Isolated wheat spike series

You can buy the entire series at iStockPhoto. If you are not an iStockphoto member, then I have made a small selection from the collection for my other agencies that you can select from on the bottom of this page.

I took the shot of my most successful photo series in last july. These photos are shot with several different techniques. Starting from the basic ones when the spikes are lieing on a white sheet, or with using a white wall while holding a boquet. Finally this series also holds a more creative shot where I have achieved isolation of the boquet by stabbing the spikes through the white sheet, so I can take a shot from above without having to think about how to hold the spikes standing during the shot.

The series presents the wheat spikes in various situations. First we can see several spikes in parallel and crossing positions, then we can see the spikes in boquets from different views points. There are some boquets that are isolated on white without any further decoration, however I have made several shots with our blue vases and spring decorations. Earlier, I have found out the scattered particles around the theme of the photo can be more attractive to the buyers. Therefore I have made some wheat spike shots that are laid among scattered wheat seeds, and with no surprise these are my most successful wheat spike shots.

My selection from Shutterstock:

• Wheat spike with seeds
• Bunch of wheat spikes
• Three wheat spikes with seeds
  

My selection from Dreamstime:

• Wheat spike with seeds
• Bunch of wheat spikes
• Three wheat spikes
  

My selection from Fotolia:

• Overhead view of wheat spike boquet
• Five diagonal wheat spikes
• Bunch of wheat spikes in a laid blue vase
  

Puszedli series

You can buy the entire series at iStockPhoto. If you are not an iStockphoto member, then I have made a small selection from the collection for my other agencies that you can select from on the bottom of this page.

Mezes puszedli is one of my favourite desserts, so it was obvious that I was useing this kind of cookies in my first real photo series. Since I did not found any meaningful translation for the name of the cookie I have come up with the name honey biscuit. This series were shot in my early days, I have tried to make shots of as many cookies I could stand not to eat while shooting. The biggest amount had gone to my favourite puszedli pyramid shots - unfortunately my buyers don't like it that much.

The series features the mezes puszedli in several situations all isolated on white. First it offers single cookies on white background. I have two color variations of the cookies: one with honey only and the other one with cocoa flavouring. These color variations offered my to play with different layouts and patterns, so the next kind of shots are offering nine multi colored cookies shot from above. Then I have moved towards the pyramid structure. The shoot includes side, diagonal and top views on the cookie pyramid. Each setup have alternate versions because I shot them with different coloring. Finally I have put the cookies in use and shot several photos about their everyday use on tea time or just as you would bite them.


My selection from Shutterstock:

• Single honey biscuit
• Single cocoa honey biscuit
• Honey biscuit with poppy seed

My selection from Dreamstime:

• Honey biscuits and mug with spoon
• Honey biscuit pyramid side view
• Honey biscuits and a jar

My selection from Fotolia:

• Honey biscuit pyramid side view
• Two piled honey biscuits with chocolate cover
• Three honey biscuits
  

Lightboxes on iStockphoto

After two months of data collection I have finally got to the point to publish my lightboxes and some of their data. On the course of these two months I have created 14 lightboxes. When I create a lightbox I also create a reference link in each photo that is added to the lightbox. The reference link shows my favourite or best selling image from the series among whith some simple text that I hope directs the buyers inside my portfolio. Some of the series are specific to a single shoot however some of them are general so it is possible that a single photo belons to multiple series therefore it could have multiple reference links.

Here is the current list of my lightboxes:

Series name	link to iStockphoto	Views	Icon
Honey biscuits	Link	9
Wheat spikes	Link	7
Isolated desserts	Link	5
Kiwi peeling	Link	3
City of Pécs, Hungary	Link	2
Chocolate cube assortments	Link	2
City of Miskolc, Hungary	Link	2
Aqua desserts	Link	1
Coco biscuits	Link	1
Half cut coconut	Link	1
Easter eggs and decoration	Link	1
Christmas	Link	0
Cocorod desserts	Link	0
Bathroom decoration	Link	0

As you can see I did not receive so many views on the lightboxes, however I have observed some sales that occured around the times the number of views increased on the lightbox including the sold image. Thus I think it is very useful to publish private lightboxes with your content. My other observation is related to the generic lightboxes. My most generic lightbox currently deals with isolated desserts, however it seems like the lightbox has much less impact than the specific lightboxes. It is also interesting to see that I have barely received views on the series (called coco biscuits) that holds my most frequently sold photo at Shutterstock. I am not worried the christmas lightbox, because I think it will become more popular in the christmas season. However my other series without any views might show the lack of interest on their topics. Alternatively they might not be clicked because the images I have added as their cover images are not suitable for advertising the series.
Finally I plan to discuss all of my lightboxes in a separate blog entry, so the first column will become more active as it would lead you to the blog entry I wrote about the specific series.

Statistics of February

February has became my second best month in earnings for me. I have had 101 downloads with no more than 381 images online. Even though the number of downloads raised a little it is still far away from the record of last August. I have got 10 new accepted images, this is the lowest amount since I have started microstock. These ten images were mainly related to easter, but I also made a few on the current local festival.

