The Microstock Blog

Looking at the Microstock Industry

October 2010 Sales Report

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October was a very welcome month with mostly higher sales across the board.  Pond5 led with a new “Best Month Ever” in both number of clips sold and sales dollars.  The only real bummer was the whole iSyndica thing… especially when it came time to gather the data for this months report.  Ugh!

October 2010
Agency Clips Sold Portfolio Size
Pond5 103 (+37) 1127 (+22)
RevoStock 5 (+1) 321 (+0)
ShutterStock 8 (+4) 159 (+9)
ClipCanvas 3 (+3) 308 (+77)
MediaStock 0 (+0) 78 (+0)
Can Stock 0 (-1) 48 (+2)
iStock 2 (+2) 17 (+0)
Fotolia 0 4 (+0)

Until a couple of weeks ago, Pond5 would manually process of all sales.  Which means sometimes several days would go by before we would know how things were going.  Finally, they heard our cry and automated the process.  So at 4:00am Eastern Time an automated script is executed to process new sales and send out the emails.  It is SOOOO much nicer to get those daily emails now.  One important note, sales are delayed.  Which means, if I buy one of your video clips today, it will not show up on tomorrow’s sales report.  Pond5 waits 2 to 3 days for the transaction to actually clear before it can be posted.  This is a measure to catch fraud and prevent refunds.  In all the years I’ve been with Pond5, I’ve never had a refund (that I know of)… I wish I could say the same for RevoStock or ShutterStock.  Getting that refund notice is a major downer.

I did manage to get about 50 new clips uploaded to Pond5, but I’ve been slow in the keyword process so only 22 new clips made it online last month.  Of course, it’s not helping that Pond5 is a week or more behind in processing clips.  But that’s to be expected as they are seeing a major rush of new artists from the whole iStock fiasco.  They also had some major FTP problems last month that took a little time to get worked out.  But, the great news is that sales skyrocketed there last month.  I hit a new BME in both number of clips sold (I sold 100+ clips in one month there for the first time) and in dollars.  I’ve said it before and it bares repeating… Pond5 knows how to sell footage.

Due to weather and car problems, I stayed home a little more than I would have liked last month and so I took that as an opportunity to get more clips uploaded to ClipCanvas.  Two my of my 3 sales this last month were from the new uploads, so I think it’s working.  ClipCanvas lowered their commission from 60% to 50% and that kicked in this last month.  I’m not happy about it because they really don’t do enough to earn 50% of my sales, but it’s still better than ShutterStock, iStock, etc…  To add insult to injury, this last week they started charging artists a payment processing fee.  So when a customer buys one of my clips, I have to pay the PayPal fee charged to ClipCanvas out of my commission.  Add to that, when I get paid by ClipCanvas, I also have to pay the PayPal transfer fee and a conversion fee from Euros to Dollars so that 50% commission is now actually around 40%.  So Clipcanvas isn’t looking as good as it used to.  They still have major issues with their artist interface and when I asked when those new features they told me about were going to get implemented, I was told sales were low and they can’t afford to do any more development right now… Of course, that does not include the development necessary to charge me for their transaction fees.  I wonder if they’re gonna start charging storage fees for my clips or charge me a percentage of the rent for their office space next…

I just missed payout at ShutterStock last month for a couple of dollars, but this month SS came roaring back with almost a new BME.  Like Pond5, they are very behind in footage reviews right now (about two weeks) but image reviews are moving pretty quickly (around 24 hours).  I had a couple of sales on iStock which was a nice surprise given how small my portfolio is there.  And I had +1 sales in October at Revostock, but it was still a very slow month.  I didn’t get anything uploaded, but with winter coming I’m planning on doing a lot of uploading to Revo over the next few months.  Hopefully that will start sparking more sales there.

Missing iSyndica

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I feel like a drug addict going through withdrawal.  It’s not so much that I miss the ability to upload once and “syndicate everywhere” (I do miss that), more it’s a matter of missing the analytics.  Being able to log in every single day to check my sales stats not only helped me to track things, but it gave me a piece of mind knowing that somewhere I sold at least 1 item each day.

I’ve added the picNiche Toolbar to Firefox which does let me track sales on a number of sites, but a lot of the sites I use are missing and I’m not good enough with regular expressions to add those myself.  Additionally, there’s no history… there’s no total across all sites… it’s very frustrating.

