April Earnings and Portfolios
Ok, I’m making a few changes this month - I’m dropping my non-earners including Lucky Oliver (RIP), Canstock, Crestock and - likely next month - FeaturePics.
In their place, I have begun uploading to MostPhotos, Zymmetrical, and YayMicro. Because I do not have enough data, I have left those 3 off this chart for now although it should be said that MostPhotos is very easy to upload to and I have over 500 images there already.
April was an absolutely fun month! Increasing my income $160 in one month was thrilling especially when I know I could have gone harder. If I can make an extra $200-300 per month, we could be really excited about this by the end of the year. 8 more months of earnings = lots of potential for growth.
Best Month Ever - Shutterstock, BigstockPhoto, 123RF, StockXpert.
| Agency | Portfolio | Earnings |
| Shutterstock | 551 | $280.16 |
| IstockPhoto | 88 | $3.75 |
| Dreamstime | 386 | $30.11 |
| Fotolia | 465 | $5.93 |
| Bigstockphoto | 427 | $15 |
| 123RF | 548 | $5.88 |
| StockXpert | 306 | $5.30 |
| FotoMind | 604 | $1.20 |
| FeaturePics | 464 | $0 |
Month Total - $349.57
Gross Nil to Mil total - $3266.62
(gain - $159.93, 84%)
March’s portfolio size - 1559
April’s portfolio size - 3839
Your SS performance is amazingly good, while IS performance is surprisingly low. Are you giving up with IS?
Comment by Marek — May 1, 2008 @ 11:07 am
Awesome progress! I’m really amazed in particular about the relative sizes of your Shutterstock and Istock portfolios. Why isn’t your Istock portfolio larger? Its my highest earner. I hope to have my numbers up later today or tomorrow.
Comment by James — May 1, 2008 @ 12:35 pm
OK
I’ve got my numbers up!
Comment by James — May 1, 2008 @ 2:07 pm
The funny thing about both your comments re: Istock is that I had given up on ISuck until this past month. Out of the 3 months I’ve done this, it’s the ONLY month IStock has actually gone up. I don’t know if you read my post on Deep Meta, but I’m going to be submitting more to IStock now that it doesn’t take an entire evening to do 20. lol
My IS performance leaves a lot to be desired, for sure. If I can improve that, I can improve my overall scores very much.
(Now I’m going to read your blogs & get caught up)
Comment by mattantonino — May 1, 2008 @ 3:55 pm
Hi there
You are raising fast ! I think you low income at FT,IS,123RF… cab explained by the fact that it takes time on these sites for the pics to be downloaded, you will see an effect next month probably !
Good luck!
Laurent
http://microstockexperiment.blogspot.com/
Comment by Laurent — May 2, 2008 @ 6:36 am
I just started writing about my microstock experience. I don’t have much in earnings yet. I did sign up for Mostphotos and put you as my reference because of reading this blog.
Comment by Greg — May 2, 2008 @ 8:50 pm
I hope you read this again Greg - your blog does not allow comments. And I have a good one for you - you need to use “faves” on 123RF - you’ll get way more sales with free images & faves. I’m going to do a post about it soon but if you see this, go add some of your images to fave.
Comment by mattantonino — May 3, 2008 @ 4:14 am
Yeah, I’ve been using faves. I switch them up every now and then. I wonder if it’s best to use them on your best images, to get the most sales possible out of them, or if you should use them on lesser performers to give them some exposure and a shot at sales.
I have doubts about giving away free images. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
Comment by Greg — May 5, 2008 @ 2:35 pm
Actually I found that the reason to “give away the milk” was it gives the rest of your images exposure. Those images get downloaded A LOT. It’s also a good way to see what your popular images MAY be … if you put up 1 landscape, 1 detail shot, 1 person shot, 1 abstract, etc, you get a feel for who the buyers are at that site.
Make sense? If I put up 3 different people shots, I can also get a sense of what I enjoy shooting that also sells.
Plus if you have 500 images online and put up 2 for free every week, maybe one new one, one old one - you get a LOT more exposure. Since doing that, my 123RF sales went up a lot. A LOT.
Comment by mattantonino — May 5, 2008 @ 4:09 pm
Good to hear you are going to upload more on IS with DeepMeta, I tried SS not on the same scale as you, but you have to upload loads there or the $$ drop off, but for me IS has started to tick over with just 40 images and 80 downloads, matching my SS earnings to date, with 66% less downloads.
I have book marked your site and will pop back
David (Good luck on your quest)
Comment by David (Adeptris) — May 12, 2008 @ 6:03 pm