I have got my first extended license sale at Shutterstock. Without this sale this month would have been even worse than the previous one. With the extended license sale at Shutterstock I have got a new BME there since last August. Shutterstock was gaining a little momentum over last month with an extra 10 sales even further in earnings. I was hoping better consistency at iStockphoto, however my sales dropped dramatically there from the BME in January, I hope this is not going to be a trend. Based on the earnings results iStockphoto has even lost its monthly crown against Shutterstock. Dreamstime has sold 17 files in a short month that is a new record there, however these sales are either subscriptions or one credit sales so the BME of december seems far away. As for Fotolia I cannot say any good news, its already bad performance has degraded even further.

Here you can find the details for my report:

Agency	Portfolio size	Downloads	Earnings ($)	Change	Views
Fotolia	345	4 sub, 3 OD	2.55	-33%	1296 (~)
Dreamstime	291	15 sub, 2 OD	5.81	+64%	218 (up)
Shutterstock	381	64 sub, 1 OD, 1EL	45.88	+182%	N/A
iStockPhoto	235	11 OD	13.03	-49%	3292 (up)

My multi-site view/download figure is 137 views/download in the month (116 views/download all time). Since I reporting this number this is the first time it decreases significantly. This is mainly because of the high amount of sales at Dreamstime. iStockphoto is back to the league of 300 views/download. Fotolia has barely changed in this figure. As an opposite Dreamstime has almost doubled the number of views on my portfolio, so their views/download figure has been increasing a little.

As I already reported it on my previous statistics page the only agency that I can count on is ShutterStock. This is still the case, however this time it seems iStockphoto could be a good performer even though its fall this month (they are still in the second best earner position with a large margin). My strategy of uploading to iStockphoto all my work accepted by other agencies finally seems to starts paying. My portfolio at iStock have almost reached the 250th accepted photo. In the middle of the month I have already predicted that my earnings would drop significantly at iStockphoto, thus I figured I need some new technique on attract buyers. This new technique is the introduction of my thematic private lightboxes that are referred from all the images they hold. I plan to introduce these lightboxes in this blog soon. They are still in their youth however I can see that they are already generating some further clicks.

At the end of this blog entry I put my total earnings comparison after the end of February. Since I have started at the different agencies at different times I have scaled the earnings down to an average day on each agency in its past year. On this figure you can see that agencies except ShutterStock started to get equalized results. iStockphoto is a little bit stronger than Fotolia or Dreamstime but the difference is still small compared to the overall result of Shutterstock. Trends of the past three-four months show that I am probably going to have the ranking stabilized as I have it today.
So here is my current agency ranking:

1. ShutterStock (-)
   
2. iStockPhoto (-)
   
3. Dreamstime (-)
   
4. Fotolia (-)

Statistics of January

January has suffered a major setback in earnings for me. The saver of the month was iStockphoto where I have had my new BME. Shutterstock was falling even further in earnings. And this month both Dreamstime and Fotolia was performing so badly that I have not seen this bad sales since last June-July. I have had 82 downloads with no more than 371 images online. The number of downloads has decreased significantly since December because of the fall of Shutterstock. I have got 20 new accepted images. This month I have made only two new series, both were short ones. I have seen quite high interest about my Pécs series that covers 2010's European cultural capital. So I also decided to add some further images to my portfolio about Pécs. Shutterstock performed so badly again that it has lost the monthly crown for the second time I have been selling stock photos. But instead of Dreamstime this time the crown went to iStockphoto with a large margin.

Here you can find the details for my report:

Agency	Portfolio size	Downloads	Earnings ($)	Change	Views
Fotolia	336	1 sub, 4 OD	3.8	-76%	1275 (up)
Dreamstime	276	5 sub, 2 OD	3.54	-82%	110 (up)
Shutterstock	371	50 sub, 2 OD	16.26	-11%	N/A
iStockPhoto	197	18 OD	25.45	+109%	2938 (up)
StockXpert	344	NONE	0	-100%	2650 (up)

My multi-site view/download figure is 232 views/download in the month (113 views/download all time). This figure has also suffered a major increase mainly because of StockXpert, where I have seen an unprecedented increase in views that did not result downloads at all. iStockphoto made a huge comeback by lowering its 340 views/download figure from the past month to an almost average 163 views/download.

As I already reported it on my previous statistics page the only agency that I can count on is ShutterStock. This is still the case, however this time it seems iStockphotos good performance might lead to a second regular performer. My strategy of uploading to iStockphoto all my work accepted by other agencies finally seems to starts paying because of the steady growth of earnings since last August. My portfolio at iStock have almost reached the 200th accepted photo. Previously it seemed like they don't like my work, however the newly submitted photos have a quite high acceptance rate for me (around 80%).

Unfortunately it seems like even though I have had high hopes for StockXpert they started to drop in earnings and this month they have reached the unprecedented 0 donwloads. This low amount of sales did not happen since I have started to upload to them... Last month I decided that unless they start to bring some "significant" money in soon, I will not even upload to them anymore. I beleive this will be the case if they are not going to sell anything in Febryary.

