Posts Tagged ‘stockxpert’
January’s been pretty good, a couple of nice surprises in the form of a $100 referral and $25 Extended license at Dreamstime, and January as a whole feels to have been a busy sales month.
CanStockPhoto has had some Fotosearch sales, one nice ‘Fotosearch regular sale’ brought in $19.80 and a trickle of subs sales from Fotosearch… looking more promising that CSP has for ages! (ever before!)
I’ve actually managed some uploading, and I’m still at it, I’m going to have to do some overnight (un-metered) uploading or I’m going to bust out of my ISP’s 15Gig/month limit an I’ll start getting charged more (£1/Gigabyte).
Considering that I’ve got myself a new project, of Beer brewing, I’ve done quite well with the keywording and editing this month, I have a batch of 103 waiting to go up to a couple more of the sites and lots of already approved images at Stockxpert though iStock have rejected quite a few of the first 20. Also I have another batch of 28 which is edited, keyworded and ready to go, iStock is going to take a while at 20/week in the queue and I notice that Dreamstime has set a 25/day limit on adding to the inspection queue too.
I’ve stopped uploading to Mostphotos and YaY Micro for the moment as its going to be counter-productive if nothing actually sells there!
Here’s the Lookstat graph:
Lookstat’s new feature is pretty cool, its an image specific stats function that lets you drill down through an individual file and check out its sales over time. Obviously this is only across iStock, Shutterstock and Dreamstime at the moment but from what I read over at their blog we’ll soon have Fotolia too… Quite an exciting prospect being able to cross-reference the sales of a particular file on all these sites and see their true full earnings, fingers crossed for Stockxpert next 😉
All-time earnings averages pie chart:
The Leader board looks like this:
Dreamstime just edging ahead of Fotolia, which is probably due to good referrals and an Extended License sale at Dreamstime and the exact opposite at Fotolia.
All in all I have cashed-out $483.30 in January, which is above my current average of $401.65, not a bad first month to say we are in this (bogus) Recession!
We would be creeping out of recession if people would just start to spend again, so come on folks go buy the thing you were thinking of buying but just holding off to wait and see what the financial climate does. Spend wisely and save, but remember to spend, pay off those debts too!
Though I do like the USD-GPB exchange rate at present, watching the exchange rates can net you a few extra monetary units in PayPal with a bit of balance swapping or cashing out 😉
December ’08 Microstock Stock Stats, this time using Lookstat.com
Current supported sites are iStockphoto, Dreamstime & Shutterstock, with Fotolia, 123rf & Stockxpert to follow.
December has been a slow month for sales with the only real event being an Extended license sale at Dreamstime, iStock worked hardest and Shutterstock sold most but made less money! I’ve been pretty slack with uploading, editing, and keywording for a good part of this year maybe I should make a new years resolution to get my finger out! 😉 Lately I’ve had computer problems and had to upgrade spending over £500 on Mobo, CPU, RAM & PSU (Acronym city!!!) and I’ve spent a good bit of time on my really old PC and installed ubuntu and had a good play around in Linux for the first time… *Maybe this is the way computer operating systems ‘should‘ work, its been enjoyable finding that almost everything I need is contained within the Ubuntu environment, albeit running on a slow-as-old-AMD Athlon system. I’d encourage anyone who uses a computer for general stuff to concider installing Ubuntu linux. 
Back to Stock, here’s the Lockstat view of my stock History on the current three sites:
No referral earnings will be in these numbers (Adding my referral earnings to these stats would bumb them up quite a bit).
As for features I’d like to see in Lookstat:
- Track an individual files’ sales history
- Show the Sell Through rates for each site
- Average Monthly figure for each site
- Specify an exact date period to show stats
- Further site additions of Canstockphoto, Crestock & Bigstockphoto
Now, the question… “Would I pay for this Service” ?
Not sure, it is interesting to see whish files sell the best, but for the most part I find it easy to keep my own little spreadsheet to keep track of my sales and site stats. If I was to pay for it, the amount would have to be low enough so as to be offset by an hour of my time earch month with my own spreadsheet.
My first ‘On Demand’ sale at shutterstock looks promising at $2.48 for 1 sale, much better than the original subscription payout level I’m on of $0.33 per sale 🙂 Lets hope for more of these 🙂
Shutterstock could claw back some potential buyers that might have been defecting to istockphoto with this, and its going to keep the photographers happy too. 🙂
Description:
Coffee cup stains, a range of cups and other round things were used to print these stain marks with pigmented black ink, scanned at high res.
