So by now most of you know that Bigstock is no longer BigstockPhoto and 123RF has also redesigned.  I’m surprised for a few reasons:

* Shutterstock (who owns Bigstock now) said the redesign proves they want to move forward with BSP.  What’s the idea of that?  Just keep stock photo buyers happy?  I like it but I wish they’d let us submit to one place and distribute on both networks.  I have many images on BSP that aren’t on SS – I’d like them combined.

* Both 123RF and Bigstock went for the black/white/grey look.  Very simple, clean, easy designs. I’ll be honest – I like both.  But they look VERY similar now!

I’m glad stuff is where I’m used to finding it, somewhat.  Bigstock’s bulk tool seems to be gone, replaced with a much better one at a time engine.  Still wish it worked more like Canstock or even SS.  Submissions are so much easier at those places without the “delay” of javascript.  I don’t want smooth transitions – I want SPEED.

Bigstock listed a lot of new changes here.  I want to look at a few more closely.

• A new and enhanced search engine (interesting – will have to search my stuff later)
• Additional search engine optimizations for Google and others
• Improvements to the collection: checking metadata and enhancing the search algorithm

I’m interested to see how their changes play out.  I would love for BSP to kick it up a notch and remain a player, even growing.  We just saw IStock kill StockXpert and the contributor side of that pretty much sucked (told you I’d be honest!)  I would be grateful and glad to see Shutterstock market and push Bigstock for one-off downloads.

As far as 123RF, their official twitter (does Alex run this ship?) says “The redesign of 123RF is NOT the END, it’s only the beginning!”  I sure hope so!  I’d like to see the beginning of shorter wait times for reviews, less of the truly bad “poor lighting” rejects and of course more dollars and cents.  PS: Note to 123RF, fix the “Check FTP uploads” screen – it doesn’t scroll right.  It looks a right mess.

What do you think of the changes?  Good, bad, indifferent?

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

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 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.

WHOA!  If you’ve read NiltoMil for any longer than 1 day you already know I’m all about speed, workflow and making things simple for us, especially across the smaller sites where it’s not necessarily worth our while to upload unless it’s dead easy.  Well I have had the opportunity to try Canstock’s new bulk upload tool and I’m impressed!

According to Duncan, who is obviously still running things over at CSP after their buyout by Fotosearch, the main benefits of the bulk upload tool include:

• You do not need to categorize images; they will do that for you
• Model releases can be applied in a batch, with a page of 100 images at a time
• Added the ability to upload a photo of each model, for quick identification when selecting releases
• Images can be submitted a page at a time, instead of one at a time
• The interface is faster than ever

According to Matt, me, I had 1400 images backlogged from Canstock because I wasn’t uploading over the last few months.  I uploaded them all one day accidentally forgetting that I had 7 days to get them done.  Canstock came to the rescue by letting me use this bulk tool to finish.  In the first 5 days I’d managed to finish about 400 images in 6 hours.  Once I started using the bulk tool I finished just over 1000 images in 90 minutes!

The bulk uploader is still in beta, but you can activate it on your account in the meantime by going to http://www.canstockphoto.com/beta/

Why am I uploading to  Canstock?  Sales have been crazy-good.  Wait for the end of month but I’ve sold more this month than in the last 6 months put together.  Add in the new $19.80 Fotosearch Sales (which I’m still waiting for …) and it makes sense.  If you bother to upload to anyone after the top 6 you should now include Canstock Photo again.

Top 20 19 Microstock Agencies

The BEST Sellers

1. Shutterstock

Shutterstock offers something most of the other agencies do not – fast sales, early income. Shutterstock has *no* exclusivity program currently. High pay, high sales, commissions vary by user.

2. Istockphoto

The Godfather of microstock, IstockPhoto is one of the most difficult agencies to have images approved at and seems to give large bonuses to exclusive photographers such as larger upload queue, faster reviews, and higher search engine placement. High pay, medium sales, commissions vary for exclusive vs. non-exclusive and for photographer level.

3. Dreamstime

Images have to “season in” before they will make you the most money but once that happens you will find fantastic returns from Dreamstime. Image approvals are probably easiest here of the BEST sellers group. Dreamstime offers per-image or photographer exclusivity. High pay, high sales, commissions vary by Image Level.

4. Fotolia

Fotolia has very strict, sometimes difficult to understand acceptance criteria for images. They also offer per-image exclusivity. Fotolia’s income potential is very high although they recently reduced this for newer photographers by making it harder to push through some of their “contributor levels.” Medium pay, medium sales, commissions vary by photographer level.

The NEXT best

5. 123RF

We have over 92% approval rate at 123RF and although it does not sell like the top 4, sales beat almost every other agency each month. Medium pay, low sales, commissions vary by image size.

