Microstock earning for May, 2009

May is over...yet another month has gone by and brings us more money via passive microstock earnings.

The whole point of these sites (stock photography and illustration websites) is to upload files and sit back and watch them earn money. Passive is kind of misleading because the real fact of the matter is that the more files you upload, the better chance you have of earning for that particular month.

Take, for example, Shutterstock - We (my wife Tracey and I) uploaded 148 files in March (we had a lot more free time on our hands apparently...and it was our first full month doing microstock, so we were full of verve!) and even without the pay increase (that we reached in April) we still made $254.86. In April the total downloads were down by about a hundred, but because of the pay increase (from 25 cents per download to 33 cents) we made $284.81 and only uploaded 62 files. In May we've been extremely busy with freelance work, so we were only able to muster 13 file uploads. And because of that our downloads were down and our total earning was at a 3 month low at $223.50.

But considering we spent a combined 2 or 3 hours creating those files in Illustrator, we still came out pretty well...

A (tiny) bright spot for the month of May was Istockphoto. We've been trying since February to get accepted (they had all sorts of wacky rules and regulations that, for one reason or other, got us rejected 3 times...heh)...and finally we were accepted into the fold in April...only to have the majority of our files (even the most popular of our shutterstock files) rejected. It was disheartening, but a small batch made it through each week and we ended up having a small portfolio of 31. And for the port to be that small and still come away with the second highest earnings for all of the stock companies we're a part of is pretty terrific. And when we finally have more time we'll have time to upload more and build on this small, but impressive portfolio...so good things will happen soon enough.

Dreamstime was the next surprise of the month. They came on strong from the previous month (from 28 to 43 dollars)...and while there were lulls in downloads, there were a bunch of expensive downloads...which is always nice.

In any case - we still made almost $350 for the month - without even really trying. And that's the beauty of Microstock. I almost regret the hundreds of files we made back in March (because we were throwing things up online...not really taking the time to craft quality illustrations)...so when I do end up having more time (probably in July) I think that'll be a major focus...and we'll see if bigger sales follow...

I'd suggest that anyone should take the time to sign up to one or more of these agencies - with Shutterstock being the easiest to get in to as well as the easiest to earn money at. Second would probably be Istockphoto - but they're a bit harder to get approved, and they are quite strict with what they approve...

IF: Adapting

This is a portion of the illustration I'm currently painting...I've procrastinated for the past week on it...but I'm finally at it - It's about half way done now...I had wanted to finish this weekend, but it looks like it'll end up going into next week a little bit.

What's been the biggest struggle is adapting these real life animals into these square little critters. I have a group that I've been drawing for a while (the panda, pigs, and skunk) - so I have those under control - but it's the other animals that I'm working through...



I've done several revisions to this piece when it was just a line drawing - a piece of that was assigning an animal to each character that I had drawn...but through that I still had to go back into the illustrator file and revise the fox character several times before it looked enough like a fox (for my taste)...like adding the darker hands, feet and ears...which I previously hadn't thought about...

Anyway - as you can see, there are a lot of characters still to color (and this is only a portion of the piece....so I'll be here a while...

But it's coming along - and I'm enjoying the process..even though it is a little slow....

IF: Adapt - The sun...

It's been a pretty quiet month on shutterstock for Tracey and I. There just hasn't been any time to put anything new up - and it's reflected in our sales...

What one should be doing, if they want to have any hope of being successful at stock illustration/photography, is adapting to what the market wants...and/or adapting to what the season dictates...like it's summer - so the sun or 4th of july or picnics or things of that nature might do well...

Today I was able to throw this up - but just like all the things we've done this month for stock illustration, it's been very cheap and very easy...(and cheap and easy doesn't usually sell well)...but I wanted to put something up...to try and help the next month start on higher footing...

This was the rough I doodled as I was on the phone this morning:



And - because it's for stock illustration - you have to do it all in Illustrator (vector) to have a chance at it selling. I think it could have turned out cuter...or whatever - I'm thinking of redoing it where the sun is lying out on the beach...but we'll see if I have any time...

I also would have liked to have put some gradient shading behind the sun - but I couldn't get the colors right in Illustrator...so I had to go without it...




This weekend I'm going to be working on coloring the Parade drawing I did a couple of weeks ago...hopefully I'll be able to finish it by Sunday night...

IF: cracked - gallery showing...

This is the first piece that I have done specifically for the gallery show I have coming up in July. I wondered whether or not to post any images on my blog - but most people aren't coming to the show anyway - It's going to be in the main hallway at Nickelodeon (the animation building)...but I feel like that's more pressure as other professionals will be walking past these images all July long.

