While last month I excused my low microstock earnings by emphasizing the ‘part time’ nature of my microstock efforts, my December results are even worse - reflecting an ‘idle’ microstocker!  While December is the slowest month of the year in microstock, I did no shooting or uploading to offset the effects of the season. Here’s what happened:

Observations

• iStockphoto weathered the December storm well for me, despite having very few festive season images in my portfolio. Earnings were almost exactly the same as November. Or perhaps November already reflected the seasonal drop.
• StockXpert is showing reasonable sales from the photo.com and Jupiterimages Unlimited connections but my earnings have returned to pre-connection levels over the past few months. I’ll be interested to see what happens when I resume uploading. At least the earnings are consistent.
• Zero portfolio growth is not the ideal way to grow your sell through rate, as I did this month. Ideally it will rise in line with rising commercial appeal of new submissions. That’s something for me to aspire to in 2009.
• My first extended license generated a new high for me at 123rf.
• My total earnings were $87 higher than last December, which is pleasing, but it’s a smaller gap than the previous year. This is the first year in which December was the lowest earning month of the year for me.
• Statistically, my six month moving average is still above my 12 month moving average, partially due to the unusually high increases in August and September.

Thoughts About My Earnings

As December is always a low earning month, I’m not disappointed, though I believe that uploading some new photos would have minimized the downturn at many agencies, particularly Shutterstock and Dreamstime.

I failed to achieve my goal of $1000 monthly earnings in 2008, coming closest in September with $870. I expect earnings will bounce back in early 2009 as I resume shooting and uploading and the market recovers from the festive season slump.  I’m aiming to cross the $1000 threshold by April.

Microstock is still only a portion of my total income, though I’m happy with the growth in earnings and still enjoy creating stock photos. I’m working to responsibly delegate some of my other commitments (not blogging - don’t worry) so that I can commit more time to microstock - shooting and blogging. While I would like to report earnings results of a ‘new’ full time microstocker, there are too many distractions in the form of opportunities in and around microstock for that to happen.

2008 was a turning point for microstock. The market matured, gained respect and moved further away from its hobbyist & community origins towards serious business. Some observations:

Microstock in Context

The way people speak about microstock changed in the course of 2008. As the idea of different images being suitable for different markets took hold, microstock grew in acceptance and we saw many traditional stock photographers enter the microstock market.

Rising Quality, Volume and Prices

Microstock agencies saw rising quality as digital photography technology improved, more hobbyists became professionals and more traditional stock photographers entered the market. iStockphoto introduced a tiered structure based on quality.

Agency portfolio sizes grew with Dreamstime and Shutterstock now adding new images almost twice as fast as they did at the start of the year.

Dreamstime, iStockphoto (twice), and Shutterstock all raised their prices during 2008.

The Business of Microstock

2008 saw a shakeout in agencies as both microstock and traditional agencies failed during the year. There were also new agencies and new ideas launched, and no shortage of mergers, merger-like partnerships (CanStockPhoto & Fotosearch) and deals to eliminate threats.

The business of creating and distributing microstock images also got serious with new distribution services and more corporate microstockers.

Maturing Microstock Market

The release of financial information ended any debate about microstock being a serious business. New ventures arose providing microstockers with tools, analysis, keywording services and uploading services.

The new-look microstock market is shaping up to provide a very exciting 2009.

Year 2008 closes another year of rapid evolution in the microstock market. Stay tuned for a look at the top news for all of 2008 and a look forward at what trends we’re seeing continue into 2009. For now, here’s what happened in December:

Microstock News

iStockphoto made lots of announcements simultaneously in this forum thread. Highlights: photos will be split into three “collections” - dollar bin, regular, and premium - with different prices; new XXXL size; adjustments to vectors, videos and audio; non-USD currencies to change only once per month; and, new credit pricing for 2009.

Dreamstime launched their Payoneer payout service. Their partnerships for this month extended their reach in Central and South America through Other Images and into Russia with Phototimes.ru.

Fotolia launched their version of a contributor shooting event, inviting Yuri Arcurs along to give a workshop. The event was held in Berlin and hosted by CEO Oleg Tscheltzoff who reminded us at the end of the video of Fotolia’s plans to sell video footage in the near future. Robert Kneschke wrote about his experience here (or translated to English here).

Traditional stock agency Superstock went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and Masterfile made a stalking horse bid to acquire the US assets.

The Getty Images and Jupiterimages deal was given early approval by the authorities and is expected to close in late January.

Corbis came out with a promotional video (actually it was late November) featuring senior executives speaking about how they’re going to generate more revenue for their photographers.

Earnings were down in November for a few reasons: there were five full weekends, only 30 days, more negative economic news and the Thanksgiving holiday in the US. I personally did almost no uploading or shooting during the month, reinforcing the ‘part time’ status of my microstock endeavor. So here’s the November results for a part-time microstocker.

Microstock Earnings Report

I only sold a single Extended License again this month, this time at Dreamstime.

Other microstockers have experienced a similarly slow month which is not surprising given the factors I mentioned above. Microstockers with Christmas themed images would have offset the negative effects to some degree this month.

December is always been lower than November for me and I’m not expecting this year to be any different.

There was no shortage of action in the microstock market this month. The Thanksgiving holiday in the US had its effect on sales, though most of us microstock contributors are bracing ourselves for the bigger drop in December when the seasonal festivities kick in.

Microstock News

Shutterstock passed the 5 million online images milestone right at the start of the month. They took five years to reach 4 million but only four months to reach 5 million after adding more than 300,000 images to the portfolio in the month of October. Right behind Shutterstock, Dreamstime passed the 4 million images milestone this month. Then, iStockphoto added file number 4 million too. Dreamstime recently overtook the total portfolio quantity of iStockphoto who restrict upload quantity more than any other agency. Here’s an updated chart of agency portfolio growth.

Fotolia continues to test the theory that bad news causes less harm when it’s not news at all. On Thursday 27th they adjusted ranking levels, drastically increasing the quantity of sales required to qualify to raise prices and earn higher commissions. As is becoming customary, Fotolia staff were scrambling for information themselves in order to answer questions from a confused and upset contributor base. On an offsite forum Chad Bridwell later explained that sales are now much higher than when the ranking levels were created and contributors were rising throuhg the rankings too quickly, thus making Fotolia comparitively expensive - or more so than they want to be.

Still, while they continue to sell as many photos as they do there’s few ramifications for them in squeezing more out of their contributors. Despite this hard economic reality, some contributors still feel like their microstock agencies owe them something.

CanStockPhoto made an ambiguous announcement about “an acquisition” and becoming and an “affiliate” of Fotosearch.com. I guess nothing came of the promises for a website overhaul and removal of non-selling photos back in February.

Microstock Press

My article about Yuri Arcurs the entrepreneur stirred up some heated debate in the comments with Jim Pickerell, Don Farrall, exclusive diamond iStockphoto contributor Pali Rao (peepo), and Yuri himself exploring RPIs in microstock versus traditional stock, image lifespace and the future of stock photography.

PDN’s David Walker wrote an impressive articles on high volume microstock producers titled Micro Machines.

Ellen Boughn explained a key opportunity for microstockers looking to make it big - branding yourself to stand out in the crowd.

I did my first audio interview with microstocker and podcaster David Allen who asked me about my own microstock experience as well as my thoughts on the industry.