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

Yes!  My goal was to hit $500 for only the third month ever (first since my BME last July) and I did it!

Full earnings spreadsheet is here.

With February’s income totaled, I have reached $508.89

BME: IStock, Fotolia, CanStock (DT $1.10 off)

Shutterstock went up $45 this month, a decent start but not where I want to be.  I expect Shutterstock to be well into the $300s for March.  I am starting to gain traction there again so I hope to regain my momentum.

Dreamstime nearly hit a  BME but failed by $1.10 to reach it.  It was my third month in four with basically $103.

IStock is the same old, same old.  Still 89 images but a new BME of $17.81 so whatever change they made to Best Match has helped me lately.  My last two months are my best two months in 4 years.

Fotolia did the expected and more than doubled this month due to my doubling of portfolio size.  Last month I went from 646 images online to 1350 and now at 1599 so a huge leap from Fotolia was expected and received.  Fotolia became just my third agency to start crossing the $50 barrier.

123RF and Bigstock did about usual.  No surprises.  I would like to see some growth though.  These two were earning $22-30 for me in June and same now but I’ve added nearly 800 new images!

StockXpert continues to improve.  my second $30+ in a row with only my EL month beating it (2nd BME).  I like the reviews there, I’m climing up their user charts and everything is starting to go well for me there.

The only other real surprise this month was Canstock.  I have been dumping my portfolio on Canstock because of the new Fotosearch acquistion of CSP and so far so great!  My previous *FOUR YEAR* earnings were $61 on around 125 images and lately on 470 images.  I finished uploading my portfolio so I now have just over 2000 images there and this month made $26.55 which is HALF of my all-time earnings there!  It won’t make me rich but it’s a start for Canstock.  When Canstock finishes 5th on your list, you know something is weird!

Yaymicro, FotoMind, MostPhotos and most of my small and new sites (Image Catalog, CutCaster, Vivozoom) all were at $0 for the month.  When I do Powerweek I will NOT be uploading to those sites.

Microstock Diaries

jrtb

CJ Photography

Microstock Junction

Driftless Ramblings

PDTNC

MelastMohican

Pixels Away

Bankizdjec

Microstock Experiment

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!

I’m posting the December results, though as many of you know by now, I’m tracking my earnings on the spreadsheet now.  I’ll let you look at the spreadsheet to get the full data but my December 2008 total was $368.09.

NiltoMil earnings spreadsheet

December was a lower month for me than November but that’s due to the three EL’s I had on Shutterstock in November and the lack of ELs in December.  My licenses sold actually increased from around 350 to near 500 in December, which is a great sign.

The most surprising move in that bunch came from MostPhotos.  I sold two images on MostPhotos last month for $25.  That brought MostPhotos into the Long Tail just after I’d expelled half of my agencies from my uploading queue.  Given that MostPhotos acts like a full resolution backup of all my images AND that it started selling for me again, I’ve resumed uploading to MP and hope to make enough sales this year (say 10?) to make it worthwhile.

My 3 month average is down from my 6 month average from $433 to $398.  I expect over the next 5 months that will reverse entirely though.  July is still being counted in my 6 month average and July was my BME.  (My 5 month average is $404, much closer to my 3 month).

On a site related note, December was the best month in NiltoMil history by far.  14, 484 page loads, 6144 unique visitors.  I’ll take that any day of the week.  Thanks for visiting!

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

I’m on a bit of a Power Week v2 right now.  I’m trying to find out how many images I can get uploaded in a week – from editing, keywording, uploading & submitting.

Here’s the issue – you run into bottlenecks, tie-ups – places that slow you down.  It doesn’t matter where that place is, somewhere along the line you will hit it if you’re fast enough.  Does anyone remember Power Week v1?  My bottleneck was not having enough images to process.  I could literally edit images faster than Sarah & I were shooting them.  I ran out of images after editing 400 in 3 days.

Fast forward to Power Week v2 – I’ve now got a backlog of almost 4,000 shots from our trip to edit & upload.  I will NOT run out of images this week.  So what now?

My internet upload speed.

I edited 200 images yesterday.  After about 4 hours of work on those same images today I had them ready to upload.  I pushed upload SIX hours ago.  I was out for a few hours this morning and pushed images at 6:30 pm.  It’s almost 1am and I am 31% done with my upload!!  According to this speed, if it stays constant, it will take anywhere from 19 to 24 hours to complete my UPLOAD.  In the meantime, I’ve already edited another 85 files.  By the end of that 19 hours, I should have another 150 to upload.  I am pushing the VERY limits of my upload speed.

I think my next post will focus on ALL of the steps in this process – so I can find & eliminate bottlenecks before this happens.  But for now, just know that if you submit 200 images to 123RF, Bigstock, Dreamstime, FeaturePics, Fotolia, ImageCatalog, MostPhotos, Shutterstock, StockXpert and Yaymicro at the same time, you will beuploading for a LONG time.

No image with this post – I’m too busy and too lazy at the same time.

Ok, I know I didn’t post Sept OR October results.  I do have them.

I’m going to make new charts for my stats.  In the meantime, here’s what I did:

September

OK grand total of $407.57

October

Grand total of $380.67

So let’s recap quickly.  I stopped uploading around July 15th with about $580.  My income retained 66% over 3 months.  Not bad!

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