September 2010 Microstock report

This is the microstock report for the month of September of 2010.

It's been a nice source of extra cash each month...last year around this time we were really trying to develop the microstock illustration portfolios on the different sites, but most recently (almost all year) other illustration projects have taken our focus and interest.  That means that the portfolios, which were growing by tens of uploads a month (on average) have shrunk to just a couple, and only if there's time, and only if the uploads are really easy to draw, clean up and color in Adobe Illustrator.

Even without much care Shutterstock continues to rise above $100 each month.  That's important as $100 is the payout minimum for a month.  We haven't had an EL in a couple of months, but we continue to get regular downloads per day (between 2 and 25) and 8 ODs ($2.26 downloads).  I've been focusing on putting my illustrations for Squaremania on products, but I was able to adapt some of those templates to upload to the stock sites (the pencils and cards, and this weekend I'm going to upload the backpack templates).

Istockphoto is a big second on the list.  While we don't get a payout every month, it is fairly consistent.  But unlike Shutterstock, the illustrations that are downloaded are at a slower rate, but each one sells for more (which almost makes up for it, but not quite because of the small portfolio size).

Dreamstime was really slow this month.  There was a huge run of downloads at the end of the month (within the last week) to raise the total to $17, but it was rather a disappointment considering it's the third largest microstock company.

Vectorstock has turned into a very consistent earner.  While the downloads are only about 1-5 a day, there always seems to be something selling on the site.  And slowly, but surely we're heading towards our next raise (a couple of months ago we finally crossed $100 total for the site, and while it took a year, it meant that the downloads are now worth 30 cents as apposed to 25 cents.)

I've decided to start including the various other sites that I've either recently signed up for (Veer and Stockfresh) and an older one (Thinkstock).  Thinkstock gives a big lump sum randomly during the month (on Aug 26th it was $3.25 for 13 downloads) and this month it was $8.25 for 33 downloads.  Stockfresh has yet to yield any monies, but the site is from the creators of Stockxpert, so I expect it to happen soon enough.  And Veer got me to sign up earlier this summer with promises to pay for any files they accepted (the offer is now over), and since then we have had one sale for $7.00.

The other sites are kind of disappointing and make it hard to want to spend the time to upload new images...but I'm going to keep chugging along, because you never know what image people might come across and want to download lots of.