6 Reasons Why Microstock Earning Will be Down in 2015

Microstock sales has been on a declining trend since the middle of 2014. It looks like this dreadful trend will continue to 2015 and more. Below are 5 reasons why this downtrend will continue.

1. The strengthening of US dollar against Euro and other currencies may seems to be positive thing at first. But in reality, buyers are taking a major hit. European, being the biggest buyers of microstock is having a tough time as Euro has hit 11 year low vs the USD. This means, buyers will be buying less stock images because it is much more expensive now. So far, my number of sales has gone down by about 30%.

2. More and more well establish stock factories are producing amazing number of qualities images everyday. To be honest, I am not sure if they could actually cover up the expenses to produce these images given the golden era is over, but this intense competition is not a good thing for lone ranger like us.

3. Another bad news would be iStock HQ is being moved from Canada to USA now. This means, we will have to pay 30% tax to US government if the purchase is being made from USA. Moving forward, I predict my earning will be at least 10% less from iStock now.

4. Stock agencies are getting more and more sneaky by manipulating numbers and playing with their system to benefit themselves more than us, the contributors. Cutting royalties, and introducing confusing sales packages and partners site are some examples of such manipulations.

5. Microstock is now being treated as commodities. The prices are getting hammered due to stock agencies pricing war. Nobody win in this situation, except the buyers. 

6. Smaller agencies such as CanStockPhoto, Crestock, GraphicLeftovers, and GraphicRiver are starting to feel the pressure with lack of regular sales. Inactivity is the scariest thing for Internet business. Check out all the 0 sales for new vectors at GraphicRiver http://graphicriver.net/category/vectors?page=1. It is very demoralizing to see such sight. With the weakening of smaller agencies, bigger agencies will soon take even more control. This is not a good thing.

As a conclusion, I predict 2015 will be a pretty bad year for us. There will be a lot of contributors giving up this year. It may no longer be worthy to be a stock vector artist now. In 2009, you can make $100/month. In 2015, you can only make $10/month with the same images.

Am I Too Late to Sell Vector Graphics now?

That's one hell of a question. But, every old birds in the microstock industry will tell you that it is never too late. However, 10 times tougher you must expect (with Yoda voice).

Contributors used to sell hundreds of downloads for a simple set of 16 vector icons during 2008 era. One such simple set of icons can generate you thousands of dollars over a short period of time. Today, a big set of 100 - 500 vector of icons can only generate you $10 dollar a month. Though, this is just my hypothesis, but I believe many can agree and more would agree soon.

Too many people contributing too many high quality works causes the meltdown. The supply is overshadowing the demands. Do you want to know who you are competing with? Take a look at this.

Searching for the keyword "icon set" at Shutterstock.
Searching for the keyword "silhouette" at Shutterstock.
Searching for the keyword "animal cartoon" at Shutterstock.
Searching for the keyword "labels" at Shutterstock.

Are you up to the challenge? Can you produce such quality and quantity? If you think you do, then it is not too late for you. And all is not lost. There are contributors who are still be able generate a comfortable side income from this with less quality works. You must be able to hit the right niche and continue to be committed to it.

If you really want to give it a try, then I recommend you to try the below 3 agencies first due higher volume of downloads and acceptance rate.

Shutterstock (must try first)
Fotolia
DepositPhotos

The golden era of microstock is definitely over, but that doesn't mean you cannot create your own golden era if you start now.

Uploading Timing Strategy

One thing often comes to every contributor mind is that whether you should upload now, or later?

There are many factors that affects your sales. Below is a list that you may want to consider with some explanations of what you can do about it.

• Approved on weekend - If your works happened to be approved on weekend, then you will definitely misses a good chance for good downloads. Without good downloads, your new vectors will be "buried" by other new vectors that approved on weekdays. Although it is good to be approved on Monday, but I realize that you have no control over this, especially agency like Shutterstock could approved your vector between few hours or 2 weeks later. However, some agencies like DepositPhotos does have some consistency in approving your stuff. So, plan it right ;)

• Summer holiday - Summer holiday are often referred to months from June to August. Contributors consider these as slow months. While, it is good to take a break in these 3 months because there are less downloads - it also means that your competitors are taking a break too. So, visibility of your vectors got higher too.

• Good downloads months - March, April, May, October and November are good months. You should not miss these five months. Work hard before and during them.

• Trends - Should I follow trends? Now, everybody is talking about flat icons. And Christmas is coming too. The answer is yes, you should follow trends and never go against it. 

• Should I draw more vectors first, and upload all at once? No, you should upload as often as possible. It is tiring and daunting to think of good keywords. Uploading 30 vectors at once could take you 2-3 days. Also, uploading a lot of vectors at one time could potentially increase your rejection rate.

As a conclusion, I do believe timing is something not to be ignored if you want to maximize your profit. Good luck.

DepositPhotos Review

I felt that I need to maximize my gain with the vectors I have created in the past 8 months. One will say it is obvious that you should upload all your vectors to every agencies you can find to maximize your gain. However, I must say this is NOT TRUE.

There are about 30-40 agencies out there, and the one that are truly making money are Shutterstock, IStockPhoto, Fotolia, Dreamstime, and GraphicRiver. You might be thinking that it is good enough to make $5 dollar a month from unpopular stock agencies, but to be honest, you might not be making a single dollar at all. Yes, the performance is that bad.

I have recently uploaded my 200 vectors to DepositPhotos and I hope it can at least makes $10.00/month. I I do not have high hope on DepositPhotos but I must try to see if I am lucky enough to make it through. I will let you guys know my earning on DepositPhotos 6 months later.

For those who have not joined DepositPhotos, let me give you a bit of review on the features inside. The upload features is good and it did not demand you for too many information. Reviewing process is super fast (less than an hour), and  I have a 100% acceptance rate with it. The contributor page contains a lot of useful features and it allows you to see the number of views, and other important statistic.

Although the site is not that active compared to the top 4 agencies, but I must say the viewing rate of my file is still in the acceptable range. I have a few views for every files that I have uploaded in just a few days time. This is a sign of life. And best of all, I already have 5 downloads in less than a week. 5 downloads in a few days is consider OK, but my target is to have at least $10.00 a month (that is equivalent to 34 download a month) . If it does not have such result in 6 months time, I must say this stock agency is a failure and is not worth uploading to.

Apart from having nice features for the contributors, DepositPhotos also have very good features for buyers. The search engine is good because it provides enough filtering features. I believe buyers have a good time browsing files and finding the things they want. For example, a buyer can filter by Best Match, Downloads, Newest, Oldest, Most Popular, and many more. You see, the more filtering features we have, the higher possibilities of our files being viewed.

The one thing I really dislike about DepositPhotos is the web design. It is rather ugly and it doesn't look professional at all. You feel like you are in a Web2.0 wannabe website. Just look at the gradient bar on top. That gradient bar color is a sign of noobish. Either the designer do not have good taste, or the CEO feels that such gradient looks interesting. I dare to comment on this because I am a web designer myself. Clients that are not internet savvy will always force me to use that kind of gradient and they will tell me it is the color for Web2.0 website.

Ugly gradient.

All and all, I do hope DepositPhotos will emerge to become a top agency in the future. If not, I hope it can at least make a payout every 2-3 months. I know DepositPhotos has been doing a lot of marketing recently, but it might all go down to drain if the website still looks like that. The performances and features are awesome, but the web design is suck.