microstock report for May 2012

Here's another exciting installment of our microstock report for May!

Shutterstock is terrific.  If it wasn't for them, I don't know if I'd be paying as much attention to the whole microstock business.  This May I ended up posting a lot more files - but apparently I'm terribly out of touch with what sells these days...so I'm going to have to keep stretching that creative muscle and see what I can do for the month of June.

Istockphoto made quite a lot of  money for quite some time...but they changed their licensing payment plan to favor exclusive contributors...and the downloads have slowed to a crawl.  One good thing about the company is that they approve the files in record time.  When I started three years ago it took almost a week to get approved, and now it's within hours.  Too bad none of the files get downloaded.

The rest of the sites had small boosts this month.  I'd like to think that'll continue...but the summer months are very slow...so we'll see how it goes.

Shark faces...

I did a shark illustration for Dreamstime last year.  I've separated out the shark from the rest of the drawing and added a variety of expressions for the different stock illustration sites.

These are vector drawings done in Adobe Illustrator
for Shutterstock, Dreamstime, Istockphoto, Fotolia, and Vectorstock

Microstock report for June, 2010

Shutterstock was the winner, once again - it was a nice month with another EL (a $28 dollar sale) helping to pull June above last month's total.  It looks like we added a bunch of images (a lot of them were variations on older designs), but we really didn't pay that much attention to the stock sites for the last couple of months...as we've been busy with other projects.  It's nice to see them still getting downloads.

Istockphoto almost beat last month's BME (best month ever)...but lost by a buck and a half.  It's still a great site and as we add more images it produces more sales.  Baseball caps and candy - those are my two images (I illustrated the caps, my wife Tracey drew the candy) that are selling the most (each with over $100 worth of sales each lifetime on the site).

Dreamstime was third.  I had the second most downloads on this site ever, but yet half the total from the month before...so while the site has a lot of action, it's for subscription downloads (35 cents) and not as many credit downloads.

Bigstockphoto was back to it's disappointing self...once again failing to break 10 dollars for the month.  The previous month had an EL, which is why it was so high - but with as many new images as I put on Shutterstock, it's rather annoying that nothing is picking up here.

And then there's the rest - I forgot to put them in order of earnings (like I usually do) - and Fotolia came through in a way that it hasn't since spring of last year - but it cleared 20 dollars!  And Vectorstock almost matched last month's BME for that site...and nice to see that while downloads are slow (it's still one of the smaller sites), they are growing.

Stockxpert closed in February, but all the images have been moved over to Thinkstock - only I can't access that site and all the earnings are reported on my stockxpert page.  Strange how they went about that - and unfortunate considering Stockxpert was my 4th highest earner and now Thinkstock brings in about $5 a month...Another thing that's annoying is that they record the previous month's earnings only once.  Every other site updates daily...but Stockxpert/Thinkstock do it once a month.

Crestock is definitely a site worth avoiding.  I've been having a hard time uploading images for the last three or four months (which is why the number stays at 99)...and the sales have suffered since the beginning of the year.  Last month I had zero sales...and this month only 2, which amounted to .50 cents.  But it's a site I'm going to start ignoring.

And finally - I also joined Veer last month because they were running a promotion where they'd pay you for every image they accepted...so I uploaded about 60 illustrations and have half accepted and the other half still pending...So I made some sort of cash from the ones they approved, but the site doesn't seem to be very user friendly so it's difficult to figure out.  None of the files has yet to be downloaded, so it doesn't really matter anyway...it's a new site (for me) and we'll see how it goes.

Microstock report for August, 2009

This month surged in some places and sunk to new lows in others. I finally had more time to do some stock images - I added over 20 images to Shutterstock (some good, some bad...some had pretty decent starts, but never ended up going anywhere).

Once again Shutterstock was tops.  I made $162 while uploading 20 or so new images.  I'd say quite a few of those 'new' images were reworkings of older images.  Total time spent on creating new images was still very low...and that lack of time and care might have kept those new images from reaching any substantial download totals.  What's nice to know is that if you upload new stuff to this site - it seems as if people will search through the rest of your portfolio and download other things (older illustrations that haven't had downloads in forever were suddenly getting multiple downloads).  And other illustrations that had a similar theme to newer ones were also getting downloaded.  So while it didn't seem to effect the totals of the other sites, Shutterstock really pays off to keep a constant flow of uploads...

