Comments on: Advanced Stock Photography Terminology- for Photographers

By: Paco

Paco — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 16:14:34 +0000

Hi Yuri,
Thank you for sharing important information. Do you have any rough estimates on a return of clip? I mean the same thing but applied to selling footage. I would be cautious to multiply the ROI by the difference in price of photos and footage. I guess a bit different rules apply. Can you give me any figures?

Thanks in advance.

By: Lisa Rivali

Lisa Rivali — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 12:21:36 +0000

Hi Yuri- I have 3 questions: First, do you invisibly watermark your images to prove ownership? Secondly, If you do find that images have been illegaly appropriated, how do you go after this problem? And lastly, Which microstock management software does your staff use to upload and track your images? Many thanks- Lisa

By: Kevin Allen

Kevin Allen — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 23:26:46 +0000

…….. also Yuri, it must of crossed your mind, with yourself branding and high profile that maybe the future could be your own Micro site. I would suggest a micro site combined with a traditional RM section for those clients that want exclusive images.

Kevin.

By: Kevin Allen

Kevin Allen — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 23:21:00 +0000

Kevin Allen: Hi Yuri, I am just starting out with the micro’s, so it’s all new to me. Selling an image for small pennies is not an easy concept for me to adapt to. I still do OK with RM at Alamy, but now I reckon I should look at micro’s as another market and intend to shoot for that market in addition. Anyway eventualy getting to my question, you say you need to submit 220 images a month, is that 220 to each agency you contribute to or that is 20 images to 11 agencies. has this rate stayed the same for you over the years or are you having to do more and more to keep the status quo. The more photographers turn to mico as all else gets squeezed keeping your slice of the pie will be more difficult don’t you think? Do you also shoot for traditional agencies on a RM basis.Cheers,Kevin.

By: Kevin Allen

Kevin Allen — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 23:18:58 +0000

Hi Yuri,
I am just starting out with the micro’s, so it’s all new to me. Selling an image for small pennies is not an easy concept for me to adapt to. I still do OK with RM at Alamy, but now I reckon I should look at micro’s as another market and intend to shoot for that market in addition.
Anyway eventualy getting to my question, you say you need to submit 220 images a month, is that 220 to each agency you contribute to or that is 20 images to 11 agencies. has this rate stayed the same for you over the years or are you having to do more and more to keep the status quo. The more photographers turn to mico as all else gets squeezed keeping your slice of the pie will be more difficult don’t you think?
Do you also shoot for traditional agencies on a RM basis.

Cheers,

Kevin.

By: Ivonne Wierink

Ivonne Wierink — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 08:58:35 +0000

Yuri, I found this article very late, right now , but it’s very interesting. Specially (for me) the ranking agencies uses. Than the RPI, at Shutterstock I do have 7500 images, in januar I earned 964 US-dollar, so my RPI is about 0.13 … so bad, wow. But, I am not only at shutterstock, and are making a living of microstock, so, it isn’t SO bad for me. But I have to work on it, thanks for the article!

By: Yuri Arcurs

Yuri Arcurs — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:48:39 +0000

DanP68: The half-life concept applied to microstock imagery longevity is most interesting.I use a more labor intensive but useful method for tracking recurring sales.I only recommend it for people who enjoy tracking their statistics, and have less than 1000 images.What I do is a few times per week query my top microstock agencies and write down how many sales I had that current month, cross referenced with the months in which I originally uploaded the files.It becomes a matrix in a spreadsheet, for instance at one agency for images uploaded August 2007:61 (sales in 9/07)54 (10/07)58 (11/07)425147464248and so on…I can quickly eyeball if my images uploaded in 8/07 are still “alive and well,” or if they are dying fast and need to be replaced.I can even use Excel to draw a best fit line on the data to show the attenuation.Interestingly enough for people who think Shutterstock only sells new images, my top selling images this month (January 2009) are from my uploads in March 2008.

Very interesting. I will test on this a little.

By: Yuri Arcurs

Yuri Arcurs — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:47:34 +0000

Thom G.: Yuri, what about Grill’s ’sell through ratio’?Do you make use of that stat?btw – thanks for your blog.It’s very generous of you to share this info.

Sell through ratio. A traditional shooter I take it. Good question. I will explain this concept a little for the people that don't know what this is. (You will know this off cause). Sell through ratio refers to how many images of a particular shoot that will end up selling. This concept was very important in traditional stock and great shooters will have a sell through ration of 50% for example. Today with microstock most people's sell through ratio is close to 90% simply because of the price being so low. Tom's sell through rations are extreme, like my own numbers just in traditional stock.

By: Andrea

Andrea — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:11:42 +0000

To Yuri: Are you using the same rules for the hits on your blog? I mean N=number of posts in your blog and HL is the time it will take a post to be visited half of the times as much as it did when it was first posted.
Then you can calculate how many posts x month you need to create in order to keep the same volume of hits on your blog site. Isn’t it?

To Mariusz Jurgielewicz: I think that on algebra rules multiplication and division are of equal precedence (belonging to the same level) and in this case the left to right rule apply then (N/HT)*0,61 = N/HT*0,61.

By: Thom G.

Thom G. — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:42:50 +0000

Yuri, what about Grill’s ‘sell through ratio’? Do you make use of that stat?

btw – thanks for your blog. It’s very generous of you to share this info.