Think of your microstock port as every accepted to any MS site. How many images is that. I suspect it is over 900.

-Lee

is should be
total income / portfolio size
Total: 826.21
Portfolio size: 842 (your total portfolio is probably a little larger assuming there are images accepted on IS and not SS)

income per image is ~0.98

Yep, some people do great at BigStockPhoto and others don’t. I fall into the latter category.

From my experience, a strong portfolio has a better chance of doing well at Dreamstime than some other agencies. I took a look at your portfolios and you have a lot of strong and conceptual images among your still life. I’m not surprised that you’re out-earning me with that portfolio!

Different agencies certainly favor different styles and subjects to some degree, though most of us tend to upload everything to all agencies anyway. My thoughts on the matter are that there’s more value in discovering which photos sell better in which market (microstock / midstock / macrostock) than between various microstock agencies. Still, a study on that topic would make for interesting reading.

-Lee

I started at this game something over a year ago when I began submitting to BigStock. It was probably as good a place as any to do an “apprenticeship”, but sales were never very exciting. At the beginning of this year I spread my wings a bit and started sending to Dreamstime as well. It was a revelation – suddenly my photos were selling the way I always felt they should. For the past three months at Dreamstime I’ve made over $50 a month from a bit more than 200 photos, so on a per-image basis I’m actually performing better than you at that particular site!

What success we have at various sites must depend to some degree on the sorts of images we produce. Most of my stuff could be roughly classified as still lifes and concept images and, from my limited experience, Dreamstime looks like a good place to sell these. I wonder if you , or anyone else, has had any other thoughts on where is the best place to sell different types of images.

Martin

It’s a statistically common seasonal trend which has marked my earnings each year since I started in microstock, but fortunately not this year. If earnings grow strongly over the next few months the summer slowdown may become evident in the chart.

-Lee

You say “summer slowdown” but, by looking at your graph, I can’t see it!

Marco