17 May 2007 Early Results on Microstock Newbies

I recently signed up to three new microstock websites and uploaded a selection of my best photos to sell. The plan was to contribute a few photos and see how they performed. It’s been a few weeks since I signed up with 123rf, just over two weeks since signing up with StockXpert, and only 10 days since signing up with LuckyOliver. I figured that’s time enough for an early report on how they’re doing.

The results were suprising. Surprisingly good. However, there are some major caveats to this data which I outline below. So let’s take a first look at how my fledgling accounts at these websites are performing.

* Revenue per image is calculated as total revenue divided by quantity of images accepted divided by number of days registered multiplied by 31 (number of days this month).

Things to note:

• These are extremely early statistics and are subsequently likely to settle over time
• The fewer images, the higher the revenue per image. This is not a coincidence as the better images were uploaded first.
• Statistics will also be inaccurate given the images weren’t all uploaded on the first day of registration

What is really impressing me is the referral income from LuckyOliver. I’ve referred two contributors and received a dollar each as my one-time referral payment. This has only taken 10 days. I have been actively referring visitors to the other microstock websites for two months and ShutterStock is the only website to have credited me with revenue.

I’m extremely pleased with the big picture results from these three websites. Even taking into account that I’ve uploaded my top selling photos, these websites are getting sales. That is what is important for up-and-coming microstock websites – selling photos.

What these results mean for us is that we’ll continue to contribute photos to these websites. The sales so far indicate it will likely be worth the effort for us. And we’re happy about that.