At the end of this blog entry I put my total earnings comparison after the end of January. Since I have started at the different agencies at different times I have scaled the earnings down to an average day on each agency in its past year. On this figure you can see that agencies except ShutterStock started to get equalized results. As a result of December's bonanza at Dreamstime and Fotolia, they postponed iStockphoto to achieve its awaited second place till this month. My overall ranking however seems to get really unstable for the bottom _three_ places because their daily earnings are really close (the difference between the lowest and the highest ranked agencies is just over 30%). In the coming months I hope these agencies will get more stable earners, as a result they will be more stable in ranking.
So here is my current agency ranking:

1. ShutterStock (-)
   
2. iStockPhoto (^, was 3rd)
   
3. Dreamstime (v, was 2nd)
   
4. Fotolia (-)
5. StockXpert (-)

Statistics of December

December became my BME so far, thanks to the BMEs at iStockphoto, Dreamstime and Fotolia. The past month became BME even though my Shutterstock income suffered a major breakdown. I have had 101 downloads with no more than 355 images online. The number of downloads has decreased significantly since November because of the fall of Shutterstock. I have got 22 new accepted images. This month I have made only two new series, so I lowered my upload average a little bit, however this month I have reached my best acceptance ratio so far (for example I have had only a single rejection at Dreamstime). PPD has peaked at all agencies this month. I have had two series of sales at Dreamstime and also at Fotolia. Without these sales Dreamstime would have closed an above average month, meanwhile Fotolia would have seen troubles again. In case of Dreamstime one of my images just reached the second level. Shutterstock performed so badly that it has lost the monthly crown for the first time I have been selling stock photos. Therefore in December the best earner agency of the month is Dreamstime.

Here you can find the details for my report:

Agency	Portfolio size	Downloads	Earnings ($)	Change	Views
Fotolia	324	4 OD, 4EL	15.3	+446%	1193 (~)
Dreamstime	270	2 sub, 12 OD	19.18	+140%	97 (down)
Shutterstock	355	62 sub, 2 OD	18.24	-31%	N/A
iStockPhoto	150	8 OD	12.12	+87%	2726 (up)
StockXpert	324	7 sub	2.1	-40%	1361 (up)

My multi-site view/download figure is 145 views/download in the month (96 views/download all time). This figure has also suffered a major increase mainly because of iStockPhoto, where I have seen an unprecedented increase in views that did not result downloads. As an opposite Dreamstime made a league of its own by breaking the 7 view/download barrier in December.

As I already reported it on my previous statistics page the only agency that I can count on is ShutterStock. This is still the case. Unfortunately it seems like even though I have had high hopes for StockXpert they started to drop in earnings and now they are cancelling most of my income from them by dropping subscriptions entirely. They suggested that if I would like to have subscription sales then they would cut the already low fixed rate of 0.3 to 0.25. This drop does not seem to be bad on first sight in my case since Shutterstock subs earn the same amount for me today, however at Shutterstock I have perspective. So I have opted out from the new subscription model of SXP, and I also decided that unless they start to bring some "significant" money in soon I will not even upload to them anymore.

My strategy of uploading to iStockphoto all my work accepted by other agencies finally seems to starts paying. This month was BME but the number of downloads did not change even though I have uploaded quite a lot to them. My portfolio at iStock have just passed the 150 accepted photos. Previously it seemed like they don't like my work, however the newly submitted photos have a quite high acceptance rate for me

At the end of this blog entry I put the my total earnings comparison after the end of November. Since I have started at the different agencies at different times I have scaled the earnings down to an average day on each agency. On this figure you can see that agencies except ShutterStock started to get equalized results. As a result of this months bonanza at Dreamstime and Fotolia, they really get a boost, and even though I thought iStockphoto is going to climb to the second place this month, it did not happen because of the strong competition from Dreamstime. My overall ranking however seems to get really unstable for the bottom _four_ places because their daily earnings are really close (the difference between the lowest and the highest ranked agencies is just 15%). In the coming months I hope these agencies will get more stable earners, as a result they will be more stable in ranking.
So here is my current agency ranking:

1. ShutterStock (-)
   
2. Dreamstime (^, was 4th)
   
3. iStockPhoto (-)
   
4. Fotolia (^, was 5th)
5. StockXpert (v, was 2nd)

About photo: Clay angel praying towards God

You can buy the picture on top by following these links:

• Buy the photo at Shutterstock
• Buy this shot with red background at Dreamstime
• Buy this picture with red background at Fotolia
• Buy this angel photo on iStockPhoto
• But the praying angel photo above at StockXpert
  

The subject of this blog entry is my best earner image that was submitted in November. This is the sixth blog entry in the series I have started to introduce my best photos: best earner photo, overall best earner in November, most downloaded photo.

History: This photo was shot as the closure of my Christmas series. I have been shooting Christmas themed pictures since early August. Most of them I have published by early September. I have decided that I will submit some photos even after the majority of my Christmas shots were already available, because I wanted to make sure my little portfolio gets some exposure in the huge crowd of Christmas photos. The best earner of this series is a composition of Christmas spheres and a plastic pine branch.

In this series I have made shots about the Christmas related objects of our home. We have started with the more obvious ones, that we use for decorating our home for Christmas. Then we have progressed towards those that could have some relation with Christmas. Since the Christmas season seems to be over, it is most likely that the series will not be extended till next August.

