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

January – blessed January!  How do I love thee?

It was absolutely fantastic to get back to uploading with any sense of regularity.  I only uploaded about 200 new images during our busy bridal show/booking month but 200 is more than enough to get me back on track!

As always, our spreadsheet of microstock earnings is here.

The January numbers were great!  In fact, this was our best month since I stopped uploading last July (other than the ridiculous ELs from SS in Nov (3 of them!)  The final total for all this excitement was 424.82

To put that in perspective for us, Shutterstock was actually down a few dollars.  We had SIX BMEs – Dreamstime, IStock, FeaturePics, Crestock, ImageCatalog and SnapVillage.  Also, StockXpert would have been a BME but we had an EL in Nov.  Our old BME was $19.10 though and so this month’s $30 would have destroyed that!

IStock – no clue.  No new images but it was almost TWICE my BME.  I’ve had almost that many images online for FOUR YEARS and never gone up over $10 really.  $17 was a huge leap.  There’s some speculation that it was a result of all their Best Match changes.  We’ll see if it continues (plus I’m going to be uploading to IStock this month like mad so we’ll see if that helps!)

FeaturePics had a … slightly insane month!  I actually repriced all of my images to $10 from $2 before.  I only had 2 sales but those 2 sales resulted in $15.75, or 61% of my all-time FeaturePics earnings.  It was TRIPLE my prior BME.  I’m going to be working on some ideas to push my FeaturePics gallery around the next 6 months so we’ll see if I can’t keep getting a few sales there each month at the new price.

Check out my Fotolia gallery size increase on the spreadsheet – from 465 last April to 646 as of Dec 31st to 1350 as of tonight!  I over doubled my Fotolia gallery in one month!  The power of the push, I guess.  I worked hard on Fotolia (while watching TV) so we’ll hope that pays off over this month and beyond.

Other interesting bits – I passed 2,000 images on FotoMind and MostPhotos and will pass it on a bunch of other sites this month.  Gotta keep pushing!  You’ll note there are *new* agencies on the list – more on that in a future post…

My BME total is $575.46 and I’ll state for the record now that I hope February can beat that.  I’m only $150 away so I think I can make that up without much problem.  I wouldn’t be surprised to go well over $600.  I have a big month ahead – some news coming soon on our next stock photo trip as well!

Other sites reporting earnings:

Microstock Diaries

jrtb

CJ Photography

Microstock Junction

Driftless Ramblings

PDTNC

MelastMohican

Pixels Away

Bankizdjec

Microstock Experiment

Any I’m missing?  This list is getting rather comprehensive!

Total November Earnings: $445.31

First of all, you’ll notice a few changes in my earnings tables this month.  I am going to be tracking my NiltoMil project on Google Spreadsheets.   NiltoMil Microstock Earnings

I found out something interesting though, related to my results.

Now you know that my main goal the last week or so has been “The Long Tail” of microstock.  If you look though, my “tail” breaks completely after the top 7 agencies. That’s not a tail – that’s a waste of time.  As of today, I’m no longer uploading to MostPhotos, YayMicro, FeaturePics, FotoMind, Crestock or Canstock.  I have cancelled my account with Zymmetrical and will do the same with Crestock.  Once we get our MostPhotos and Fotomind money, we’ll likely be closing up shop there too if sales haven’t improved.  We will give Yaymicro until the end of 2009 and then reevaluate but I’m sticking with the 1500 images there, no new ones.

This is an example of where you should NOT think about Long Tail earnings. 1500 images on MostPhotos = $0 for 3 months.  Let’s do the math and 150,000 images ALSO = ~$0.  Do not waste your time on these false tails.

When I do my “Power Week” uploading, one thing I’m always running into is upload time.  As of today, I just cut it in half.  I hope this allows me to add FAR more images to the agencies I do stay with and who do help me earn money from microstock.  I’ll have a full evaluation of Power Week v2 in an upcoming post.

November 2008 Earnings
October 2008 Earnings
September 2008 Earnings
August 2008 Earnings
July 2008 Earnings
June 2008 Earnings
May 2008 Earnings
April 2008 Earnings
March 2008 Earnings

Shutterstock
1247
252.80

IstockPhoto
89
11.83

Dreamstime
1135
74.69

Fotolia
631
18.51

Bigstockphoto
1256
22

123RF
1396
27.87

StockXpert
1084
10.90

FotoMind
1445
0.08

FeaturePics
1209
0

November 2008 Earnings
October 2008 Earnings
September 2008 Earnings
August 2008 Earnings
July 2008 Earnings
June 2008 Earnings
May 2008 Earnings
April 2008 Earnings
March 2008 Earnings

Well, the overall did not increase as much as I would have liked, mainly in part to having an amazing Shutterstock last month with one video sale AND one EL in the same month.  That was an extra $26 to catch up just to make the same money with the same DLs.  Best Month Ever on 7 of the 9 (Istock & Dreamstime with no BME but both up from last month.)

Overall feeling this month was fantastic on the slower sites but the words of the day are “wasted opportunity.”  We had a chance to make a REAL push in May and didn’t push up to $500.  We now need to clear $600 next month to be even remotely on track.  That is going to be difficult, but I have hope!  We are crossing the 1k image mark at a few sites – and June should be our biggest portfolio increase EVER.

Best Month Ever – Shutterstock, Fotolia, Bigstockphoto, 123RF, StockXpert, FotoMind, FeaturePics.

Month Total – $448.85

Gross Nil to Mil total – $3715.47

(gain – $98.28, 28%)

March’s portfolio size – 1559
April’s portfolio size – 3839
May’s portfolio size – 5777

November 2008 Earnings
October 2008 Earnings
September 2008 Earnings
August 2008 Earnings
July 2008 Earnings
June 2008 Earnings
May 2008 Earnings
April 2008 Earnings
March 2008 Earnings