3,500 Sales and More Signs of a Recovery

Today I past 3,500 images sold. I have various milestones that I created nearly 3 years ago when I started to sell stock. This was one of them. I also keep track of some monetary statistics. One of them is my 12 month moving average. The last time that I set a new high for this metric was December of 2008. After over a year, I now have set a new bench mark for this metric of over $110 per month and rising. If you recall, December of 2008 was about when the recession was really starting to show. The graph of my 12 month average pretty much went flat. Now that the economy is recovering. I'm watching this line slowly rising.

I also keep tabs on my 3, 6, and 24 month averages. The advantage of watching these metrics is that it allows me to see how I'm doing in the market over a period of time that helps to balance out seasonal variances. I can also reasonable determine what my income should be in the future.

$3,000 Lifetime Earnings Reached

Yesterday I finally hit the $3,000 mark for my lifetime stock photo earnings. My goal to go from $2,000 to $3,000 was 275 days. I did it this time in 271 days. I hit this mark 9.7% faster then the previous thousand dollars. It was looking like it was going to be a close call, but thanks to a big extended license sale at CanStockPhoto, I hit this milestone early.

Here is my progress.

Goal	Days	Annual Income
$0 - $1,000	455 Days	$802
$1,000 - $2,000	300 Days	$1217
$2,000 - $3,000	271 Days	$1327

Where to go from here? My goal to hit $4,000 is in 250 days. Hopefully I will reach this well before October 1st. To reach this goal I will have to average $4.00 a day. I know, not much but I cannot compete with the photographers who have studios and enough money to shoot half naked 20 somethings. I'm hoping that with my improved equipment and increased travel opportunities coming in the near future, I'll be able to hit this mark early. Also, My fine art site, www.SnapBySnap.com is up and running and I'm already booking clients to photograph their private events. We will see how that effects the income in the future.

December 2009 Earnings

I have not posted my earnings in a while. Earnings have actually been rising over the past few months. Here is a break down of the monthly totals since I have been doing micro stock.

Month 2007 2008 2009

Jan. 130.36 69.35

Feb. 110.42 119.68

Mar. 124.11 118.32

Apr. 0 90.92 102.87

May 3.50 102.94 102.00

Jun. 6.65 117.66 94.50

Jul. 11.75 161.70 111.69

Aug. 22.92 85.82 96.38

Sep. 35.05 94.00 119.96

Oct. 65.22 117.76 133.20

Nov. 66.01 101.51 129.02

Dec. 72.83 91.31 94.81

I am without a doubt seeing an increase in sales. Hopefully this will counter the effects of the subscription sales and keep the bottom line rising. One of the metrics that I keep an eye on is how I did compared to last year. Even thought I did better the last 5 months of the year then the previous year, I still was down $30 from 2008. Again, I'm hoping with these increased sales and the economy moving on, this just a small bump in the road.

Moving Beyond Stock

Before Christmas my wife and I decided that after a few years of working on developing my skills and technique, it was time to take the next step. Instead of relying on others to judge my images and advertise for me (along with several hundred thousand others) I now have my own image site. It took about two weeks to find a .com that what available.

Introducing www.SnapBySnap.com.

This is my personal fine art photography site. With my new equipment and many opportunities to travel coming up, I decided that the stock sites will have to wait for my best images. My best photographs will take up residence on SnapBySnap. As the stock photography industry has evolved, professional photographers have adjusted by sending to the micro stock sites their left overs. I'm just doing it the other way around.

More to the Big Man, Less to Us.

I'm actually writing this about 2 weeks ahead of time. I just got my notice from StockXpert about the transferring of my images over to the new Getty Images Subscription site. Of course, my commission now drops to $.25. I could opt out, but then I would not get anything at all. The question is, when will it end? When will Microstockers banned together and say no to this exploitation of our work? Most likely never. The more who opt out, the more profits others will make. The only consolation we can hope for is an increase in sales to offset the loss of profits. In my blog last week I discussed how I track how long it takes to make a $1000. I may have to adjust my goal if anybody else follows suit.

Meassuring Your Progress

One of the things that I do is set goals. I set them for example, achieving a new commission level or total sales for a period of time. One of the goals that I have been watching is how much time does it take to make a thousand dollars? That is a good question. Here are my numbers

1st $1000 - 455 Days

2nd $1000 - 300 Days

I'm nearly at my 3rd $1000. My goal was 275 days. My projections have me at 270 days. That should be on or about Jan. 23 2010. Why am I not improving at the same rate as before? I should. I am using more stock companies. I had 5129 opportunities for a sale (includes the same images on multiple sites) when I made my 1st $1000. I had 10155 opportunities for sales when I made my 2nd $1000. Currently I have 12375 potential sales opportunities. By the way, I consider an opportunity an image online. These numbers are the total images I have on all sites combined. Some of these sites are dudes and I no longer contribute to them, but still occasionally get a sell.

Here is my theory on why I am only improving by 30 days where the previous mark was an improvement by 155 days. Subscriptions. Our commissions have been lowered drastically because of the subscription model. When I made my first $1000, I did it with 1165 sales. My second was made with 1034 sales. Currently I'm at 1109. I'm estimating that I need to sell 191 more images to reach the $3000 mark. That number would have been higher had it not been for extended license sales.

At this point most of my commissions are on subscription sales. That means that I should now start seeing my time to reach my next $1000 level decrease with the more images I upload. Because we are still in a recession, my goal to hit $4000 is 250 days. However, my goal to reach $5000 will be 200 days after that.

New Camera!!!!

OK, OK. I know that I have not been keeping up with this blog. I've been very busy trying to manage a business and also taking my skills to the next level. Over the past several years, I have felt hampered by my equipment. I purchased a refurbished Canon Digital Rebel with two lens. I have been struggling ever since. I have nothing against Canon. As a matter of fact, I'm still using Canon. My refurbished camera has been the source of rejection after rejection because of the bad image quality. Not any more. I have now upgraded to a Canon EOS 7D. WOW! What a difference!

The images are sharper. Colors more accurately captured and noise is greatly reduced. I also have a 18-135 mm lens with image stabilization. This means that I will be able to capture wider angles then before.

There are two times of the year when Indiana is just not that photogenic. Ok, I should say worst then usual. Those times are after the leaves fall and before we get any decent snow. And after the snow melts until spring. We are in that first period. I did take my camera to downtown Indianapolis after a rain shower and got some beautiful images. I've been doing some studio work to get a better feel for the camera. Thus far I am very satisfied.

Another thing to note here is this. I paid for the camera, lens, cable release, cleaner and backpack entirely with earnings from my stock photography. Not bad, uh?