Content: This photo presents an angel praying towards the top right corner of the image. The direction suggests it is praying towards God. This is a plastic statue used for decoration. Even though it is plastic it has tremendous amount of detail imitating strokes of the hand during the formation of a clay statue. This can be best observed around the eyes of this little statue. The focus is on the face of the angel, therefore its wings and its kneeling legs are a little bit blurred. Finally the statue has a yellowish or brownish coloration. This however I don't think adds to the overall look of the photo so I recommend you to use it in black and white.

Technique: Finally let's talk about the creation of this photograph. It looks like this photo is easy to isolate. However because of its color is so close to white it is easy to burn parts of the statue. Since I still only have a single light setup isolating this object would be much better on a non white background. I have tried several backgrounds, but for me only the white and the red was working. The white background of this photo becomes gray if you don't want to burn parts of the statue, therefore this image needed a little more fine tuning than the red background ones. (You can see the red background ones here, and here.)

About photo: Single honey biscuit

You can buy the picture on top by following these links:

• Buy the photo at Shutterstock
• Buy a darker verison of this shot at Dreamstime
• Buy this picture at Fotolia
• Buy this cookie on iStockPhoto
• But the cookie above at StockXpert
  

The subject of this blog entry is my best earner image during November. This is the fifth blog entry in the series I have started to introduce my best photos: best earner photo, most downloaded photo.

History: This image is part of two series. The scattered particles series that was born during the making of my longest series with the honey cookies (so called "Puszedli" in hungarian). In this series my wife thought it would be nice to spread some cookie crumbs in some of the shots. The honey cookie series however did not make a breakthrough, but the photos with the crumbs were the most popular. Thus we decided to take take the idea with the crumbs and since then we made a shot of scattered particles in every series in which it was possible. I have already introduced a prominent member of this series in august: a wheat pike with seeds. Another example is our coco biscuit bite (on ShutterStock) shot. This shot is actually the one that has established the scattered particle series.

Honey cookie is one of my favorite desserts. They are frequently part of my daily diet. I know it is quite unhealthy and too sweet, but still it is the best kind of cookies mankind can make around here :). Therefore it was obvious that I have looked around for shots in the area of honey cookies. I have searched both on Fotolia and Shutterstock as I usually do my research on new photo ideas, and I came to the conclusion that we can make a long series because it seems like there were no shots of honey biscuits in these huge photo galleries. So we have created a series of shots, and this one is the most popular among them.

In November this photo became the best earner with the help of two over dollar downloads on iStockPhoto even though there were more frequently downloaded newcomers in the month. This is one of my steadiest earner photos anyways so it is not surprising that it has achieved the best earner state in November.

Content: This photo shows a single honey biscuit after I took a bite. The crumbs are still scattered around the biscuit. These crumbs are mainly out of focus and only lead our sight towards the cookie. This photo is isolated as this is my favorite technique.

Technique: This shot uses a more complicated but not so successful isolation technique. I pointed my lighting directly towards the biscuit through a huge white bed linen. This linen has surrounded and covered the biscuit and the A4 paper I used as a base for the isolation. The only hole I have left in the linen was for the camera lens. As this technique did not let too much light towards the object, this image required heavy post processing in order to replace the gray background to a white one.

Statistics of November

November has had slightly better results than October, but it was still far away from September's bonanza. These results are mostly coming from the almost identical month at Shutterstock and BMEs from Dreamstime and iStockphoto. But I am still under $50 in earnings from all the sites in a single month. I have had 130 downloads with no more than 333 images online. The number of downloads has decreased a little bit. I have got 26 new accepted images. Since I have started this is the least productive months of mine from the shooting point of view. This month I tried to produce more images, so I have almost reached my upload average. My PPD at Fotolia has drastically fallen to the previously unseen level of July, as a result I have sold more photos than I did in October but I have earned less. I wrote about Fotolia's good progress last month, however since then they have slowed down dramatically, maybe because they don't really like my non isolated shots and they were dominant this month. Other interesting observation that more than half of my monthly earnings from Fotolia and Dreamstime occurred at the first 5-6 days of the month (at least in my past four months).

Here you can find the details for my report:

Agency	Portfolio size	Downloads	Earnings ($)	Change	Views
Fotolia	310	4 sub, 2 OD	2.8	-7%	1219 (up)
Dreamstime	247	6 sub, 4 OD	7.97	+22%	123 (down)
Shutterstock	333	95 sub, 2 OD	26.54	-2%	N/A
iStockPhoto	114	1 sub, 5 OD	6.46	+48%	1281 (~)
StockXpert	305	10 sub, 1 OD	3.5	-35%	1098 (up)

My multi-site view/download figure is 113 views/download in the month (86 views/download all time). This figure has also suffered a major increase mainly because of StockXpert. I am now almost sure that Fotolia (203/downs this month, 175 all time) and iStockPhoto (213/downs, 132 all time) counts the number of views of a photo differently.

As I already reported it on my previous statistics page the only agency that I can count on is ShutterStock. However, in the past months StockXpert seemed like it can become the second stable earner. Of course I came too late to StockXpert, because my majority of my earnings was coming from Photos.com and Jupiterimages Unlimited subscription sales. Since the removal of Photos.com my sales figures has almost halved. So I am still really interested whether the StockXpert sales alone would result similar sales. For the record here are the details of November: Photos.com Sub 5, Jupiterimages Unlimited sub 5 and finally I have got a single StockXpert OD sale. This seems a definite problem after they also remove Jupiterimages sales. Without these sites I would barely have a single download. This is worrying, especially for a site that I have had such high hopes for.