Keywords:
background, base, beverage, black, bottle, bottom, caffeine, circle, coaster, coffee, cruddy, cup, design, desk, dirt, drink, drips, element, glass, grunge, grungy, ink, liquid, mark, mess, messy, mono, mug, old, paint, paper, pattern, prints, rings, round, runs, single, spill, splatter, stain, texture, used, water, wet, white
Image Buyers Click below:
Photographers sell your work and make money, Click below:
My first ‘Urban Exploration or Urbex’ photo sale 🙂 I’m glad a couple of stock sites had the the forethought to accept ‘Dark photos’ without branding them as ‘Poor lighting’, so far the excellent Dreamstime and Stockxpert have accepted my dark railway tunnel shots. I’m hoping that istock will accept once they get re-reviewed by scout! *fingers crossed*
© Photographer: Pdtnc | Agency: Dreamstime.com
Description:
Shadow figure – The Darkness of a Disused Railway Tunnel in North Yorkshire, shots taken with long exposures and a mixture of available light and torch light, light painted to reveal the textures and brickwork of a forgotten age.
Keywords:
arch, architecture, brickwork, dark, darkness, disused, exploration, figure, inside, light, painting, railway, shadow, stonework, tunnel, urban, urbex, light painting, ravenscar, north yorkshire
Royalty Free – My Sell through Rates
Posted on: June 8, 2008
After reading the article over at www.microstockdiaries.com I decided I should work my own Sell thru Rate out, you can read the article for yourselves if you need to know how to work it out 😉 I like these results because they are in no way influenced by referrals or referral earnings.
| Sold Images | Total Images | Sell thru Rate | |
| Istockphoto | 322 | 815 | 0.3951 |
| Canstockphoto | 105 | 949 | 0.1106 |
| Bigstockphoto | 125 | 801 | 0.1561 |
| Fotolia | 292 | 786 | 0.3715 |
| Dreamtime | 397 | 844 | 0.4704 |
| Shutterstock | 584 | 717 | 0.8145 |
| Stockxpert | 216 | 797 | 0.2710 |
| 123RF | 135 | 943 | 0.1432 |
| Crestock | 34 | 372 | 0.0914 |
| Total= | 2.8237 |
This makes for some interesting viewing, it shows some subtle differences in what I thought were the best selling sites:
| The Leader Board For Sell-Thru: | The Leader Board for Sales: |
| 1/ Shutterstock | 1/ Shutterstock |
| 2/ Dreamstime | 2/ iStockphoto |
| 3/ iStockphoto | 3/ Fotolia |
| 4/ Fotolia | 4/ Dreamstime |
| 5/ Stockxpert | 5/ Stockxpert |
| 6/ BigStockPhoto | 6/ 123RF |
| 7/ 123RF | 7/ BigStockPhoto |
| 8/ CanStockPhoto | 8/ CanStockPhoto |
| 9/ Crestock | 9/ Crestock |
So now we can see that apart from Shutterstock still being ‘the daddy’, Dreamstime is out in front of iStock which ties into the sales pattern I get from Dreamstime which always seems to sell images of all ages whether newly submitted or older images that I never thought would sell. You do hear about the different agencies weighting their search alogirithm (a mathematical equation that filters the results) in favour of new images and ‘best match’ etc and I’d say this pretty much proves that.
