Ok, so August was exactly what I expected - our busiest month and the least likely to result in any new stock. Other than a couple of trial images to show people how stock works, I didn’t upload one image this month for the first time since March. I feel terrible about how August went and Sept may not be a ton better.

We’re preparing for our trip in Sept. as well as launching a new Picture Infinity website on the 12th. We have a bridal show on the 14th and our trip starts October 8th. Once we get back from the trip, we have one more wedding and then it’s on. If you’re wondering when I’m going to kick it into another gear and start down the road of finding Mil, that’s the time. In the meantime..

Total earnings for August 2008 - $415.82

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.

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

April 2008 Earnings
March 2008 Earnings

Here are my favorite images approved in April, one from each site (easy to find my folio that way too!)  Canstock has not approved one image in April so they can’t play.

April is so far all about the pending images.

123RF - 39 pending
Bigstock - 42 pending
Canstock - 99 pending
Crestock - 65 pending
Dreamstime - 65 pending
FeaturePics - 65 pending
Fotolia - 32 pending
FotoMind - 11 pending
IStock - 20 pending
LuckyOliver - 65 pending
Shutterstock - 48 pending
StockXpert - 109 pending

Here is my current top 5 3 Pet Peeves list:

1) BigstockPhoto is not taking uploads again.  “File uploading has been temporarity disabled to allow us to reduce the number of files waiting review in the Approval Queue.”  Hint - if this happens twice in a week, hire more reviewers.  In fact, I’ll work cheap.  Here’s the problem with stopping the queue - nobody stops shooting.  We don’t all take a break and say “Bigstock wants to catch up, let’s not shoot this weekend.”  So when they resume uploads, we do a mass dump of like 100 pictures on them.  It’s insane.

2) Shutterstock’s “new image feeding frenzy” is out of control.  If you didn’t upload it in the last month, it’s doing about 1/10th the DL of a new image.  Makes me want to delete & re up my entire folio once a month.

3) Long review times.  Yes, I mean you Bigstock, Canstock, Istock and StockXpert!  5 days, max.  That’s gotta be a hard & fast rule by some agency someday.  5 days, review, max.  MAX.  123RF, Fotolia, FotoMind, Dreamstime, Shutterstock - all been blazing quick lately.

Remember those 28 images I sped through?

Here are the acceptance rates and times:

123RF - reviewed on 3/31/08 (3 days), accepted 28/28.

BigStock - reviewed on 4/3 (6 days), accepted 26/28.

Canstock - unreviewed as of 4/5/08.

Crestock - reviewed on 4/1/08 (4 days), accepted 9/28.

Dreamstime -reviewed on 4/2/08 (5 days), accepted 28/28.

FeaturePics - reviewed on 4/1/08 (4 days), accepted 28/28.

Fotolia - reviewed on 3/28/08 (within 2 hours), accepted 12/28.

FotoMind - reviewed on 3/28/08 (within 2 hours), accepted 28/28.

Istock - reviewed 14 out of 20 on 4/4/08 (within 7 days), accepted 6/14.

Lucky Oliver - reviewed on 3/29/08 (about 14 hours), accepted 23/28.

Shutterstock -reviewed on 3/29/08 (about 26 hours), accepted 22/28.

StockXpert -unreviewed as of 4/5/08.

March was an all around Best Month EVER. Shutterstock was BME and double last month’s sales on 94 new images. Dreamstime was almost 4x my BME. The new sites got into the act late in the month - Crestock, SXP, LO and FotoMind all pulled their first sales. Slightly down month on Bigstock and 123RF.

Month total - $191.64

Last month’s total portfolio - 657. This month’s total portfolio - 1936!!!! Huge growth. I hope sales can only go the same direction. All-time will pass $3k this month, around mid month. $82.70 needed.

This is going to be a treat I think.  I’m at the beginning of uploading 28 images to every site we use.  Yes, IStock included.  That’s why it’s going to be so much fun.  This is a timed test  and hopefully we can all learn *something* from this. 

The first thing I learned after timing the FTP upload is that all sites were the same - they can accept our images as fast as we can push them.  So about 21 mins for 28 images all around seemed to be almost dead-on for every agency.

