the other big agencies: Fotolia was BME at $83.68, BSP also a BME at $31.50 and SXP a BME at $43.50.

Overall March earnings: $550.15

That’s good enough for second best month ever ($575.46 is overall BME).? I would be happier if SS was picking up momentum but in June I had $398.59 with 1247 images online and now $241.97 with 2143 online.? Sad!

Portfolio size average for my top 6 agencies is now 1903.? Fotolia’s 1599 brings that total down but SS, DT, 123, BSP and SXP are all now over 2000.

Coming soon: my first year back and what’s next for N2M.

Welcome back to another exciting episode of SlowLinks, my version of Speedlinks but with far too many for it to be considered speedy.

Today’s SlowLinks book list is all about books you should read in the coming year.? I listed books about photography, microstock, business, branding, personal advancement and growth as well as organization and motivation.

These have been accumulated through conversations with other photographers, small business owners and in my own reading.? I tend to read a *lot* of business books and own about 99.9% of the books on the list.

Nobody will be surprised that the #1 book on this list is The Long Tail.? After that, hopefully more than a few are new to you.? These are *not* in order so read whatever appeals to you.? We’ll probably talk about a lot of these in 2009.

1. The Long Tail – Chris Anderson

2. Light, Science & Magic – Fil Hunter

3. Lighting and the Dramatic Portrait – Michael Grecco

4. Matters of Light & Depth – Ross Lowell

5. The Moment It Clicks – Joe McNally

6. Understanding Exposure – Bryan Peterson

7. Microstock Photography: How to Make Money from your Digital Images – Douglas Freer

8. Digital Stock Photography: How to Shoot & Sell – Michael Heron

9. Tell the World You Don’t Suck: Modern Marketing for Commercial Photographers – Leslie Burns

10. Love is the Killer Ap – Tim Sanders

11. Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell

12. Blue Ocean Strategy – W. Chan Kim

13. Good to Great – Jim Collins

14. Getting Things Done – David Allen

15. Talent is Never Enough – John Maxwell

16. Primal Branding – Alan Sklar

17. Creating Customer Evangelists – Ben McConnell

18. It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be – Paul Arden

19. The Millionaire Mind – Thomas Stanley

20. The Brand Called You – Peter Montoya

Disclaimer: these are all Amazon Affiliate links.? If that bugs you, search them on Amazon.

? Tomas Marek, Dreamstime.com

While NiltoMil covers a wide variety of topics from SEO on Technorati to shooting with models, the main point of its existence is to document our progress from $0 to $1,000,000.? As such, the end of the year is a good time for 2008 wrap up and goal setting for next year.

As of December 31st, our total earnings will be just a shade over $6,500.? While a decent amount of money, we will not get to $1,000,000 with years like that.? Obviously there’s? a need to greatly increase our number of salable images quickly.

Goals in microstock may be measured by many different statistics:? RPI, earnings, download rates, sell through, approval percent, size of your portfolio, etc.? For NiltoMil, we’ll focus on the obvious two: portfolio size and earnings.

My goal for 2009 portfolio size is to have more than 10,000 accepted images by 12/31/09 on most of my sites (Istock will be an exception of course, Fotolia may be as well).? Shutterstock, 123RF, Bigstock, Dreamstime, MostPhotos and StockXpert should *definitely* hit this goal for me to be successful.

My goal for 2009 earnings is to earn $25,000 in stock photography for the year. While not “huge” by any definition, this would be around $2000 a month for the year and would represent the figure that would continue our journey in a positive direction.

So here’s a reason to continue reading NiltoMil.? 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 by 12/31/09, NiltoMil.com will close for good whether I continue to shoot microstock or not.

So wish me luck!? I wish you luck in 2009 in reaching all of your goals.? (Luck wishing appreciated by clicking “Comment” below)

Track our progress at the NiltoMil Spreadsheet