My strategy of uploading to iStockphoto all my work accepted by other agencies finally seems to starts paying. This month was BME and the number of downloads also reached a number where the earnings seem to become more sustainable. My portfolio at iStock have just passed the 100 accepted photos. Previously it seemed like they don't like my work, however the newly submitted photos have a quite high acceptance rate for me.

At the end of this blog entry I put the my total earnings comparison after the end of November. Since I have started at the different agencies at different times I have scaled the earnings down to an average day on each agency. On this figure you can see that agencies except ShutterStock started to get equalized results. If Fotolia does not catch up soon it will be hardly enough to catch up with the now decreasing sales volume of StockXpert. This month I have not seen any movement in the ranking, however iStockphoto starts to reach StockXpert and soon it will be again second in my stats.
So here is my current agency ranking:

1. ShutterStock (-)
   
2. StockXpert (-)
   
3. iStockPhoto (-)
   
4. Dreamstime (-)
5. Fotolia (-)

Statistics of October

October could not beat September results for me. As a result I am again under $50 in earnings from all the sites in a single month. I have had 133 downloads with no more than 309 images online. The number of downloads has increased a little bit. I have got 29 new accepted images. Since I have started this is the least productive months of mine from the shooting point of view. I only made around half of the submitted images in the recent month. I made the others during August and July, back then I did not have the time to publish all the images I shoot, so now it was time to submit them. If I would not have two OD downloads early in the month Shutterstock would have produced little less money than last month. I wrote about Fotolia's good progress last month, however since then they have slowed down dramatically, maybe because they don't really like my non isolated shots and they were dominant this month. Other interesting observation that most of my earnings from Fotolia and Dreamstime are from the first 5-6 days of the month (at least in my past three months).

Here you can find the details for my report:

Agency	Portfolio size	Downloads	Earnings ($)	Change	Views
Fotolia	294	2 sub, 2 OD	3.05	-65%	982 (down)
Dreamstime	218	3 sub, 4 OD	6.5	-17%	136 (down)
Shutterstock	309	93 sub, 2 OD	27.06	+7%	N/A
iStockPhoto	80	8 OD	4.35	0%	1262 (up)
StockXpert	279	18 sub	5.4	-45%	714 (~)

My multi-site view/download figure is 81 views/download in the month (79 views/download all time). Dreamstime and StockXpert here still contributes a lot. I am now almost sure that Fotolia (245/downs this month, 170 all time) and iStockPhoto (151/downs, 134 all time) counts the number of views of a photo differently.

As I already reported it on my previous statistics page the only agency that I can count on is ShutterStock. However, StockXpert had more frequent downloads, so I could almost count on it two-three times a week. Of course I came too late to StockXpert, because according to other blogs and forums their merger just starts to show its results. So I am still really interested how do my overall sales figure will turn up at the end of the coming months there. For the record here are the details of October: Photos.com Sub 11 and finally Jupiterimages Unlimited sub 7. This seems a definite problem for the future because I read it several times that these two sites will not offer images from StockXpert anymore. Without them I would not even have a single download which is worrying, especially for a site that I have had such high hopes for.

The next paragraph is a recap from last month, unfortunately nothing changed since then, even though the number of accepted photos now are almost reaching 100: I also changed my upload strategy for iStockPhoto because others report sales comparable to ShutterStock there. And I also have surprisingly high rpi there. So now I started to submit all of the photos I have managed to get accepted somewhere. Previously it seemed like they don't like my work, however the newly submitted photos have a quite high acceptance rate for me. The earnings figures however did not change too much.

At the end of this blog entry I put the my total earnings comparison after the end of October. Since I have started at the different agencies at different times I have scaled the earnings down to an average day on each agency. On this figure you can see how much StockXpert gained even in a single month. Also iStockPhoto started to drop a place which is probably because the small amount of photos I have uploaded so far (the new uploads does not seem to catch downloads so fast).
So here is my current agency ranking:

1. ShutterStock (-)
   
2. StockXpert (-)
   
3. iStockPhoto (-)
   
4. Dreamstime (was 5th in Sept)
5. Fotolia (was 4th in Sept)

About my most viewed photos

This blog entry is about those photos that attract viewers only. Currently I have two really disappointing photos. One is my most viewed photo at all agencies where it has got accepted. And one is the photo with the highest number of views in the past two months. It seems like both of them present an interesting idea, and they both have really good keywords also. They even come up early in search results somehow (surprisingly because I thought search results are influenced by the number of image downloads). Finally they also look promising in icon sizes. But they still could not earn a single download. After all, I decided to present them here, and share some of my ideas why did these photos are not among my best earners as their view count would suggest.

