And quickly - Microstock agencies are websites where you upload your images (photographs or illustrations). Then people pay per download to use one of your images. It can vary from site to site and even from download to download. We've had sales of .25 cents and up to $28.
Shutterstock, once again, leads the way! We bumped up our portfolio with almost 50 images this month - and it paid off with our first $200 month since last April! This ended up being our third highest month ever, which is pretty great considering just last November we were struggling to make $100. This month was also the third EL sale (which is one of those $28 ones). They are few and far between, but they're always nice to receive.
Second on the list - and coming in with it's best month ever was Istockphoto. This is the second time we've passed $100 (this is our newest site as it took the longest to get approved...we've only been up and running since May, whereas we've been members of every other site since the end of February of 2009). And while it's still the hardest site to get an illustration approved from (this month two different images were denied because they thought it was too hard to see the illustration in the preview window. I completely disagreed and challenged the rejection...so that's still pending. What sucks is that it's a page of fish and marine life and it won't sell as well if I have to break the fish into smaller sections and into pages of fewer fish. I actually tried that and got one approved and the other was rejected for being too simple). Istockphoto, while hard to upload, is still completely worth it. And the more images we have on that site should net us more money.
This is the illustration that was too hard to make out in the preview window...
Third place, as per usual, is Dreamstime. I originally hated this site because of their uploading method. You have to upload a high quality jpg and add an illustrator file at the end. And then it takes about 3-6 days for the jpg to get approved and another couple of weeks for the illustrator file. And while it's a process, they make up for it with consistent sales. This was the most sales we've had for a month...but because a lot of them were subscription sales (which are cheaper) we ended up not making as much as some other months. What makes this site unique and which commands a lot of my time is that they hold a monthly contest (or about every month and a half) where the prizes range from 100-300 dollars. This month we've slowed on uploading images to all the sites so I could concentrate on this contest. So far we have three images in, and we'll see how they do (results are tallied in a couple of weeks). The contests, even though I haven't won, have paid off as all images approved for the contest go into my portfolio at a higher price point (and, about 4 images from contests in the past, have sold multiple times so far).
The rest is a jumble of good and bad. I've had a best moth ever at Vectorstock, and it replaced Fotolia for 4th highest total. Everything else rounded out around the $10 range for the month. They've all been sort of disappointing as it means that most don't sell an image for days at a time. Vectorstock is different though because they are only a subscription based microstock agency and each one sells for .25....so making 10 dollars is a lot of quarters per month!
Disappointing me most of all (besides the closure of Stockxpert last month) is Fotolia. It used to work quite well, but now, even with more and more uploads, the sales have been few and far between. And it's gone from a solid 4th place to 8th (and it'd be lower if I was on any more stock sites)...
Overall it was a great month. It was my best month so far overall - with a total of $417. Last April was a great month, and hopefully that proves to be true once again this next month!
1 comment:
Looking good to me. I wouldn't mind getting into triple figure income lol
Last month i made about $30 with a portfolio of 50-60 images. How does that compare to your progress out of interest?
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