123RF
Processing time on site: 3 mins.
Categories & Submission: 2 mins.
Total: 5 mins for submission and 26 minutes for 28 images, start to finish.  Because there are no categories and I used IPTC data, there was really nothing to it.  Adding the two model releases were very simple and would be simple even if I had all 28 images as MR.

BigStockPhoto
Total: “File uploading has been temporarity disabled to allow us to reduce the number of files waiting review in the Approval Queue.”  Unfortunately due to a technical issue and backlog of files, BSP was not available to do this test.  They are normally very quick and I am interested when they come back up to finish this.

CanstockPhoto
Processing time on site: 12 mins.
Categories & Submission: 4 mins.
Total: 16 mins. While it took 16 minutes to process these images, I thought about my affiliation with Canstock.  As anyone who’s read this blog knows, I’m not fond of this site anymore.  I like Duncan.  I think he’s a nice guy.  16 minutes to process is 3 times as long as 123RF took and I make about 1/8th the money on the same images.   This is officially my last upload to Canstock until I have minions uploading for me.

Crestock
Processing time on site: 11 mins.
Categories & Submission: 4 mins.
Total: 15 mins.  The processing time was long at Crestock and I know my approval rate is going to be low compared to other sites.  The process was EASY however and 4 mins to submit is fairly quick.  I don’t mind the upload process here so if I can get fewer rejections and more sales, I’ll be entirely happy with 15 mins per 28 images or roughly 120 per hour.

Dreamstime
Processing time on site: instant! 
Categories & Submission: 12 mins.
Total: 12 mins. Dreamstime was a fairly quick submission process to me.  I dislike categorizing, especially on multiple sites because you need to learn what they each consider categories and there’s no way to embed categories.  Otherwise it’s not bad.  Considering how much income I’ll get from these 28 images compared to something like 123RF, spending 2.5x the time is worth it.  My income on Dreamstime this month is going to be roughly 20x my 123RF income.  So 3x the work is more than adequate although I’d love this to be a 3 minute upload of course.

FeaturePics
Processing time on site: instant!
Categories & Submission: 4 mins.
Total: 4 mins. If my current earnings weren’t $0.00, I’d say wow!  Right now I’ll say it’s simple.  It takes me 5 mins per 30 images to submit including a couple with MRs and all the smoke missing its IPTC data etc.  This is a site that 50 of a single theme could easily be submitted in 10 mins or less.  That’s extremely quick and I’m happy with FP so far this way.

Fotolia
Processing time on site: instant!
Categories & Submission: 9 mins.
Total: 9 mins.  Given my batch of recent rejections, I was actually hoping Fotolia would be a touch quicker.  I also HATE that I can’t figure out how to attach a model release if I forget it during submission.  That basically means I have a rejected photo and I have to reupload it.  It’s SOO infuriating when you WATCH yourself make a mistake and have no way to instantly fix it.  Other than that, doing batches at Fotolia is fast.  Doing a bunch of random stuff is MUCH more time consuming.  I did smoke and textures and then a few random ones - the smoke & textures flew in no time.  The random stuff took most of that 9 mins.

FotoMind
Processing time on site: 1 minute!
Categories & Submission: 7 mins.
Total: 8 mins.  FotoMind’s total is superquick especially when you consider two things: 1) they are getting new servers next week which should make the site move even quicker.  2) I messed up somehow.  My IPTC data was not on title for many of these images and I kept making a mistake of not removing the & keyword here so I had to resubmit the images some times 2-3 times.  I probably could have done the entire submission in 6 total minutes so that is very close to my 123RF time, which is fastest so far.   I’m very happy with the FotoMind upload procedure.  I also read something about we can categorize after acceptance?  I’m not sure how this works but if true, once FotoMind rejects more images, you could save SO MUCH TIME by categorizing only those that were accepted.  I’m amazed that other sites don’t let you do this.  (Chris if you want to comment, I know you’re going to read this - let me know what I’m meaning here…I know there’s something like this.)

Istock
Start to finish on Image Manager: 29 mins. 
Total: 29 mins.  Ok, I’m going to share some honesty here.  I’m happy with 29 minutes for IStock.  I honestly would have guessed it taking at least 45 if not 60.  AND I think I can get faster.  I’m not used to using their system so I’m guessing 28 images could be done in 20 mins.  Given that I make a lot of income with them, I am actually going back on my word here and resuming Istock uploads effective today.  I will get myself a nice long queue going to submit 20 at a time.  I don’t hate Image Manager .5 as much as I did the last one.