Or… maybe its the easy way that Dreamstime give you referral image HTML code for self promotional use helps ease it in front of iStock?! Because its easier, due to Dreamstime’s features, I self-promote my DT images there more than any other agency. Hmmm… *strokes chin* 😉
My shot is at the top left, the ‘Bicycles in Beijing’ 🙂 I found this image with images.devilfinder.com which I’d never used before but someone had found my blog with it so I gave it a go and did a bit of searching for myself. Its nice to see myself, my photography, in print 🙂 I’d be unsure which agency it was purchased from so here’s the list of places you can buy my shot:
www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=1428098
www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=1579898
www.canstockphoto.com/Beijing-China—Bike-0248905.php
www.canstockphoto.com/Beijing-China—Bike-0248878.php
www.bigstockphoto.com/photo/view/432162
www.bigstockphoto.com/photo/view/432165
www.fotolia.com/id/439726/
www.fotolia.com/id/439730/
www.dreamstime.com/beijing-china—portrait-view-of-bicycles-rimage585212
www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=1415610
www.stockxpert.com/browse.phtml?f=view&id=111143
www.stockxpert.com/browse.phtml?f=view&id=111122
www.123rf.com/photo_510860.html
www.123rf.com/photo_510764.html
Description:
Stock Photo In Beijing, China, Tiananmen Square / Beihai Park, Forbidden City…
Keywords:
bicycle, bike, pavement, walkway, sidewalk, ancient, architecture, beihai, beijing, bowuguan, building, chairman, china, chinese, city, clear, communism, communist, communists, courtyard, cultural, dynasty, emperor, flag, forbidden, gate, gugon, heavenly, historic, history, imperial, landmark, mandarin, mao, ming, monument, ornate, pagoda, palace, park, pavilion, peace, peking, peoples, prc, qing, red, republic, revolution, roof, shang, shrine, sky, square, summer, temple, tianamen, tiananmen, tree, zedong,
Here’s the Dreamstime referral image: 🙂
© Photographer: Pdtnc | Agency: Dreamstime.com
The tables below shows current earnings on a per-site basis giving accurate daily and monthly averages, images sold, online totals and length of time being a member.
| Stock | Average / Day | Average/ Month |
| Istockphoto | 1.69 USD | 51.31 USD |
| CanStockPhoto | 0.11 USD | 3.48 USD |
| BigStockPhoto | 0.23 USD | 6.92 USD |
| Fotolia | 1.07 USD | 32.71 USD |
| Dreamstime | 1.48 USD | 45.11 USD |
| Shutterstock | 2.36 USD | 71.97 USD |
| StockXpert | 0.83 USD | 25.28 USD |
| 123RF | 0.21 USD | 6.38 USD |
Current Royalty Free stock earnings for each site.
| Stock | Earnings Totals |
| Istockphoto | 1,013.12 USD |
| CanStockPhoto | 53.95 USD |
| BigStockPhoto | 107.38 USD |
| Fotolia | 503.96 USD |
| Dreamstime | 699.57 USD |
| Shutterstock | 884.36 USD |
| StockXpert | 378.80 USD |
| 123RF | 74.78 USD |
Sales and Images online totals.
| Stock | Sales | Images Online |
| Istockphoto | 1558 | 573 |
| CanStockPhoto | 87 | 717 |
| BigStockPhoto | 156 | 592 |
| Fotolia | 441 | 632 |
| Dreamstime | 822 | 614 |
| Shutterstock | 2983 | 580 |
| StockXpert | 335 | 671 |
| 123RF | 140 | 686 |
The total length of time in days that I have been submitting images to the sites.
| Earning Days | Stock |
| 601 | Istockphoto |
| 472 | CanStockPhoto |
| 472 | BigStockPhoto |
| 469 | Fotolia |
| 472 | Dreamstime |
| 374 | Shutterstock |
| 456 | StockXpert |
| 357 | 123RF |
My current league table is as follows:
- Shutterstock – for sheer volume of sales
- iStockphoto – my current favourite, though longest running, earner
- Dreamstime – surely this place is going to be nipping at the heals of istock soon
- Fotolia – is getting better and more reliable earner, quite possibly the best for referral earnings too
- StockXpert – steady earner, great upload features
- BigStockPhoto – Slow trickle
- 123RF – an equally slow trickle but showing more promise due to the length of time I’ve been submitting
- CanStockPhoto – drip…….. drip……………… drip………………. Obviously not a place where my images sell! Nice place, shame about the lack of sales
🙂
Four new stock sites….
Posted on: May 31, 2007
- In: Links
- Leave a Comment
Its been a while since i posted anything to do with stock images, and I’m in a major need to update my online stock image report from my spreadsheet. This I shall get around to soon-ish, erm honest! 😉
For now though I am going to dip my stock toe in the water of 4 other Royalty Free sites and see if the water is Hot, Warm, Cold, or bloody freezing!
For this experiment I shall be using the following to sell my imagery wares to the design community:
Kinda cool quirky site… ever-so polite approval system.
Fairly easy submission process, lets see how it goes.
Lacks a referral scheme but its a pretty usable site.
Lacks a sensible (so far as i’ve read) referral scheme, they don’t want to accept my images yet as its not to their ‘style’, quite possibly the ‘Bakers Dozen’… Number 13 bread roll I dropped on the floor and the dog licked it.
These 4 sites are obviously going to take a back seat to my others so don’t expect any instant results! 🙂
Probably Due To Network Congestion 
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