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.

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

This won’t be a huge surprise for anyone that follows my numbers at all anymore but March is going to be *huge* for me.  I  have done the work in February – not as much as possible but a decent amount of work.  I think I will be rewarded for it.  So many people want to doomsday and naysay on how stock is going but next month we’ll see if that’s true for me.

Why do I predict such a huge month?

• February is going to finish as my best month since July (BME).  I’m back to my max levels from before.
• According to 123RF, I submitted 450 new images in February (that would be 450 to all sites).
• My Shutterstock gallery is nearly 2000 now with 550 new since Dec 31st.  They are selling very well.
• BMEs on at least 4, maybe 5 stocks tomorrow.
• As summer comes, sales pick up naturally.  Add in the work from this month and the work I’ve done in Jan. and will do in March.  It’s coming together.
• Finally – I’m doing Powerweek v3 from March 8 through March 14th.  I will be posting about that more around the 3rd or so.

So overall March is looking like the month to beat for me.

I’ve felt challenged lately – many people have found the site.  A lot of them question my “insane” $1,000,000 goal.  I understand that.  I disagree with where I’ll end up, but I understand.  I think it’s doable or I wouldn’t bother trying.  Of COURSE it’s not doable from where I am today.  I get what needs to be done.  Keep watching!

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!

We reached a few portfolio milestones this month already and may reach a few more before the month is out.  This is the current list and what we hope to accomplish by the end of the month.

On 123RF we are at 1973 on our way to 2000.  We will definitely surpass this goal by 1/31/09.

At Bigstock we passed 1500 by a ton – 1878 out of 2000 as well and could easily hit this mark.

Dreamstime sits a bit lower with 1733/2000 but I have just over 100 pending.  Assuming a good final 9 days, we could make it close.

Fotolia will be our big surprise for the month.  We started the month with 646 images and may top 1500 before the month ends!  Go me!    I have pushed nearly 600 images into the queue there this month.  And yes, next month I plan to finish that up and do Istock a few times as well.

Istock is only 89/100 and close to reaching my *first* milestone.  Sad, I know.

Our Shutterstock gallery is just over 1500 images at 1635/2000.  I don’t know if we’ll get 365 more approved in just over a week.  I would like to hope so … we shall see.

StockXpert gallery size is 1651 passing the 1500 mark earlier this month and headed toward 2k as well.

So our average gallery is nearing 2000 images.  Not good enough but a start.  We’ve also decided to spend a good portion of February improving our image quality to a level that will SELL a lot better.  I’ll post some trials soon.

So far in 2009 I’ve done almost 8-10 hrs a day on some part of microstock or NiltoMil.  Whether blogging, editing, keywording or submitting I’ve definitely put in the hours.

So what’s the return?  So far, so good.  I’ve uploaded just over 100 new images to all 7 sites and had 70-95 accepted on each.  I also have 100 more edited images and will keyword them tomorrow morning.

I was a bit surprised by Shutterstock today.  I had a large jump in downloads but with that  many new images, on a Monday – well let’s just say I expected more.

Dreamstime, on the other hand, has been great to me lately.  I love image levels.  I think it’s the right way to do sales.  I’ve never been tempted at ANY level to go exclusive with any agency but if I were to do so, I think Dreamstime has the best shot of getting my images.  It seems fair and it’s our second-best earner.

By the end of January I should have submitted close to 1500 images – if a consistent 70% gets accepted, we’ll add just over 1,000 new images to our portfolio this month.  Now *that* is worth waking up in the morning.

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!

© 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

© Tomas Marek, Dreamstime.com

It’s not quite the end of the year but it’s a great time to review my last year of microstock.

We were not microstocking in January or February. While we’d been part of this industry and have had images online since 2004, we uploaded very few new images in 2007 and the start of this year.

A conversation in late February prompted me to start researching more about microstock photography. I found out about the success of people like Yuri Arcurs, Andres Rodriquez, IOFoto and Vegas Visions Studios. I learned more about Lise Gagne and started reading Microstock Diaries and Micropayment Photography.