LuckyOliver
Processing time on site: instant!
Categories & Submission: 4 mins.
Total: 4 mins. Blazing quickness!  The only reason this wasn’t 100% FASTER even was the same issue with the smoke’s IPTC data.  It must be incorrect as multiple sites have now had issues with it.  If the IPTC data was correct, this would have taken ONE MINUTE to do all 28 images.  LO’s speed is very very VERY hard to beat.

Shutterstock
Processing time on site: instant!
Categories & Submission: 4 mins.
Total: 4 mins.  Considering sales, considering everything else - Shutterstock is definitely one of the best “per hour” moneymakers on microstock.  BY FAR. 

StockXpert
Processing time on site: 1 min.
Categories & Submission: 5 mins.
Total: 6 mins.  I think.  I’m still learning StockXpert’s site - I have 3 images that weren’t reviewed in my last batch.  No clue why.  I just “submitted” the 28 images, I think?  I have had sales there now so I did something right once.  IF I just did it correctly, same series and similar images are SUPER easy and StockXpert and different images are much more difficult.

I will be tracking my acceptance rates at these sites as well for this batch so you’ll know if I uploaded 28 to SS and all get rejected but I sell 10 of them next month at Dreamstime, what we actually make per hour including rejects. 

Most important stuff I learned:

• REALLY check IPTC data before uploading.  I must’ve given myself an extra hour of work all total in fixing my mistakes.
• Istock isn’t as bad as I remember.
• Depending on rejections and income in the future, Crestock may not be the site for me.

Final Times for 28 images:

• Lucky Oliver - 4 mins.
• Shutterstock - 4 mins.
• FeaturePics - 4 mins.
• 123RF - 5 mins.
• StockXpert - 6 mins.
• FotoMind - 8 mins.
• Fotolia - 9 mins. 
• Dreamstime - 12 mins.
• Crestock -  15 mins.
• Canstock - 16 mins.
• Istock - 29 mins.
• Bigstock - pending

Something I want to do is figure out which sites I want to be on.  To do that, I feel like I should get on as much as possible, test them for awhile, then make a rational and educated decision without using someone else’s data.

To further that end, my goal in April is to submit 100 of the same exact photos to 6 new agencies (MostPhotos, SnapVillage, PantherMedia, StockRiot, Zymmetrical, and PhotoLibrary).  At the end of a few months, I’ll check in on the sales at those sites and see which ones I will finish uploading the rest of my library to.  I am not going to constantly check their earnings or add it to the N2M totals until the project is done.  My goal is to find one (MostPhotos? Zymm?) that I will continue to upload to that will replace CanstockPhoto, which I am through with.

What’s your plan for April?

One week to go in March and here are my random thoughts:

* 123RF - way more images (4x) need new sales now.
* Bigstock - 10x the images, need my first sale of the month!
* Canstock - who?
* Crestock - looking for sale #1 to happen this week.  Then I’ll add more images I hope.
* Dreamstime - BME?  Maybe.  Who’s this random referral generating me $10 a month?
* FeaturePics - first sale…looking for first sale.
* Fotolia - need to finish my uploads so April starts off synched across agencies.
* FotoMind - 2 sales in a week.  Can it keep going?
* Istock - Isuck at uploading here.  Maybe I’ll do some… in April.  Not likely though.
* LO - need that first batch reviewed so I can make some mental notes and move on.  Want a folio here.
* Shutterstock - BME.  Yep.
* StockXpert - first reviews, first sale… we hope it goes well.

My 2 biggest agencies - DT and SS - are going to have Best Months Ever.  In fact neither should honestly be close.  My BME on SS is 136 sales and I’m currently at 122 with 8 full days including 6 weekdays left to go.

I can’t wait to post my first update on N2M and see where I am on earnings for March.  I know it’s going to be a great month.

Need more images shot.  I have a lot of “real work” on my desktop right now though so I need to get through that so I can focus on my microstock.  Right now I’m a bit backed up from this massive synch.