While I would love to see someone else do something similar to iSyndica, the players who have talked about it all say that Video is their nemesis.  The amount 0f storage space needed is apparently expensive and those expenses have to be passed on to the customer.  So it’s not likely we’ll see anything similar to iSyndica’s upload capabilities for video that is affordable. I can probably live with that… I’ve gotten back into a routine for uploading files to multiple sites from my computer using a series of scripts that monitors an empty folder on my computer (I stick a file in the folder and my scripts automatically upload the file to numerous sites for me.)

What I miss more than anything is the analytics.  And I hope that Hugo from iSyndica sees this post and considers bringing back a new service which just does tracking the way iSyndica did.  Such a service would be FAR CHEAPER to run than iSyndica since there would be no file storage necessary beyond the database.  And it’s something I’d pay $10 to $15 a month for depending on how far it went.

First, it would need to support all of the sites that iSyndica did (which was 90% of the MicroStock industry) with regular updates several times a day.  The report would include how many files were downloaded from each supported site and the total revenue.  With support for historical data and basic projection of revenues each month.  All of this is what iSyndica did.  What it also needs is the ability to track portfolios.  I want to have a complete list of every file I have uploaded at every site and the ability to track which files are selling where. More importantly, I’d like to know which files I still need to upload to various sites and which files were rejected (so I don’t attempt to upload them again).  I imagine this would mostly be a manual process, but I’m fine with that as long as I can view and edit the data myself.

Unlike iSyndica which was primarily for file distribution, such a tracking site could run on relatively cheap hosting (you can get unlimited bandwidth/unlimited database for around $20 a month on many reputable web hosts).  The main expense would be a programmer to write all the code, add new features, and keeping it maintained.  But I would imagine such a site would have hundreds if not thousands of supporters which would cover the cost of a full time programmer and provide a hefty profit.

I know there are  a few other “stats” sites out there, but none of them go as far as iSyndica did with their stats and NONE of them support as many sites as iSyndica did (most don’t support video tracking).

More than I want a replacement for iSyndica’s easy uploading and distribution… I want a site to better track my Microstock statistics.  That is something I’d subscribe to “in a New York minute”.

September 2010 Sales Report

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With the loss of iSyndica, doing these monthly sales reports is gonna be a major pain-in-the-ass.  But I vow to keep on keeping on.

Also, a little bit of great news… For the month of September this site averaged 244 unique visitors a day dropping as low as 82 but with well over 1000 when I make new posts.  So I’d like to thank everyone for stopping by and I’ve got a lot more info coming… Plus I’m working out a way to give back to all of you (some kind of contest, I’m still working out the details).

September 2010
Agency Clips Sold Portfolio Size
Pond5 66 (+0) 1105 (+6)
RevoStock 4 (-7) 321 (+0)
ShutterStock 4 (-5) 148 (+0)
ClipCanvas 1 (-1) 231 (+4)
MediaStock 0 (+0) 78 (+0)
Can Stock 0 (-1) 46 (+0)
iStock 0 (+0) 17 (+0)
Fotolia 0 4 (+0)

September was a pretty busy month for me with other projects.  I signed on as Director of Photography on a web based TV show and I got heavily involved with several other projects outside of stock.  I did manage to shoot about 100 new clips and render out about 20 new animations, but I haven’t had time to upload them.  With iSyndica shutting down on the 10th of October, I’m taking a few days off of my projects to get the clips edited and syndicated out everywhere before the 10th.

iStock announced a major cut in pay for most of their artists in September, I’m sure  you’ve heard of it.  As a result a lot of exclusives at iStock have dropped their exclusivity and started uploading to Pond5, Revo and other sites.  The result is MUCH slower review times on most of the major sites.  Since the pay cut doesn’t take effect until January of 2011, a lot of iStock exclusives are wait until then to drop their exclusivity, so expect review times to get even worse in January/February.

Pond5’s wait time is up to 3 weeks right now and they’re not reviewing clips every day (or even every business day), so it could get worse before it gets better.  Also, it appears that they read my comment about their lack of curating and decided to ‘punish me’ by removing all of my clips from their front page bin.  It’s probably hurt my sales as things seem a but down from last year and from reports by most of my friends that their sales for the first week of October are gangbusters.  I’m not happy about the lack of sales, but the lack of them curating is going to hurt even worse down the road.  The more clips they approve that are simply copies of what’s already online is going to hurt buyers as it becomes impossible to find exactly what they need through a sea of copycats.  Especially with all of the keyword spam going on there.  At least ShutterStock, iStock and other sites actually curate the keywords too.

