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.

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’ve been having some fun with fractal images lately - and the sales are “ok” on them.  As I get better, I hope sales improve as well!  I’ve only sent them to Shutterstock so far - they approved most of these.  I hope the other agencies like fracs!  (These were all made in APO 3d Hack which ROCKS! Download here)

 In all, I’ve probably made 30 of these in the last 2 days.  I figured out the difference between a 5 hour render (yuck!) and a 5 minute render (woohooty!) and I’m spending most of my time doing the 5 minute variety so I can get better at these much quicker.

So what happened?  Did I fail?  Why am I back already?

Well the answers are long & complex - I learned a lot the last 4 days though.  I  have submitted just over 400 images in 4 days.  If I kept going, I would have made a serious run at 1k in 7 days so why stop?

The answer lies in my beliefs going into the challenge.  I believed that it was easier to shoot 1000 images than to take them from the camera to the stock agency.  I was wrong.  The single most difficult and time consuming part of the microstock process is to shoot stock worthy images.  Period.

The second reason we ‘quit’ our challenge early is that my computer bit it.  I spent 11 hours on the FIRST DAY changing over to a brand new 4 gig RAM Vista machine.  I’m not familiar with Vista so there was a learning curve.  Add in the 11 hours out and I was already behind.  When I realized I had to start shooting, it was over.

I gave up the challenge because Sarah & I simply could not *together* shoot fast enough to keep images coming.  As of right now, I have under 50 images left to process.  I thought that we could add shoots this week, we’d have plenty of images.  It simply wasn’t true.  If you are going to “add 1000 images” in 7 days, you need to have a backlog.  You can’t add 1000 AND shoot 1000 in one week.  I don’t believe it’s possible.

Here’s more of what I learned:

* I can edit, keyword, upload and submit about 10 pictures per hour.  This meant during my 12 hour days, I would put between 110 and 150 images online.  If I did longer days, I could easily hit 200 images in one day.

* No matter how tireless a worker you are, you will get tired at the end of 16 hours of editing, keywording and uploading.  If you do it for 4 days in a row, you will be exhausted. 

* If you shoot 40-70 useable images per model session, over 1-2 hours, you can upload 500 images per week (10 hrs of shooting, 50 hrs of editing, kw, upload & submitting).  You could * with difficulty* do about 600.  At my speeds, you’d average a 12 hour day everyday 7 days a week though.  The most you can reasonably add is 400-600 per week.  Anything more is blitzing and it’s less likely you can keep that up for a long time.  Of course at 600 per week for 6 months, you’d be retired or very close!

In June, I’m doing this again but with a much different plan.  I will evaluate more and figure out what needs to be done - needless to say, however, records are made to be broken. If I disappointed anyone by not making the goal, sorry.  Once the lessons from this first time had been learned and learned, there was no real reason to keep myself offline.

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.

There are so many ways to put this raise into different “perspectives” and all seem legitimate.  Before we do, let’s review the original announcement:

“Dear Submitters:

We wanted to let you know that we’ve been working hard on the details of your 2008 commission increase, and we think you’ll be very pleased with the new terms. … We expect to be able to announce the raise to you during the first two weeks of May. It will be effective immediately.”

Now, the ways to view this:

* “very pleased” does not equal = no raise for under $500 and .03 for under $3000.
* “Dear Submitters…your commission increase” = all submitters, not just those over $3000 in earnings.
* “during the first two weeks of May” = sometime on the 13th or 14th of course.
* 10% raise for all “real” submitters (over $500 earnings) is more than your “real job” gives.
* 27% raise for top tier submitters is fantastic/27% raise for top tier is subpar to all other sites.
* No raises were promised, be happy with what you get.
* If .30 was worth it yesterday, .33 is better tomorrow.
* SS raised their rates across the board but not everyone gets more money now.

My way of viewing the raise has evolved over the last 12 hours.  My immediate reactions were anger, disgust, sadness, and ultimately concern over my business plan.  Now? 

I think I feel like this - yesterday, I submitted to SS for .30 and was “happy enough” with it to put in the work.  Why would I stop at .33?  Add in the fact that I’ll be making .36 in a couple months and my raise will be 20%.  Honestly, that satisfies me personally. 

I’m still sad for the <$500 earners.  Their images sell for just as much as mine do and they get a much smaller piece of the pie.  I still think Shutterstock went about this entire process the wrong way.  Expectation management is a huge part of business and doing things like “the first two weeks” ending up being the 13th and “very pleased” ending with half or more people “very pissed” instead - it just doesn’t add up to good customer/client service management.  They botched it, whether you like the raise or not.

And if you made less than $500 all time, you don’t get one.

Well, it’s somewhat of a raise.  I’m in the .03 category for another couple months.  Can’t say I’m happy.  Could say I’m disappointed.  Will most definitely not be submitting 100% of my best images to SS anymore.  I’ll probably send 95% to SS and keep the other 5% exclusive to DT and see how that works out.  I think it doesn’t matter if they’re my best images or not, if they’re new they will sell on SS.

A lot of people will have reactions to this - good, bad or otherwise.  For now, I’m going to try to just bite my tongue & take my “raise.”  I’ll voice my concerns in a letter.

Dear Shutterstock,

Please learn expectation management.

Love,

Matt

—-

Dear Istock,

You’re welcome.

Love,

Shutterstock

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.)