This post was scheduled to unveil on Monday but Steven has guessed one of the stats and tried to guess a few more so I’m going to reveal it now. It’s always more fun when someone plays along so thanks!

Statistics for November

19 days

12 cities

110 hours of shooting

200 models

5000 submittable images after the trip (great guess Steven!)

48 hours driving

3150 miles driving

4000 dollar budget

Statistics for November

19

12

110

200

5000

48

3150

4000

Any guesses on what each stat goes with?

Leaf had an interesting question in the Microstock Group Forum - What are your lifetime microstock goals?

Like many photographers, my goal would be to travel all over the world. I would love to have the resources to drop everything, fly to Europe and shoot for a month. I would like to see Africa, revisit the Great Wall of China, freeze my butt off in Alaska. Life is not a journey, it’s an experience. For me, traveling would be that ultimate experience.

My top places to visit, not in any particular order:

1 ) Hawaii - I want to take my parents to Hawaii before it’s too late. My grandmother wanted to visit Hawaii and never had a chance to visit. My mother has internalized this dream herself and I feel like I must make it happen.

2 ) Australia - home of my best friend and kangaroos. What better way to spend winter in NY than NOT IN NEW YORK?

3 ) Africa - Kenya, Egypt. I would love to see the desert and the sand. View the pyramids and see old Cairo.

4 ) Italy - mainly Venice, Rome and Tuscany region. To drink wine and float down the rivers (I’ve heard gondola rides are not all that in person - I’d still like to!) And spend a relaxing week at a home in Tuscany - relaxing so far from everything I know.

5 ) The Galapagos Islands. They were on my short list of honeymoon destinations. I would like to see things you can’t see anywhere else, to experience what Darwin saw. I am about the experiences and nothing can beat seeing creatures that just shouldn’t exist, living in the wild.

6 ) Ireland. Green and castles. That’s what I think of. And rain. I would love to see the old Irish land, castles emerging from the hillsides. Stonework, architecture - what a great getaway.

7 ) Alaska - there’s something about being thousands of miles from anything you’ve ever known and in a situation beyond your immediate control that feels freeing. I speak from experience having spent a year in Korea alone. Alaska is another exotic must on my wish list.

8 ) New Orleans - strikes me as something everyone should do once. An interesting place, from all I’ve heard.

9 ) All 50 US States - what can I say, I’m a guy who likes statistics and completing tasks. 50/50 is a great stat!

10 ) Cheju Island, South Korea - I was ill and had a twisted ankle the first time I went. I would like to go back, healthy and ready to see the island for all it has. I had so many beautiful ideas about my trip there and they turned out to be … less than ideal. I would like another chance at Cheju.

How do you make all your dreams come true?

If you want to make a million dollars in microstock photography, you need to have a plan.  You need to know what it will take to get you there and then you need to do the work that you planned.

The “issue” we have most frequently is lack of images to edit & submit.  I can edit & submit quickly.  My issue is always with having enough to edit.  So the one issue we’ve struggled to address lately is how to create *many* more images - enough that I would never again worry about our lack.   We created a plan - one I’ll be drawing out over the next few months - that will give us enough images to change where we are in stock photography.

Currently we have just over 1k images up at most stock sites.  By January 31st, 2009, we expect to have 7500 images online with our plan.  According to most major lists we’ve seen (StockXpert, Dreamstime, Istock) that would put us in the top 20 of all microstock portfolios, behind only megastars in our industry.  That would be a start.

Our plan is repeatable.  If it works the way we envision in the fall, we’ll repeat it in the spring, then again after next wedding season.  By the end of 09, we believe it feasible to have 15-17k images online.  At that point, we’d be top 5 largest microstock galleries behind IOFoto, Andres and perhaps a few others by then.

Again, I’ll be sharing more details as we go along - be sure to check the comments too as I’ll drop hints along the way there too.  It’s going to be the autumn of a lifetime.

Well, there may be something good to come of all this for June anyways.  Even though I’ve been too busy to upload, the good is that I can examine what happens if I stop working for a month - and so far there are some surprising results.  Shutterstock, for example, is a site where you must “feed the beast” and always upload.  Yesterday was my best Saturday in 6 weeks even though I haven’t uploaded a new shot in awhile. 

Another benefit - all of my Qs are caught up except Fotolia.  DT, BSP, SXP - all at 0 pending.  So as of June 30, I should have a very accurate count of my “going into summer” portfolios! 

Are there more benefits to not having uploaded in a couple weeks?  I’m not sure.  I haven’t had enough time to contemplate it.  I hope to actually get some images edited this coming week and then uploaded asap.

Uploading is going very well so far in June - much faster than expected.  I realized last week that we were about $560 from our next Shutterstock raise on June 1st.  $557.38 exactly.  So my goal is to make a real Shutterstock increase and go from $300s to $500s in one month there.

To reach goal, I needed: $557.38 in 30 days or 18.75 per day.

After 4.5 days, I have $76.95 and now need $489.80 to make the next level, or $19.20 per day.  I have a new batch of images in the queue and a good push coming but obviously I’ve never made more than $10 per day average so $18 and $19 are hard goals.  Last month we averaged $9.99 per day.  That’s the record for us.  We need to about double it in one month.