The first one is my all time winner of the most viewed photo awards:

This photo is about an old sniper scope (and you can buy it at Fotolia, ShutterStock, StockXpert and DreamsTime). It was so heavily used it shows heavy wear. I believe this wear is not the main cause of the non buyers. This is one of my images with some distracting shadows that shows the deficiencies of my earliest isolation techniques. However I don't think this could be the full reason behind the small sales potential. In the same series of shots I have got really successful earners also, and they all share the shadow problems you can see above. For example the photo about the isolated gun is highly successful even though you can clearly see these problems on it. I guess the main problem with this photo that people has preconceptions. This scope was used only by real snipers. Meanwhile my photos about telescopes for hunters are the ones people want as sniper scopes if I am not mistaken. You can see a scope used exclusively for hunting on the right. The surprise that this photo has significantly less views but already has several sales (if you are still not convinced you can still buy the hunting scope on the right on these links: Fotolia, ShutterStock, StockXpert, Dreamstime). So it seems like people don't like the photos that does not match their preconceptions of an object.

The second shot is my most viewed photo in the past two months:

Red parfume bottle: buy at ShutterStock, Dreamstime, StockXpert

Oxeye daisy in a tin: buy at ShutterStock, Fotolia, Dreamstime, StockXpert, iStockPhoto

This photo is part of a less downloaded series (you can see some of its members on the sides of this paragraph). It presents an open perfume bottle and oxeye daisy decoration (you can purchase it from Fotolia, ShutterStock, Dreamstime, StockXpert). This photo is one of my favorites. The contrast between the sharp blossom and the slightly out of focus red perfume bottle beautifully presents the idea "gentle care". This shot however still did not catch up with downloads. I see three main problems here, first there is a quite sharp edge between the leaves and the white background. Secondly the leaves in the background might be distracting entirely. Finally the buyers want the bottle sharper than it is currently. This last reason came when I first seen the photo on the left sold on ShutterStock. However I don't think it is the strongest one, because the shallow depth of field might even help a little to emphasize the gentleness of the photo.

Feel free to comment if you can think of any further reason about why my viewers turning back before they would buy.

Prediction results for september

I have discovered the tool of Yuri Arcurs that can predict your monthly earnings based on the sales you had so far. This tool uses historical data of Arcurs. I started to use the tool and compare it to the linear prediction in my previous blog entry here. Now that I have reached the end of the first full month with logged predictions, here are the basic statistical details:

	Arcurs's prediction	Linear prediction
Median	$63.78	$61.6
Average	$69.17	$68.06
Minimum	$57.71	$54.83
Maximum	$111.44	$123.8
Standard deviation	$12.53	$16.01

As you can see there are not too many changes in the data if you compare them to the previously published ones (E.g. minimum and maximum values did not change, they were all reached by the 10th of the month). It still shows that the linear prediction is not that different.

Below you can also see the chart showing the relations between the current earnings and the two predictions.

As you can see I have stopped collecting the data after 27th of Sept, because I don't think anyone would need any prediction on their earnings so late in the month.

Here is how close the two predictions get to the real number ($55.91):

	Arcurs's prediction	Linear prediction
Median difference	+$7.87	$5.69
Average difference	+$13.26	$12.15
Closest match	+$1.8	-$0.05
Maximum difference	+$55.53	$67.89

So on the first 5 days of the month Arcurs's prediction gives more precise numbers (+86% overprediction instead of the linear's 106%). However this advantage disappears soon in the last 7 days of my measurements there were several predictions over $7 from Arcurs's tool meanwhile the linear prediction have had less than $5 as its error. The smallest error in the last seven days was $0.34 (or 0.5%) with the linear prediction and $1.91 ( or 3.2%) with Arcur's tool. So if you are as eager as I am for new numbers (and your portfolio's profile is similar to mine or has small amount of sales during a day), than I suggest you to use Arcurs's tool in the early days. Arcurs were predicting consequently closer numbers to the final result - the 10 predictions I made during the first 5 days have had more than $11 advantage for Arcurs on average. Then after 5-7 days you can switch to the linear prediction algorithm. At least that's what I will do till my earnings don't start to get different. (e.g. if my total earnings reach several hundreds of dollars a month).

Statistics of September

Updated with the number of views and analysis.

September was BME on Fotolia, Dreamstime and StockXpert for me. And this was the first time I have earned more than $50 from all the sites in a single month. I have had 132 downloads with no more than 280 images online. I have got 21 new accepted images. Since I have started this is one of the least productive months of mine. Even though I slowed down submissions there was an increase on monthly total earnings at all agencies save ShutterStock. Shutterstock started to produce more countable income with 3-4 downloads every day. Fotolia is getting interesting because since April I always earn more there.

Here you can find the details for my report:

Agency	Portfolio size	Downloads	Earnings ($)	Change	Views
Fotolia	273	2 sub, 4 OD, 1 EL	8.7	+45%	1238
Dreamstime	199	3 sub, 4 OD	7.83	+347%	198
Shutterstock	280	101 sub	25.25	-22%	N/A
iStockPhoto	43	4 OD	4.33	+375%	501
StockXpert	265	11 sub, 2 OD	9.8	+113%	725

My multi-site view/download figure is 88 views/download in the month (79 views/download all time). Dreamstime and StockXpert here still contributes a lot. Even though Fotolia has increased the earnings significantly its views/download figure is still around 200... It seems like Fotolia and maybe iStockPhoto counts the number of views of a photo differently.

