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

Simple and to the point this month, like my month of work.

Overall gallery increased from 5777 to 9052 but that was mostly the result of adding YayMicro and 1100 images as well as pending May images finally being reviewed.

Overall income increased to a record $524.84 and 5 agencies had a Best Month Ever despite me doing basically no work.  Not a bad month, but I hope to dramatically improve it in July.  That was disappointing.

Well, the overall did not increase as much as I would have liked, mainly in part to having an amazing Shutterstock last month with one video sale AND one EL in the same month.  That was an extra $26 to catch up just to make the same money with the same DLs.  Best Month Ever on 7 of the 9 (Istock & Dreamstime with no BME but both up from last month.)

Overall feeling this month was fantastic on the slower sites but the words of the day are “wasted opportunity.”  We had a chance to make a REAL push in May and didn’t push up to $500.  We now need to clear $600 next month to be even remotely on track.  That is going to be difficult, but I have hope!  We are crossing the 1k image mark at a few sites - and June should be our biggest portfolio increase EVER.

Best Month Ever - Shutterstock, Fotolia, Bigstockphoto, 123RF, StockXpert, FotoMind, FeaturePics.

Month Total - $448.85

Gross Nil to Mil total - $3715.47

(gain - $98.28, 28%)

March’s portfolio size - 1559
April’s portfolio size - 3839
May’s portfolio size - 5777

May 2008 Earnings
April 2008 Earnings
March 2008 Earnings

Once in awhile I like to post what’s in my queues on various sites so you get an idea of how fast (or not) some sites review and how many images I have just waiting to be seen.

Here is today’s Q-List:
123RF - 38 pending
Bigstock - 139 pending
Dreamstime - 139 pending
Fotolia - 0 pending, 90 uploaded unsubmitted
FeaturePics - 38 pending
FotoMind - 0 pending (lightning fast reviews)
IStock - 10 pending, 10 unsubmitted
Shutterstock - 38 pending
StockXpert - 51 pending

Total pending on my 9 sites - 453
Total uploaded to submit - 100
Total in “upload these” folder - 55 more per site.

What does it all mean? It means you don’t want to ever stop submitting - constant submissions should = constant reviews. The time between your reviews = the time between your last submissions on MOST microstock sites.* It doesn’t matter how long or how terrible the site’s queue is - if you submit from the time you submit your first batch forever forward, eventually you have files coming up all the time on every site for reviews. That is what you want - constant reviews = constant growth.

(* Yes, you have to factor in weekends, holidays & other non-review days as well as “beginning of month” runs from other photographers, but it’s approximately correct.)

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

I know a lot of microstockers, having been involved in some way in this business for a long time.  Where you start will vary depending on how you found microstock and the reasons you chose to get involved in the industry. 

If you are a hobbyist photographer deciding to make money from your photos, you are going to find the learning curve steep.  Things you probably considered: lighting, noise, composition.  Things you NEVER considered: model releases, taxes, commercial value, series images, design. 

If you’re a professional photographer already and jumping ship to microstock, you probably considered: business, taxes, branding, image quality.  You never considered: rejections, noise, and the value of being really good at isolations & extractions.

If you are at all serious about microstock as a way to earn your income or even make a few dollars, you will get rejected at some point.  Sometimes a reviewer on one site may get a full batch rejected on another site.  In one case, at least, a reviewer got their own images rejected on the site they reviewed for!  So yes, it’s going to happen to you. 

People deal with rejection in their own ways - this isn’t going to be a diatribe on “how to get over it” or how to deal with rejections.  You, individually, either will take it as “do better, try again” or “screw it, I’m taking my ball & going home.”  You will *never* understand all of the reasons for rejections.  We just yesterday had an image rejected on Dreamstime because it was a silhouette and I added a Model Release.  You don’t apparently need a MR on Dreamstime for silhouettes (like you do other sites) so my image was rejected for: “Image does not contain a recognizable person, no model release needed.  Please correct the issue and resubmit.”  If I had not put a MR on Shutterstock’s upload, it would have been rejected for having no MR.  If that doesn’t convince you that you will *never* understand 100% of your rejections…

Here are your action options when you get a rejection:
1) Quit microstock completely.  Happens all the time.
2) Be angry, flail about a bit, post about it on some microstock forum or other.  Fail to understand. Fail to improve.
3) Completely understand, actually praise the reviewer, and try again.
4) Put the image in a resubmit to folder and resubmit it.
5) Ignore the rejection and submit more photos, trying to get better.

Those are really the bulk of your options.  Two are non-productive.  Three have the possibility of being more productive.  Rejections suck.  Sometimes you have to decide to cut losses - and “quit microstock” but on a site by site basis.  There will be some changes to my list next month, especially related to that particular topic.  It does nobody any good to submit 1000 images to a site that isn’t looking for your work.  At the same time, the only way to make money in microstock is to add more images, improve your quality.

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.