RPI = the valueless statistic

Published by mattantonino on July 01, 2008 at 02:39 PM in Microstock World

I read a lot of microstock blogs - every one that I know about. I hear a LOT about RPI, return per image.

This stat has no value, month to month. I’m sorry, but it’s true. It’s an interesting stat, but has no value. Sort of like innings pitched for baseball or blocks per 48 minutes for basketball. (Kenny George averaged a triple double per 48 minutes last year for UNC-Whatever…he still didn’t get chosen in the NBA draft).

RPI has no value for two reasons:
1) As your collection grows, older stuff gets pushed aside and newer stuff makes the majority of your income. RPI would have more value if you only counted your top 200 images every month. Then you’d at least have a measurable stat. By measuring your lowest images as well, you’re saying “well, I made 10 cents per image this month and 11 cents last month so my RPI is down” - so? Last month you had 650 images and made $71.50 This month you had 900 images and made $90. Your RPI is down but income is up and those new images helped increase you $28.50 or 11.4 cents per image. Basically, the older images can hold you down.

2) As the stock agency’s collection grows, your RPI is absolutely positively *always* going to drop. The only thing you can do about that is increase your gallery faster than the market increases. If market share increases 3%, increase by 6%. Your RPI may go up - it may drop. In the end, your earnings *will* increase.

RPI is not a terrible stat. Statistics should help us - they should show us a path and lead us to a new plan or future. What RPI shows is a snapshot but it’s not comparable month to month. I made $82 with 161 images online. RPI of $.50 Last month I made $400 on 1000 images. RPI of $.25 OH NOES - my RPI is tanking! I only increased income 5x but my RPI dropped.

So RPI - dead to rights. Forget it. If you’re not increasing your portfolio, your earnings will drop. Older images sell less. No news there. If you’re increasing your portfolio, RPI will rise slightly then drop. Every.single.time. No news there either guys - sorry.

If you truly care about your RPI, dump your worst 10% of your portfolio every month - your RPI will triple.

4 Comments »

  1. I agree. The most important stat is earnings per month per site. Assuming you have uploaded all photos to each site (different levels of rejection are not an issue), the site witht he highest earnings is the best site.

    Comment by CJPhoto — July 1, 2008 @ 4:27 pm

  2. I was looking into that recently i agree that RPI can be misleading. I was calculating a batch RPI more representative but it works really well only on SS…..

    http://microstockexperiment.blogspot.com/2008/06/metrics-to-track-portfolio-monthly.html

    Comment by laurent — July 2, 2008 @ 6:12 am

  3. [...] RPI is calculated by taking your monthly earnings and dividing by the number of images in your portfolio. RPI is a good indicator of the performance of your portfolio relative to your own portfolio over time and as compared to others (although some are disputing it’s usefulness). [...]

    Pingback by jrtb » Blog Archive » Comparing RPI and STR of stock photographers — July 3, 2008 @ 10:20 am

  4. “If you truly care about your RPI, dump your worst 10% of your portfolio every month - your RPI will triple”

    Number of $$$$ is more important to me. :D I agree.. what a waste of time recording this stat!

    Comment by Captured — July 5, 2008 @ 3:57 am

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment