Vector Sales Earnings in June July and August 2012

Vector sales has been amazing all the way until the last 3 months. Shutterstock has the biggest drop in sales compared to the rest. Many big contributors have been reporting a loss of 30% to 50% at Shutterstock. Other agencies fluctuated, but are still consistent and bearable, except Dreamstime.

In the last 3 months, I had failed to reach a payout ($100) at Dreamstime. This never happened in the last 2 years. The sales at Dreamstime is very disappointing with a lot of subscription sales ($0.35) and hardly any on-demand sales.

Other agencies such as DepositPhotos, CanStockPhoto, GraphicRiver, 123rf are all doing fine with little fallback. I hope they rise further.

iStockPhoto maintains its usual trend although I did not upload much there. This shows that iStockPhoto is consistent and sustainable. The sales is hard to improve, though.

Just like iStockPhoto, Fotolia remains strong, but again, I do not see major improvement despite heavy upload. The Enhanced License purchase at Fotolia is getting rare and almost unseen these days.

I believe the biggest reason for drop in sales (especially in Shutterstock) are due to summer holiday, Euro Cup, and Olympics. Many have complain that Shutterstock screws up its search algorithm making it difficult for buyers to purchase. I do not believe this is true. Looking at the site analytic from compete.com, Shutterstock traffic is dropping dramatically.

Summer holiday is ending soon, and I hope the slowdown is over. We should be seeing major improvement from September and onward. However, if no improvement can be seen at Shutterstock, then we could have a big problem.

The big problem may caused by competition from sites such as DepositPhotos, Fotolia, and ThinkStock which are currently promoting their subscription model heavily.

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Best and Worst Sales of the Year

November 2010 had been superb. A large group of vector artists and photographers had claimed that November 2010 was their best month ever (BME). Yes, that include myself. However, for the past 2 weeks, since the middle of December, sales had declined significantly. I noticed that my sales had dropped for nearly 50% since 20th. The obvious reason is because of Christmas celebration, and that means holiday. Holiday is bad for vector artists and photographers because buyers dont buy at this time. October and November are perhaps the best months of the year. I think the reasons being is because of rush. Many companies around the world prefer their backlogs to be finished before the new year, thus they urge graphic designers to complete all the jobs before the new year.

I hope sales will fully recover as early as 5th January 2011. Next year, I plan to concentrate even more on microstock industry as the profit has been significant compare to whatever I am doing right now :)

Ohh yeah, and in case you have not noticed, I have setup a new poll on the left column of the blog. Please cast your vote now :)

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Shutterstocks Strategy Boosting Sales For New Stocks

Have you ever wonder why your newly uploaded stocks at Shutterstock gets more downloads compared to other agencies? That is because Shutterstock has a strategy that keeps new stocks get better visibility.

Lets compare the search filtering choices we have.

Shutterstock
1. Most Popular
2. Newest
3. Oldest
4. Random

IStockPhoto
1. Best Match
2. Age
3. Downloads
4. Contributor
5. Rating
6. Size
7. Title

Fotolia
1. Best Match
2. Date
3. Price
4. Downloads
5. Popularity

Dreamstime
1. Relevency - Descending
2. Relevency - Ascending
3. Download - Descending
4. Download - Ascending

5. Upload- Descending

6. Upload- Ascending

7. Resolution- Descending

8. Resolution- Ascending

Shutterstock only has 4 choices (Most Popular, Newest, Oldest, and Random) on the search filter. Lets understanding them better. Oldest filter is pretty much useless because I dont think buyers want to look for old stuff. Random is also useless because it dont return you with good results at all. So, Shutterstock literary forces its buyer to search for Newest and Most Popular. I dont know the actual algorithm behind the Most Popular filter, but from my experience, it is able to give chances for new stocks to appear on it pretty quickly. If your stocks has a few downloads each day after the first few days of upload, it can then be quickly shoot to the top of Most Popular. I believe Most Popular has something to do with number of views, downloads, and age.

Because Shutterstocks search dont have other choices like Number of Downloads and Rating, older stocks dont have the advantage of being grandfathered, thus new stocks have chance.

I believe Number of Downloads or Rating basically kill off new stocks. Simply take a look at other agencies, 3 years old stock will always be on the top of Downloads due to obvious reason. Rating is prone to abuse and I believe that it favors older stocks in some ways as well.

The more search choices an agency has (that does favors new stocks), the less visibility we have for new stocks.

So, if you are a grandfather in stock agency, then you will feel that IStockPhoto, Fotolia, and Dreamstime love you in a constant way. And you may not feel the same for Shutterstock because it doesnt favor your 10000 stocks which is 3 years old now.

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Shutterstock Vector Sales Not Doing Well

Vector graphics earning in Shutterstock had been on increasing trend for a very long time. Contributors were working very hard to produce more and more high quality vectors. The competition was stiff as ever, but we survived. Not this time, though.

Reading posts from everywhere around the Internet, I can see that weve probably hit the peak somewhere in 2013. 2014 is a decline for Shutterstock and it is still declining. Yes, probably only Shutterstock is declining because other agencies have been neutral. Sad, but true.

I am seeing a sharp drop in my sales at Shutterstock just like everyone else. Many have come up with theories such as:
- search algorithm changes by Shutterstock
- server uptime issue
- summer holiday
- tight competition among contributors
- Getty giving away free images
- ... and many more...

Everything above could be true, but I personally dont think of that. I think Shutterstock is losing clients.

Fotolia introduced DPC (I have opt out because I dont like the idea).
IStock introduced subscription model.
DepositPhotos and 123rf are advertising heavily.

All these are hurting Shutterstock sales and we dont see our overall earnings spread evenly because the income of our vector images are getting less and less everyday in other agencies when they "silently" played around with their royalties, ranking system, and buyer packages.

The trend of "race to the bottom" is also worrying one. Agencies are fighting a price war. Contributors and agencies are suffering because of this. Jon Oringer knows this (who would have know better, if not Jon?). If I am Jon, I will probably start diversifying my investment into other new revolutionary ideas.

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