As I already reported it on my previous statistics page the only agency that I can count on is ShutterStock. This has not jet changed, but in case Fotolia holds on to its steady growth for the coming months then it will be my second agency to provide useful income. As you have seen from this month figures the others are still heavily jumping back and forth, so I cannot count on them too much right now. However, surprisingly StockXpert reached second place with the same amount of downloads that we have seen in last month. I start to believe that StockXpert buyers like my images more than the other fluctuating agencies. Of course I came too late to StockXpert, because according to other blogs and forums their merger just starts to show its results. So I am still really interested how do my overall sales figure will turn up at the end of the coming months there. For the record here are the details of September: StockXpert PPD 2, StockXpert Sub 5, Photos.com Sub 4 and finally Jupiterimages Unlimited sub 2.

I also changed my upload strategy for iStockPhoto because others report sales comparable to ShutterStock there. And I also have surprisingly high rpi there. So now I started to submit all of the photos I have managed to get accepted somewhere. Previously it seemed like they don't like my work, however the newly submitted photos have a quite high acceptance rate for me. The earnings figures however did not change too much.

At the end of this blog entry I put the my total earnings comparison after the end of September. Since I have started at the different agencies at different times I have scaled the earnings down to an average day on each agency. On this figure you can see how much StockXpert gained even in a single month. Also iStockPhoto started to drop a place which is probably because the small amount of photos I have uploaded so far (the new uploads does not seem to catch downloads so fast).

So here is my current agency ranking:

1. ShutterStock (-)
   
2. StockXpert (was 3rd in Aug)
3. iStockPhoto (was 2nd in Aug)
   
4. Fotolia (-)
5. Dreamstime (-)

About photo: Hungarian highway

You can buy the picture on top on these links:

• Buy the photo at Shutterstock
• Buy me at Fotolia
• Buy this picture at Dreamstime
• This photo is also available at StockXpert
• Finally you can also buy the above photo from iStockphoto
  

The subject of this blog entry is my new best earner ever photograph. You can find the previous one about the blue vase here. This is the fourth blog entry in the series where I introduce my top photos according to the buyers. I have already wrote about my best photo in July and the all times most downloaded photo. However this entry is about the new king of the hill.

History: This is the first time my D90 was with me on a flight. I took this shot from a plane back from Lyon. We almost reached Ferihegy Airport, and just before landing the plane crossed the M0 highway that surrounds Budapest. I made this shot just when the plane crossed M0. When I got back to my computer I immediately loved the shot, so even though I read it several times that it is not a good idea to upload photos taken from a commercial flight I still tried. And as it turns out this photo became one of my most predictable earners.

Content: This photo shows the M0 highway of Hungary in westward direction shot from the air. You can also see that a junction of the highway is just outside the photo. The four lanes cross two small bridges, first to avoid some rural roads and secondly to pass over a small brook. There are several cars and trucks coming and going, but it's not too heavy traffic. Finally the road disappears on the top right corner of the photograph.

Technique: If you are familiar with my portfolio (for the portfolio links see the left side of the blog), then you know that I am not too familiar with moving subjects. I mainly take photos of isolated objects. So this photo was different. I had an entire flight to exercise to finally come up with a recipe for the shot. The result was simply using focal lengths between 60-80mm to avoid the wing of the plane, and to use apertures between F8-11 to make sure the lens is giving me the best sharpness, finally I used 1/200-1/500s shutter speeds to avoid blurring. During landing even 1/500 seems slow... So don't be surprised that I don't have photos about landings yet. To avoid reflections on the window of the plane I pushed the lens as close as I can to the window. While I also tried to make the front element of the lens parallel to the window.

Predicting earnings by the end of the month

I have recently discovered a tool of Yuri Arcurs that can predict your monthly earnings based on the sales you had so far. This tool uses historical data of Arcurs. I started to use the tool and compare it to the linear prediction I believe most of us use. Its formula is simple and straightforward:
LinearPredicion=TotalDays*SalesSoFar/DaysSofar

I have started to take notes on both predictions from 3rd of September. Now that we have reached the middle of the month here are some statistical details:

	Arcurs's prediction	Linear prediction
Median	$71.31	$68.51
Average	$75.21	$74.62
Minimum	$57.71	$54.83
Maximum	$111.44	$123.8
Standard deviation	$14.69	$19.76

As it can be seen from the table above the usual difference between Arcurs' tool and the linear prediction is within the boundaries of standard deviation. For me it means that the tool cannot be used more precisely for my data than the simple linear prediction algorithm.

Below you can also see the chart showing the relations between the current earnings and the two predictions.
Finally you could observe that the linear prediction always grows within a given day. Its because the formula I used for the calculation is on daily basis. If I would have used smaller granularity in timing the differences between the two predictions would be probably smaller.

At the end of the month I plan to report when did these two predictions reached the best prediction and how close did they matched the real earnings figure.