Anyway - I cracked and decided to post the finished images. I originally did this as an illustrator drawing, but I really didn't like how little texture it ended up with...so I always knew I would have to repaint it...and in photoshop.

IF: cracked - freelance project...

So I was commissioned to do this piece this week. Take an electric scooter and crack it open to see the inner workings. Officially it was to render a line drawing of an electric scooter with half x-ray view.



We ended up adding color to add interest and to have it read a bit better. By we, I mean the client asked and I obliged. We ended up doing a second version as well showing the direction of power/electricity as it went through the scooter to how it all works...



It was a fun project to work on - and both will be shown as posters in a museum back east (along with the actual scooter). And, hopefully, these scooters will be on sale to the public soon enough...

Illustration Friday: Parade - cleaned up...

I posted a rough of this drawing earlier this week...it's taken me quite some time to get this done. I still need to print it out and do another round of revisions...but once that's done, it's just a quick little clean-up (again) and it's finally on to color! I hope to have it done by this weekend and (if I can manage my time correctly) hopefully I can start on another piece...maybe even finish another piece? Who can say...



I might have mentioned this before (I only say this because I HAVE mentioned this before...and probably in each of my posts since I found out for sure), but I have the gallery at Nickelodeon for the month of July...so I have to bust out some really nice pieces...hopefully this turns out well and will end up on the wall...

Illustration Friday: Parade

I have a small gallery show coming up in July...so I've been trying to push myself to create some killer pieces for this show.

This is the first one - and I have Illustration Friday to thank for it...when I think of a parade, it always has to have a band playing. Nobody really likes the band parts, but they're quite the parade staple. My first new illustration for my gallery will be this one...

I started with several thumbnails


and scanned it into Adobe Illustrator. From there I cleaned up the rough lines and added a little bit of perspective lines to help out. Then I lightened the lines and printed it out so I could do some revisions and add a bunch of detail.



Anyhow - this is what I have so far, I'm about to clean this up in Illustrator - and I'll print it out and revise it - and then it'll be ready for color. Hopefully I'll be able to find some time to finish it this week...

Microstock earning for April

When I originally started this report, I was following the template set by a couple of other microstock earners - and I reported my percentage, but not my actual numbers...but throughout this past month i found a bunch of other people who were very candid with how much they made, and I decided that it would be more fun to do it that way.

April was a good month on several sites, none better than Shutterstock. In April we saw our overall total rise above $500 lifetime total which is the first milestone for a raise. Our individual downloads rose from 25 cents each to 33 cents. And an on demand download went from $1.88 to 2.48. We've been on the site since February - so it took us about 2 and a half months to achieve that goal. In all we made $284.81 on Shutterstock.

What was suprising was that our second highest microstock site was Stockxpert. They came on with a bang with this one -

selling three times on April 1st for a total of $14 dollars. Overall on stockxpert we made $36.80 - it wasn't a giant total, but it was consistant...there were downloads throughout the month, not every day, but most days...

In third place was Dreamstime. I expected better things out of them after March - but April started with a whimper...and continued...and it was hard to check our numbers on this site as they stayed the same for too many days in a row. In all we reached $28.10 - but it was on the back of a three files that sold for 5 dollars at a time. One bright spot is that one of our files was downloaded a total of 5 times since it's been up at Dreamstime (which means it's more expensive for anyone else wanting to download it...I'm not sure if that hurts it's chances of getting downloaded again).

The rest of the sites were also very disapointing - with the exception of vectorstock. But I had such low expectations for that one that reaching 8 dollars was quite a surprise.

Istockphoto was the hardest nut to crack. It took me over two months to finally get approved (even trying my most popular files on shutterstock got me denied). And once I did get in, three quarters of my files were rejected for one reason or other.

This file

Which has been downloaded over 200 times on shutterstock was turned down...as were many others...We have over 400 images in our shutterstock portfolio now...and only 23 in Istockphoto. I had heard so many good things about istockphoto...and so far they've just been the most difficult and (because of the hype) the most disappointing. I expect as we get further into microstock and figuring out what's appropriate to upload it'll get better. But for now I'm just disallusioned with them.

Anyway - overall it was a good month. I uploaded less images in April than I did in March because of real freelance and work...and while that resulted in less downloads overall for Shutterstock, we netted more money (because of the raise, and more ODs this month).

I expect to make a lot less the next few months as both Tracey and I will be busy with work and freelance and my gallery show at Nickelodeon (coming in July) - but what's nice about microstock is that the files that are currently up will continue to sell (definitely less, than if we were consistantly uploading new stuff, but still, it's nice to make money without actually having to do any more with it).