As March started up, I thought it may be a good idea to change direction from my “search for passive income” to my current NiltoMil.com site so I changed format for this blog to strictly microstock.  A search for other blogs to monitor and read quickly pulled up several on my feedreader. I currently read:

Microstock Diaries – Lee Torrens’ great site

All You Need to Know about Microstock Photography – Todd’s site

Yuri Arcurs blog – Uhh…by Yuri, of course.

Pixels Away – Marek

JRTB – by JRTB

Captured Little Moments – no longer a microstock blog

Lookstat – Rahul Pathak’s microstock stat tracking service

Snapvillage – although not updated frequently enough for a company blog

Microstock Photography Blogspot – CJ’s site

Microstock Junction – Lorraine’s blog

Driftless Ramblings – Allen

PDTNC – a new one on my list

MelastMohican

(now that I’ve added the links, let’s see who has Google Alerts setup for their names/blog  names)

Once March was over, I knew we could “do” this microstock thing.  We went from an income of $85 to $189 with little effort.  Our portfolios increased by approximately 90 new images per site.  April and May we turned up the speed to see what we could do.  We grew portfolios by 300 and then 350 images a month.  Our income in the same time grew from $189 to $350 and then $450.  The increases from our work showed us our future in this business.  We started to believe we could get enough images online to pay our bills and then much more with new images.  I still believe a consistent effort will get us there very quickly.

June and July were also months things improved.  Our income rose to a high of $575 on 1250 images.  Not bad but we hadn’t seasoned in images at Dreamstime OR Fotolia and we had not done nearly a single new image on Istock – plenty of room to grow!

August through October are difficult months for us – wedding season is cranked up, we’re shooting a lot and editing all the time and NOT for microstock.  We added zero new images from August 1 through Nov 1st on most sites and our income dipped to 66% of our high.  The strangest thing that happened was Dreamstime kept rising.  No matter what we did, Dreamstime income gained & gained as the images seasoned in – definitely an advantage to multiple pricing levels!

November ended our run of NO microstock work as we added 50-100 new images across most site and finished pushing some queued images we had left there from July/August.  Our income rebounded from $380 in October to $450 in November – more in line with our income from May when we were starting to add more images.

We learned a LOT in microstock this year – from how to add IPTC data before upload to how to upload to multiple agencies at once.  Both are huge timesavers, which matters a LOT in the micro world.  We also made new microstock friends – Todd at Micropayment Photography, Lee at MSD, Leaf (Tyler) at Microstock Group, Bobby at VVS and many many others.  We continue to learn from those photographers and microstock afficionados and a lot of our success is attributable to their influences, help and work on getting us up to snuff quickly and efficiently.

Our two microstock and travel sponsors came on board this year – ThinktankPhoto and Pro Photo Rental.  Both provided us with new gear to use on our October trip and we appreciate their support and hope 2009 is productive for all of us!

This year we increased our income from $2700 total to $6400+.  We have more than doubled but that’s not good enough by far.  Our goals for 2009 are to increase from ~$500 to ~$5000 a month by next December.  We would like to add roughly 10-15k images to our portfolios and we’d love to start pushing IStock images harder.  Our goal is to reach $50k on our total earnings as fast as we can.   That’s a good start on our ultimate and real goal of hitting $1,000,000.

Another goal for 2009 is to add more sponsors/advertisers to N2M.  We keep them fairly well contained so they don’t take over the whole site but by adding advertisers, we are able to become 100% focused on microstock AND this blog – to spend the time to help, educate, learn and teach that we need.

So that’s 2008 – and here comes 2009.  Don’t forget that you can follow our progress on here and also at our spreadsheet on Google.

Thank you ALL for reading NiltoMil.com  I appreciate everyone who’s taken their time to bookmark, subscribe, read us, link to us, and sponsor us.

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