Which Microstock Websites Pay the Most Per Photo?
September 18th, 2007 by Lee TorrensThis is an update of the original post published on May 1. This has been my most popular post so there’s value in updating it with current figures and including the additional agencies where I currently contribute.
Dividing my monthly income by the total number of images I have on each website I’ve come up with my per-image revenue. I plan to start collecting my portfolio numbers each month so I can chart this and monitor trends. It’s also an interesting insight into the performance of the microstock websites.
| Website | Revenue per photo | Portfolio Size |
| iStockphoto | 0.30 | 625 |
| LuckyOliver | 0.28 | 148 |
| ShutterStock | 0.24 | 594 |
| StockXpert* | 0.17 | 105 |
| Dreamstime | 0.15 | 539 |
| 123rf | 0.13 | 108 |
| Crestock | 0.08 | 63 |
| Fotolia | 0.07 | 441 |
| BigStockPhoto | 0.07 | 212 |
| CanStockPhoto | 0.01 | 363 |
USD. All figures averaged over preceding 5 or 6 months, except StockXpert.
*StockXpert was an unusually high 0.56 because I have had only by best selling photos there for four months. I have uploaded additional images this month, so the figure in the table is based on extrapolated figures for September.
My newer agencies (LuckyOliver, StockXpert, 123rf, Crestock) are advantaged in this comparison due to the order in which I contribute. I first upload my best selling images and work my way down through my portfolio.
Looking at the figures I can immediately see why iStockphoto is my biggest earning agency. I can also see that CanStockPhoto have a long way to go if they’re going to remain in the market. Interestingly, BigStockPhoto is where we have by far the least number of images in our portfolio, so this information tells me I could likely raise my income with them to the same level of Fotolia by uploading the rest of my images. That’s information I can use!
How can LuckyOliver be higher than Shutterstock? They simply sold three extended licenses from our portfolio over the past four months.
But it goes further. If you add up all of these totals you’ll see we earned $1.51 per image on average over the last six months(94 cents for April 2007 in the original post). With this information I can also tell, more or less, how much my income will grow as I grow my portfolio. If I want to reach a particular milestone of income, for example $1,000 per month, then I know I need to have 666 images in each portfolio.
This enables us to plan. We can look at each photo opportunity and decide if it’s worth the income of $1.50 per month per suitable photo. If setting up the environment to take good photos will cost money or take a long time, we can reconsider. If we’re buying tickets to the zoo to take photos of animals and the tickets cost $30 each (total $60 for the two of us), we know we need to create between three and four images that sell well to reach return on investment within a year. (3.3 photos at $1.50 per month = $5, multiplied by 12 months of the year = $60)
Yet another insight this data can provide into our portfolio is a measure of quality. As I wrote in my rejected by StockXpert post, I’m now committed to increasing the quality of my portfolio. By charting over time the changes in my per-image revenue, especially totalled across all microstock websites, I can guage the sales performance of my images as an indicator of image quality. It’s not a perfect measure, but it’s definately an indicator.
This is such a simple measure and provides so many useful insights into a microstock portfolio.
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Tags: 123rf, BigStockPhoto, CanStockPhoto, Comparisons, Crestock, Dreamstime, Fotolia, iStockphoto, LuckyOliver, Microstock, Shutterstock, StockXpert
“If we’re buying tickets to the zoo to take photos of animals and the tickets cost $30 each (total $60 for the two of us), we know we need to take five images that sell to have return on investment within a year. (5 photos at $1 per month = $5, multiplied by 12 months of the year = $60)”
So… your equipment is free and your time is worthless?
“If we’re buying tickets to the zoo to take photos of animals and the tickets cost $30 each (total $60 for the two of us), we know we need to create between three and four images that sell well to reach return on investment within a year. (3.3 photos at $1.50 per month = $5, multiplied by 12 months of the year = $60)”
Reaching break even is not a “return on investment”. It is merely recouping what you’ve spent on the tickets and in real accounting terms is almost certainly a loss. As Mike points out you have not realistically costed equipment or time and a year has gone by and you need new software, a faster computer, your camera is a generation back from the leading edge, not to mention your travel costs, internet usage, electricity etc etc. This type of erroneous accounting is used by most microstock shooters to sustain their fantasies.
If I spend $60 to shoot pictures at a zoo or anywhere else, I expect to make at least several hundred dollars in the ensuing 12 months, using mainstream stock agencies, and hopefully each year for some years to come.
Fair comment Mike. Yes, overheads, cost of equipment and hourly rates all go into the equation when doing it properly.