Let me unequivocally state that I LOVE POND5.  It’s my favorite site, not just because it’s my highest source of revenue, but because they still treat artists as partners, not servants. at the end of the day, they prove that you can have a fair relationship with artist and everyone can make money.  My complaints about them are simply because I love them and I want to see them improve.  It’s the same reason I complain about my step-daughter chewing with her mouth open, or not saying please.  Pointing those things out so that she can fix the problem makes her a better person.  Pointing out Pond5’s faults so they can fix them makes it a better site.  Sadly, it doesn’t seem like they see it that way…

RevoStock was super dead last month, not just for me but for a number of my friends as well.  Maybe it was because I didn’t upload anything… But I doubt it because all of my best selling clips on Pond5 are also on Revo.  They just don’t appear to have a good base of buyers.  The good news is they enacted a new method for sharing revenue between artists.  So, two or more artists can collaborate on a project, then one artist uploads the project and sets up sharing with the other artist(s).  That is an AWESOME new feature and if they would promote it more, I think they’ll see a major upshift in quality submissions.  I created a clip using some footage loaned to me by a friend and I’m about to upload and test out this great new feature.

It’s definitely the beginning of Fall here in Kansas.  The pollen count is going nuts from all the dead foliage, the temperatures are near perfect during the day and the skies are mostly blue and clear.  Perfect for getting outside with my camera and shooting some footage.  I just need to make time for editing and submitting, otherwise it’s pretty useless just sitting on my memory cards and/or hard drives.

August 2010 Sales Report

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The first half of August was a continuation of the summer slump with more sales woes.  Things did start to pick up some mid-month and the final week was a very good week bringing August sales up to respectable levels.

August 2010
Agency Clips Sold Portfolio Size
Pond5 66 (+4) 1099 (+52)
RevoStock 11 (+4) 321 (+22)
ShutterStock 9 (+3) 148 (+9)
ClipCanvas 2 (+2) 227 (+18)
MediaStock 0 (+0) 78 (+0)
Can Stock 1 (+0) 46 (+2)
iStock 0 (+0) 17 (+1)
Fotolia 0 4 (+0)

Believe it or not, RevoStock went toe to toe with Pond5 for the first 11 days of August.  Not that Revo sales were so spectacular, Pond5 sales were just that bad.  It also helped that I sold my first bundle on Revo.  I also had some rejections that I thought were out of line.  A friend of mine posted this quote “Yes, for a site that sells the least RevoStock has the biggest rejection rate.”  They just don’t seem to understand the overall footage market.  It’s nice that they curate submissions better than Pond5, but I they have also rejected a number of clips that sell very well on Pond5.  When they reject clips for suspect reasons, it just kills any motivation to spend time uploading there. They just don’t seem to be serious about selling footage.

As I mentioned previously, Pond5 started out extremely slow and then came roaring back with lots of sales at the end of the month to make it a respectable sales month over all.  There have been a LOT of  new people uploading clips to Pond5 lately which has caused very long delays in getting stuff into the uploads page to be submitted.  To make matters worse, there are dozens of new artists who are literally submitting hundreds of animations rendered from tutorials, and free animation demos like particleIllusion.  And the Pond5 curator is just letting everything through.  It doesn’t appear that there is any actual “curating”  going on there.  The file count keeps getting higher at Pond5, but the quality of clips is going down and I imagine at some point buyers will get frustrated with too much spam and poor quality clips.  Pond5 needs to do something to curb the number of new artists and they need to actually spend some time looking at each submission for quality and redundancy issues.  It would really be great if they started looking at keyword spam too.

July 2010 Sales Report

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Better late than never…

July 2010
Agency Clips Sold Portfolio Size
Pond5 62 (+1) 1047 (+10)
RevoStock 2 (-5) 299 (+16)
ShutterStock 6 (+5) 139 (+1)
ClipCanvas 0 (-1) 209 (+5)
MediaStock 0 (+0) 78 (+0)
Can Stock 1 (+0) 44 (+0)
iStock 0 (+0) 16 (+0)
Fotolia 0 4 (+0)

I had a very busy summer with family outings and a few consulting jobs.  So I wasn’t paying attention too much as to what was going on.  Other than the summer slump was in full effect. Even though I sold 1 more clip on Pond5 than in June, my sales dollars were down considerably.  It was a miserable month sales-wise.