Statistics worth monitoring

If you remember I was writing about my own stock statistics application on this blog already. You can see the previous entries here: about Fotolia's tag cloud, about photo views monitoring. Now that my application is running for more than a month I started to collect more than just the basic statistics I have built the application for. Basically my app monitors the sales and views of every picture I have on SS, FT, IS and DT. From these data I can calculate the following stats:

• How much did I earn overall or at a particular agency
• How many views I have had overall (excluding SS for obvious reasons) or at a particular agency
• Number of views/download - overall stat (all views/all downs) or per agency stat
• How many downloads do I have with a particular download type (overall, per agency)
• Detailed view on the statistics above for every month/week/day
• Total earnings/views per photo (independently from particular agency) - this stat aggregates all earnings/views of the different agencies for a particular photo (I made an algorithm to find the same photo's different id's at the agencies I am submitting to)
• Latest views/downloads per photo - this is useful to identify if a photo has lost the appeal to the buyers or it was not listed in any searches at a position visible to them.
  

These are the ones I currently monitor. If you can figure out some more that you think I could include in my stats I will do my best to include them. I plan to publish the app as soon as it gets stable enough for others, so stay tuned. I hope it will be useful for others. The good thing about the app that it collects all the data to a simple SQL database, so in theory you could write your own statistics queries. The bad thing that you will probably won't like the app because it does not have a GUI currently (ok, there is a simple GUI for prompting you the recaptcha image for shutterstock login, but that's all).

Statistics of August

August was BME on Fotolia, Shutterstock, and StockXpert for me. I have had 148 downloads with no more than 259 images online. I have got 60 new accepted images. This is almost comparable to the number of accepted images in June (which was 70). Even though there was an increase on submissions my monthly total earnings were not increasing at all agencies. On first of August my 23 day long download record has not counted further. But my downloads only stalled for a single day and it turned out that only 1st of August finished without downloads in the entire month. So now I have a new record still running and it is now on its 30th day. Therefore if this tendency is not broken soon I would count the days where I have had more downloads than a single one.

Here you can find the details for my report:

Agency	Portfolio size	Downloads	Earnings ($)	Change	Views
Fotolia	251	1 sub, 3 OD, 1 EL	6	+79%	1117
Dreamstime	168	5 sub	1.75	-74%	211
Shutterstock	259	123 sub, 1 OD	32.43	+73%	N/A
iStockPhoto	9	2 OD	0.91	-85%	115
StockXpert	236	12 sub, 1 OD	4.6	+1433%	624

I usually monitor the number of views on my images also, and from now on I plan to include the views column my the statistics. My multi-site view/download figure is still around 85 views/downloads, thanks to StockXpert. Fotolia's figure has dropped significantly first since I have started to calculate this number, and now instead of 135views/downloads now I measure 156. And these are the all time figures this month Fotolias monthly average has gone over 200!

As I already reported it on my previous statistics page the only agency that I can count on is ShutterStock. As you have seen from this month figures the others are heavily jumping back and forth, so I cannot count on them too much right now. However, surprisingly StockXpert starts to rise the volume of its sales for me. It might happen that StockXpert buyers like my images more than the other fluctuating agencies. Of course I came too late to StockXpert, because according to other blogs and forums their merger just starts to show its results. So I am really interested how do my overall sales figure will turn up at the end of the coming months there. For the record here are the details of August: StockXpert PPD 1, StockXpert Sub 4, Photos.com Sub 7 and finally Jupiterimages Unlimited sub 1.

At the end of this blog entry I put the my total earnings comparison after the end of August. Since I have started at the different agencies at different times I have scaled the earnings down to an average day on each agency. On this figure you can see how much StockXpert gained even in a single month.
So here is my current agency ranking:

1. ShutterStock (-)
   
2. iStockPhoto (-)
   
3. StockXpert (was 5th in July)
   
4. Fotolia (-)
   
5. Dreamstime (was 3rd in July)

Photos from the cultural capital of europe 2010

We have been on vacation with my wife in early August. Our target was Pécs, the city selected to be the cultural capital of Europe in 2010. We did not just target the city but the surrounding area that has several interesting touristic targets. The city is lovely however so we took several nice walks in the center. During these walks we have checked the Basilica that shows the strong catholic heritage of the city:

Basilica of Pécs - buy at Shutterstock, buy at Dreamstime

I have also made some successful photos about the city hall on Szechenyi square (buy at Shutterstock or Fotolia), and about the Barbakán bastion that is also available for buyers on Shutterstock. Most of the images were accepted at Dreamstime so for the full coverage about Pécs please visit my galery there.

As I already wrote we also made excursions to the surrounding area in Baranya county. The weather was not so welcoming, so I could not take too many photos. However when we have visited the castle of Siklós the weather was pleasant for a little while so I made some shots about the castle and the mosque next to it. Here, you can see the mosque which is still used today. It is not so frequent nowadays in Hungary that a mosque is used, this particular one is only used on Fridays by refugees from our southern neighbors. The staff of the mosque is really helpful and they answered our silliest questions about the Islam or the mosque. You can buy the photo of the mosque at Shutterstock or Dreamstime:
After the visit in the mosque we have visited the castle, however the castle's staff was not so helpful so it was not worth visiting except the beautiful panorama of the south Hungarian border. The exterior of the castle is really nice you can see it yourself on these photos:
Buy the photo above about the watchtower of Siklós castle at Shutterstock or Dreamstime. Finally the next photo is the entrance of the Siklós castle that you can buy at Dreamstime by clicking on it:

© Photographer: Dbtale | Agency: Dreamstime.com