Earnings per Image – what can you make from each photo?

I’ve been doing some analysis of my portfolio to try to work out if the earnings have risen because of the number of images online, or if other factors are coming into play. The answers are fascinating! Although there is a lot of doom and gloom in the stock industry, with the common view that earnings are falling faster than you can put images online, the key point from my analysis is that the earnings per image is actually increasing through 2011 on both Shutterstock and iStockPhoto. Of course, every photographer’s portfolio is different. I’m not sure that I can explain the Shutterstock results, although I am confident that the growth in earnings from iStock comes from their Photo+ program where you can choose images for both higher search results and a higher earning per download. Underpinning this could be several factors – my images are getting better, they are more appropriate for Extended Licensing, there is some traction from people seeing my overall portfolio – who knows! Here are the background graphs:

During the year I have continued to add images on a pretty regular basis. This graph shows three stock agencies – CanStock, which generally accepts most of my images, Shutterstock, which is a bit more choosy, and IStock, which restricts me to 20 images per week. Each of the sites is showing that steady regular growth. As other posts have shown, my earnings continue to grow as well.
I then went back and worked out, quarter by quarter in 2011, how much I earned on the main sites, and how many images were, on average, online. The method slightly overcounts the average number of images as I make a note of the online photos at the end of each month. This would have the effect of under-estimating the earnings per image a little. I did this for the top 10 sites and then lumped the rest together. Earnings from this “Others” group adds up to less than $100 per month on average. I also removed stock video sales from Pond 5 as those earnings are variable from month to month and nothing to do with the number of photos I have available for sale. The end result is this table of earnings per image per month:

As you can see, a steady growth in both Shutterstock and iStock, not much movement in the other main sites although iSignStock is picking up nicely and Veer is very variable – great some months and then next to nothing the next. The “Others” are a bit variable as I have been joining more sites as the year progressed and so the average number of images is pretty difficult to calculate.

The take away message – Quality counts, Quantity makes a difference, but the industry still has some life in it!