6. BigstockPhoto

BigstockPhoto is a “fair reviewer” agency – it’s difficult to argue with their rejections and is thus a great site to learn from. The income varies dramatically – one month being a new high and the very next month half the income and then right back up one month later. High pay, low sales, commissions vary by size.

This agency has one of the simplest upload procedures but limits of 50 per day transfer. The two combine to make growing your gallery fast but not amazingly so. Medium pay, medium sales, commissions vary by size.

7. StockXpert

StockXpert is one of those sites that varies too much month to month.  Their new arrangement with Photos.com makes it so that one Photos.com sale changes your stats by a lot.  Fortunately, it’s a good thing.  UNfortunately, when you don’t make those sales, you don’t make as much here as I’d like to make.  Medium pay, medium sales, comissions vary wildly.

The NOT best

1. FeaturePics – set your own pricing, 70% commissions, few sales.
2. FotoMind – high payout threshold, few sales, could still grow.
3. MostPhotos – high payout (12.50€ per sale), few sales, easy upload.
4. SnapVillage – very few sales. A newer agency.
5. YayMicro – very few sales. A newer agency.
6. Zymmetrical – very few sales. Difficult approvals. A newer agency.
7. Crestock – difficult approvals, very few sales.
8. CanstockPhoto – very few sales, one of the older agencies, low commissions.
9. ImageCatalog
10. CutCaster
11. PantherMedia
12. Moodboard
13. …

I was going to list a top 20 but microstock is not a place to joke around with how many agencies you can *possibly* join. Here are some thoughts – unless you opt for exclusivity with Istock, Dreamstime or Fotolia, you should be on the top 4 sites. There’s no (good) reason to avoid them. Accept the rejections that come and learn from them. The next three sites are great to learn on, grow on and get some sales under your belt. If you’re “worried” about rejection, start there. They are fewer and easier to take. Bigstock has professional, superb reviewers and if you get rejected there it was probably for a good reason.

The rest of the sites on the list are sites to mainly avoid. If you *have* to keep adding sites, #8-12 are the best places to start. Moodboard is almost not microstock (it’s midstock). Your time would be better served getting ONE sale on Alamy then a year’s worth of sales on all of the sites #8-19 combined.

Let’s see how well you know logos.  Who am I quitting?  Want to guess why?

Do yourself a quick favor and compare the Long Tail we’ve been discussing to the chart on the “Recent Results” page of my spreadsheet.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pZEgM338rPYAiUQorCHGoYQ&hl=en

Now if you understand that I suck at Istock and just move on from there, if this were a Long Tail situation, I would have a few sales at one of the bottom agencies.  I would have fewer but *some* sales at a couple and I’d have nearly no sales but a couple at a few agencies.  The fact that those bottom 6 agencies have earned $1.73 COMBINED in November and $2.46 in October and never more than $25 COMBINED – it’s a sad day but they are being removed from our upload queue.

Agencies we are sticking with:

Shutterstock
Istock
Dreamstime
Fotolia
BigstockPhoto
123RF
StockXpert
(possibly Alamy)

Agencies we have accounts with that we’ll no longer submit to until sales increase:

CanstockPhoto
Crestock
FotoMind
FeaturePics
ImageCatalog
YayMicro
SnapVillage
MostPhotos

One reason we bottlenecked during our PowerWeek was upload speed.  It took HOURS to upload the first 200 images to these 8 agencies.  None of those 200 images will likely sell!  What was I thinking?!  I’m all for trying out something new but most of these agencies have 100s of my photos available and few sales to justify my effort.  This also gives me more free time to upload to Istock and push at Fotolia.

This is NOT a long tail situation.  I’ll say this about the long tail – if your time is NOT maxed out, (maxed out = you do NOT have enough time to get every image uploaded to Shutterstock, Dreamstime, etc.) then you should not worry about who you submit to.  If you have extra time, always do the extra submits.  It doesn’t make sense.  You can’t take the time with you.  It is gone after you waste it.  If your choice is playing a game online to pass the time or uploading to Yay, upload! However, if you are maxed out on time, like we are on PowerWeek, don’t waste your time!  Save it for what is important.  We have a huge backlog of images and uploading them to 7 sites instead of 15 will cut our upload time by MORE than half.  When you’re uploading 20 images this doesn’t matter.  When you upload 200 it matters a GREAT deal.

Note:  we will NOT be closing our accounts on these sites mentioned.  That would be even dumber than uploading to them in the first place.  You never know what’s going to gain traction.  I still think YayMicro could be a big player in our industry but I’d like to see them kick it up a notch or ten.

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