I’ve been a member of iStockphoto since 2002 and it’s a great community. I’ve also recently written an article (4 parts in total so far) that you may want to check out: Make Money Selling Digital Photos. It is my experiances over the last 5 years of being on iStock and how to get the most from your images.
Gimmestock.com pays 0.50 cents per download. Although not a big microstock company but they do pay 50% to the photographer.
Hello Lee,
Nice to read an update on your numbers. FT performs poorly as well for me (0.05 on average the previous 2 months) I am starting to wonder if I should pause my uploads there..
By the way do you have an estimation of the % of your unsold pictures on SS and FT? I have 20 % on SS, 82 % on FT…
Cheers
Laurent
hi Lee,
I’d like to invite you to upload all your photos to 123RF.
With a larger portfolio, you may fave more of your photos and hence, will increase your exposure when a search is made, it’s a bit disappointing to note that you only have 108 of your photos with us.
Do drop me an email when you get around to uploading. I’ll get the reviewers to expedite things a little for ya. alex(at)123rf.com. Interested to see your figures then
Cheers
This article just seems to confirm my idea about microstock; undervalues the photographer role and what he/she should be getting for his/her images! How many images do we need to upload to one of those sites get a reasonable profit? (One million probably…). What about the time, effort and costs that a contributor/photographer takes to produce images?! Believe that hardly will be paid by those agencies…
Just incentive me more to concentrate my energy to built up a strong portfolio to get a representation by a “proper” agency. Where pictures will be paid in a correct way!
Unless your doing it just for the satisfaction of having your work displayed in the web…
Cheers
Comment about revenue per photo.
these calculations are a good indication for YOUR individual portfolio, but say I am with fotolia, and all my photos are exclusive to them, you can increase the revenue by quite a bit. if you have sold at least say 100 photos with them you can sell your pics at 2 credit each for the smallest size.. same for the other microstock, it depends on which options you ticked. Quite complicated to work out.
i am not a professional photographer. it is a passion, and I am not taking photos for microstock, but rather for my own pleasure. I take the photos anyway, I have fun submitting my pics watching the sales and talking to the community and improve the way I take pictures.
that’s why i’m not taking into account the cost of my equipment. I am not buying or spending more than i would otherwise. So the money I get is a bonus that I use to fund my buying more equipment for my pleasure.
and if you are a pro, you have many ways to sell your photos: microstock is just an extra option (very lucrative for an extra too).
You don’t have to submit your best pics, but the most illustrative….
Thanks Christelle, that’s one of the great things about microstock - that anyone can participate for any reason, financial or otherwise. In other photography markets it’s difficult, and impossible in some, unless you’re a professional.
And yes, there are many complications with calculating a return per image, but if I keep it simple and show the earnings divided by the quantity of photos online it results in a fair comparison. I do all that I can to earn the maximum (such as raising prices for high selling photos at Fotolia).
-Lee
ah something else.
Microstock is a long term time investment. Your photos might not sell straight away, but once submitted, you can just sit comfortably on your growing portfolio, or forget it and relax if you can’t be bothered uploading more.
Christelle,
I have a lot of evidence to indicate this isn’t the case. Some agencies use the quantity of recent contributions as a factor in the search engine rankings. This means that if you just “forget it and relax”, your earnings will decline. There’s also the additional competition coming in at around 40,000 images per month!
It’s more passive than many other ways of earning money, but it’s not a free ride.
-Lee
You are right Lee, I am adding photos regularly.. I said that because photos I posted ages ago sold months and months after. And it is more and more difficult to satisfy the microsites since some subjects already are overtreated… I find thet simple photos or niche photos sell the best…
More fascinating factoids and insights, Lee.
Thanks for updating this regularly…..gives us a good benchmark to compare.
Hi Guys,
I do not know why you make all this worthless calculations, except the few top microstockers the only people what make money are the agencies.
I submit now for 2 years I think and I still can not make a living out of microstock.
Regular $1500, if I am lucky that month maybe $2000 this is really crap.
I recently sold a single photo for 150 pounds this is in some cases more like I do with the whole portfolio in a month on an medium agency.
Good light to everybody.
Lucian
Hi Lucian,
Lucky for us we’re not all trying to make a living. However, many full time microstockers don’t have a problem making a comfortable living. Microstock isn’t suitable for everyone or every style of photography. If you can sell photos for 150 pounds it sounds like that’s a better way for you to go.
-Lee
I’ve been on Istock for 3 years now, and i’m making a pretty good living of it. And, I don’t even consider myself a professionnal photographer. Find niches and use them….