I *will* hit this goal.  150 new in queue, more coming - we’ll get there.  I want the raise to kick in July 1st or before.

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

I’m so glad it’s the end of May!  I can’t wait until tonight to do earnings for tomorrow’s post!  It’s been a great month and I’m excited for the final total.  I know it’s going to be a BME on several sites - in fact, some of them were BME by the 10th or 12th so they are REALLY good BMEs!! 

Today marked the first “full” wedding of my season - which means I have to focus a bit more on my “real” business and a bit less on this “hobby” of mine for a few months.  We hadn’t actually shot a wedding in FIVE MONTHS!  We try not to shoot Dec/Jan/Feb in Syracuse - it’s too cold!  haha  This season is going to be great - even though it could potentially be one of our last 2 years or 3 years.

Subscriptions for the month:
Shutterstock - meh.
IStock - had one, got $2.39 or something around that.  Could live with that.
Fotolia - .23?!  WTF?!  I hope they are kidding.  I fear they are not. 

I’m not organized in my stock world to be full time yet so I’m glad that I am not there yet.  One major goal for June is getting my head on straight about files & folder structure.  Right now it’s a mess of doing so many images in 3 months and never really grasping from the beginning what I needed.  One example of a workflow change that June will bring is that right now, all our model releases are saved in one folder.  When you have 5 models total, who cares?  That’s a perfectly fine way to arrange it.  When you have 50, you no longer know which releases have been uploaded until you attempt to submit photos and there is no release.  Starting in June we will scan all releases to one folder (unsubmitted) and then whenever we do an upload, Sarah will upload the MRs and move them to (submitted) so that we know they are taken care of.  It’s a simple, subtle change but moving the responsibility from me to Sarah and then moving the files between status’ is going to make all the difference for MR uploading.

We finally got our new model recruitment site up at http://www.SyracuseModeling.com  Very simple, very straight - and we have a gallery online to show agencies, etc. in hopes of scoring some new models.  A lot of the wording we are still working on.  It was “borrowed” from Andres Rodriguez’s site (thanks AND sorry Andres).  I’m going to keep changing what it says until I’m 100% happy with it but for now it’s very simple, very easy and matches our model business card perfectly.

My good friend Todd at Arena Creative is now freelancing some graphic design.  If you need something done up, he’s the man. He’s also a stock photographer so I think that helps him “get” us. Also, Todd may be dragging me back into Alamy (kicking & screaming) - no CD? We’ll see about that! I could handle that - except the upsizing.

I’m a chronic measurer.  I need to know how much, how long, how many, how can I?  I measure my speed editing weddings, I measure my speed editing a portrait shoot, I measure how many images we take vs. keep, how many we shoot at a portrait session vs. a stock session.  I measure EVERYTHING.  How long my cards take to DL, how long it takes LR to import them.  I can make better decisions if I have more information.

SO - one thing I have no information on is the question “How many stock images can be edited, keyworded, uploaded & submitted in one 7 day period?” 

I’m going to find out.

In my ongoing research, I could not find a submitter who had contributed more than 1023 images in one month to Dreamstime (without having a preexisting large collection offline).  (IOFoto did 1023)  My goal is to come AS CLOSE to 1023 new images in the next 7 days as possible.  Keep in mind that there’s 2 of us - Sarah shoots.  I shoot, edit, keyword, upload & submit.  So I do have new images coming in everyday.  She shot some today, she has a 3 hour model shoot tomorrow & other ideas lined up all week.

The rules: Sunday May 25th, 12:00am until Saturday May 31st, 11:59pm.  No forums, no blogs, no IM, no email except twice a day (need to check on my clients), no anything but stock for 7 days.  Just to see what can be accomplished.  The goal: 1024 of course. *laugh* 

Serious goals:

under 200 = failure.
201 to 400 = acceptable range.
400-500 = great!
500+ = stunning & excellent!

Wish me luck - although unless you write in email or within the next 40 minutes, I won’t see it for a week!

My starting point.

Right now my motivation is dimly lit.  Not because I don’t want to do stock but because I have a full time photography job that takes up quite a bit of time.  We’re ending the offseason & starting to shoot more which means that my time is even more limited.

What have I done this month: I’ve shot a TON.  I have at least another 700 images to edit, keyword, upload, etc.  but haven’t been able to open a single stock image in the last 7 days.  I’ve edited three newborn sessions, 1 engagement session, and shot over 600 client images.  Unfortunately that doesn’t mean much for my microstock goals.

My goal this coming week is to schedule more models and start hammering this pile of images I already have.  My queues are actually quite low right now (123RF, SS, FM, SXP, FT and IS have none in queue, BSP and DT have under 50 each) so I should be able to really get to gettin!

As far as income at the halfway mark, I’ve already surpassed several agency BMEs in half a month.  I’m well on my way to a record month income-wise and can’t wait to put the final numbers together.  I hope some work in the next few weeks really pays off as well.