It also helped that we had our first EL download on Shutterstock.  An EL is an Extended License agreement, and instead of the usual .33 cents per download, these are $28 downloads.  These types of downloads are rare in general, and even rarer for illustrations.  

Istockphoto wasn't nearly as good as last month ($52 as opposed to $65 in July), but the last two months have been the most successful months on this site...and I've got more images approved than ever before (I used to get denied 9 out of every 10 images I uploaded)...so I think I'm getting the hang of what they want and how to format my files appropriately.

One big disappointment was Dreamstime - the downloads happened every couple of days like they usually have on this site - but this time there were no big downloads (everything was .35 rather than a couple of bucks or 5 dollars here and there).  I also wasn't able to upload any of my new files because the uploading page kept freezing my internet.  I'm going to try again soon enough, and maybe the bigger downloads will start back up.  On an upside, I finally have my first referral that's actually uploading pictures!

The last one I'll talk about is Fotolia - They were an incredibly disappointment.  The worst thing is that they've got a new uploading process that's different from all the other sites (you have to have a higher res jpg zipped in a folder with the illustrator eps file).  This is very different from where they were 2 or 3 months ago where I only had to resave my eps file as a svg (a vector format that wasn't as popular as they first expected that was web friendly), and upload that - and it made it's own jpg preview.  On top of this, I uploaded almost as many files on this site as on Shutterstock, and yet I saw absolutely no uploads.  It's frustrating because it was one of my middle of the pack microstock sites, and it's just stalled.  I keep getting a ton of views for my pictures, but no downloads.

Anyhow - this month, except for Shutterstock, it was going to be hard to compete with the previous month or so because I got ELs on a few of the other sites (Dreamstime  in June for $28, Fotolia and StockXpert in July for $12 each).  So while this month made about 30 dollars less than the previous two months did (the last two months were in the $290's), my microstock sites still generated enough business to make it interesting and fun.  That's the biggest thing for me - as long as it's interesting (and it's mostly Shutterstock that's providing the most interest) I'll keep creating new illustrations.

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).

Microstock earnings for March

Things took a turn for the better in microstock earnings. Two big things - Shutterstock pays out once again (the only site to do so) and I actually started selling consistantly (if slowly) on some of the other sites. But I tripled February's numbers thanks to all the sites I'm signed up with...

Sadly - it wasn't until the last week of March that I finally got accepted into Istockphoto - and in that week's time I still have yet to have a single download.

Shutterstock - 76% of my total microstock earnings. They're the most fun because they produce the most downloads. I'm getting at least 20 downloads a day on Shutterstock. So, if nothing else, it's a lot of fun to visit every couple of hours and see what's been downloaded. Each download nets you 25 cents (I'm just about a hundred dollars away from $500 lifetime on Shutterstock which will raise each download to be worth 33 cents). They also have On Demand Downloads which net you $1.88 per. I've been averaging about 1 of those a week (it really depends on your images as to whether or not you'll get those). The final week of March I got 5 of them...so it was a nice way to end the month. And finally Shutterstock also has Extended License downloads which I haven't gotten yet. Usually those come easier to photographers, but I'm still hoping for some eventually (they net you 25 dollars). Anyhow - that's Shutterstock....a terrific site to be affiliated with.

My latest images for sale at
Shutterstock:

My most popular images for sale at
Shutterstock:

Fotolia - 7% of my earnings for March. I got nothing from them in February (my first month)...well, 60 cents...but this month the downloads were coming! And steadily. I'd go a couple of days without one, but then someone would download 2 and then another couple of days and then I'd get 4...





Big Stock Photo - 6% of my earnings for March. I was surprised by this one. It was basically all on the strength of this image:

That image sold as a vector and as a jpg several times. What's different about Big Stock photo is that they don't have subscription downloads (like Shutterstock...the 25 cent downloads), so you get fewer downloads, but each one is for more money.

Dreamstime - 5% of my earnings for March. I was very disapointed with Dreamstime. I had a few downloads at the beginning of the month and then nothing for almost two weeks. The only reason I ended up making as much as I did is that this file sold twice within two days for 5 dollars each (which is the most I've made from any one image at any time from any site):

And the rest - 123 Royalty Free, Crestock, Vectorstock, Stockxpert. Total they equalled 3% of my total earnings. Stockxpert is the hardest on vectors (there are so many little variables for why something gets rejected)...what's nice about them is that the reuploading something is an easy process...but they were incredibly frustrating...and all said and done Stockxpert netted me $2.40 for March. Is is worth uploading images to? The two brand new places I signed up with - Crestock and Vectorstock - were kind of slow too - Crestock was the easiest to upload files to (I made 5 dollars from 7 downloads) and Vectorstock was the hardest (you have to upload each and every file individually...plus they want a jpg preview version that's a very specific size...which is annoying because all the other sites have just a minimum size...that's means you have to resize each jpg for vectorstock...and I only had 7 downloads for 1.75. That's right, they're also a 25 cent downloads, only, like Crestock, they're new and don't have much traffic...so it makes it hard to want to waste the time uploading to their site.

Anyhow - that's my microstock earning report for March. It was a fun month (but mostly only because of Shutterstock). My goal right now is to get an image into their top 50. Our highest downloaded image was this (which was surprising):

It was uploaded on the 16th of March and already has 95 downloads! It was so simple too...

So...we'll see how April goes - I'm on 9 microstock sites currently...8 hours old and already have $7 on Shutterstock!

Microstock - photo and illustration stock websites

So I've been on several 'microstock' sites for the last month.  They've been hit or miss on a couple of sites - but it's been paying off quite well on one.

Shutterstock seems to make the most money - especially for vector art

I know a couple of photographers that are on the site - and they'd back me up on that - it's not just that the clients seem to like vector art more, but that it's easier to get images approved on shutterstock if they're art, than photographs. There's so much stuff you have to watch for in a photograph (such as pixelation, blur, or noise) - but I've hardly had any problems with my illustrations. The biggest problem is that if you work in vector art (Adobe Illustrator) then you have to back save everything as an Illustrator 8 eps. That's no problem, except if you're using filters or effects or things that weren't compatible with version 8. But since I found that out - I usually just avoid those things (like gradient mesh and I don't go too crazy with transparencies).

Anyhow - here's a breakdown...as far as it's worked for me:


Shutterstock - 95 % of microstock earnings have come from Shutterstock

Dreamstime - 3 % - this is a hard one to judge though - they take a little bit more time to accept any images (shutterstock approves images in about 2 days, if not sooner - whereas Dreamstime takes about a week AND then another day or so to upload into the search engines...so while the images might have been created at the same time, they're still finding their feet on Dreamstime) - if you wanna check out this site - http://www.dreamstime.com/res1220499-dreamstime - that's my referral number...

Stockxpert - 2 % - I'm not a fan of this site - they take too much time to upload.  They make you upload a high quality jpg version as well as an eps file - but it can't just be an eps file, it has to be zipped.  And they're the most strict with open paths and color profile conflicts and bitmaps (meaning, that if you have any of these then your image will be denied).  They approve (and deny) the quickest out of all the sites, but they are the hardest to get approved by (as the smallest thing will get your image turned down).

Fotolia - .05 % - that's right - POINT OH FIVE!  it's been quite a small part of my stock images - but it's the easiest to upload images to - what sucks is that they want all their vector files as SVG (which is a suck version of AI or EPS files)...they've also been slow - but I feel like it' s a matter of time.  The month of March is turning out quite a bit better as I've already made $2.50 (as opposed to February's 2 downloads and 60 cents).  What's nice about Fotolia is that you can see how many people have viewed your work (I'm averaging about 60 views a day, so I feel like it's only a matter of time before people start downloading my stuff).

Anyhow - so that's the month of February for Microstock.  It's been a lot of fun - and especially because Shutterstock has been so successful so far.  We started with a base of 40 images (and by we, I mean my wife and I...as we're both creating images) and have created about 160 new illustrations for these microstock sites since the 6th of February.  So, I expect our totals to go up as we build our portfolio...so far, so good!