March 2021 Sales

[Wilm Ihlenfeld]

9 minutes ago, David Calvert said:

This month I made 88 sales on a portfolio of 561 (not sure if that's any good or not for a port that size..?), compared to 83 sales in Feb, but revenue this month is massively down from last month - less than half. Sales in the last couple of days have ground to a halt.

That's not an easy question to answer, David.
But I'm assuming you haven't been with shutterstock that long. And then that seems to me to be a pretty decent performance, according to everything I read in the forum.
Because if you joined here when there were already an infinite number of images in the database, it has become much more difficult to establish a highly visible portfolio. The contributors who have been here for a long time have had it much easier.

In my eyes you seem to be on a good way.

 

[Sari ONeal]

Weird day today - nothing at all at first, then three DLs within 30 minutes, then nothing at all again.

Yesterday I had more downloads than I've had in a very very long time, but outside of one ODD, everything was small sales.

[Charles Lewis]

Second half of the month has been good for downloads and a bit better for RPD than in the previous months. Revenue is still well down on 2020, however, due to lots of subs and very few ODD's and SOD's.

Downloads at AS are 25% of SS but revenue is the same. I need to be doing more commercial photography and less editorial.

[balajisrinivasan]

Best month in terms of downloads. RPD is, of course, quite bad, less than 20 cents. But a good number of decent (by which I mean "above 10 cents") sales in the last two days of the month means it was pretty alright overall.

I hit level 3 and it appears to have had some effect because the last few sales of the month were certainly a bit higher than before. Hopefully RPD improves in the months to come.

[Steve Bower]

Revenue was almost twice what it was last month which admittedly was horrendous.  RPD was not what I hoped (.64) but an increase in the number of ELs, SOs and ODs was encouraging.  Given the new contributor's payout structure, it could have been much worse.  I should make it back to level 4 early next month which I hope will increase the monthly income. Things should get better for all of us as the year progresses. 

[Steven Tritton]

While not the total disaster February 2021 was, March 2021 was nonetheless mediocre.

By comparison to the previous year, downloads were 65% / earnings were just 58% in March 2021 compared to March 2020.   

 

[David Calvert]

Please forgive my ignorance, but what is RPD? 

[Pavel Rumlena]

RPD = Rate per Download 😉

[Wilm Ihlenfeld]

• 6.2 % less downloads than in March 2020

• 14.8 % less income than in March 2020

 

 

[Steven Tritton]

Barely 6 hours into the new month and have made a video sale each on SS and AS. So that's a good start. 

[Wilm Ihlenfeld]

19 hours ago, David Calvert said:

This month I made 88 sales on a portfolio of 561 (not sure if that's any good or not for a port that size..?), compared to 83 sales in Feb, but revenue this month is massively down from last month - less than half. Sales in the last couple of days have ground to a halt.

I just read about a contributor with 16% of your downloads and a portfolio size that is more than 8,5 times as big as yours. Just for your information.

[Former_Poster]

Record breaking month for *downloads* for me.  Ever. Smashed it.

Earned 35% less than last month and 70% less than last March.

RPD has dropped through the floor and continues to plummet.

Again its video killing it dropping the RPD from $21 to $5.  More and more $0.34 video "sales".

Generally now if any my best selling videos sell for under $3 3 times in a row im removing them off SS.  6 removed in March under my new scheme.

[lonndubh]

41 minutes ago, Former_Poster said:

Record breaking month for *downloads* for me.  Ever. Smashed it.

Earned 35% less than last month and 70% less than last March.

RPD has dropped through the floor and continues to plummet.

Again its video killing it dropping the RPD from $21 to $5.  More and more $0.34 video "sales".

Generally now if any my best selling videos sell for under $3 3 times in a row im removing them off SS.  6 removed in March under my new scheme.

Well done! Yes, the only way to go! If they are not prepared to pay proper rates then so be it.

[Awana JF]

Well not bad for March, better than January (14%) and far better than February (40%) in terms of $. Slightly better in terms of downloads (5 to 10%). Being level 3 didn't make a huge difference when only considering the numbers but it is only because I had a nice SOD in January and nothing exciting this month. 

With 2x more pictures than last March, I've earned 2x more $ for about 2x more downloads, which is also consistent... Anyhow this is my second BME here on SS. 

On the other hand, it is a disaster on AS. Downloads are a bit down compare to other months, but I've earned half of previous months with mainly 0.33$... 

I started to upload on Alamy and Dreamstime but no download so far... 

[Wilm Ihlenfeld]

1 hour ago, Former_Poster said:

Record breaking month for *downloads* for me.  Ever. Smashed it.

Earned 35% less than last month and 70% less than last March.

RPD has dropped through the floor and continues to plummet.

Again its video killing it dropping the RPD from $21 to $5.  More and more $0.34 video "sales".

Generally now if any my best selling videos sell for under $3 3 times in a row im removing them off SS.  6 removed in March under my new scheme.

That sounds really bad.

I wonder – out of curiosity – how things are doing for Doug Jensen. But it seems that he won't share his experiences with the new earnings structure.

Of my donwloads in March, 340 were under $0.38.
They brought an average of $0.14. So together $48 – for 340 downloads! In the past that would have been $130. This alone results in an annual loss of $1,000, even though I'm at the same level I was before the new earnings structure was implemented. Add to that the losses from the beginning of the year (that are difficult to estimate).
Elsewhere I get €0.38 as the lowest payment, which is equivalent to $0.45 at the moment. So that's three times. And there, the percentage of downloads with the lowest compensation is significantly lower compared to the rest of the downloads.

But if that's even more severe in the video sector, I really feel sorry for everyone who offers videos! What you write sounds really frightening.

 

[alessandro pinto]

Best month since June 2020... but still very low income compared to prior june 2020.

[Former_Poster]

43 minutes ago, Wilm Ihlenfeld said:

That sounds really bad.

 

Of my donwloads in March, 340 were under $0.38.

 

Ive not got that level of detail to see how many were below a threshold as i stopped caring but for sure 600+ are below that without calculating it exactly.

Roughly 33% of my image sales by revenue are subs and of course all of those will be lower than the $0.38 of old.

March is my worst month for RPD for both images and video since i started 11 years ago on here.

 

[Wilm Ihlenfeld]

3 hours ago, Former_Poster said:

Ive not got that level of detail to see how many were below a threshold as i stopped caring but for sure 600+ are below that without calculating it exactly.

Roughly 33% of my image sales by revenue are subs and of course all of those will be lower than the $0.38 of old.

March is my worst month for RPD for both images and video since i started 11 years ago on here.

 

I had my worst RPD since 2010 in January 2021. February was a touch better. March RPD was 27.5% better than January and 22.5% better than February.

Actually, due to the new revenue structure, January should have been the worst month for you as well. And since then, it should actually have gone uphill for you. Why now March brings you such a bad RPD is difficult for me to understand.

[Former_Poster]

2 hours ago, Wilm Ihlenfeld said:

Why now March brings you such a bad RPD is difficult for me to understand.

Video.  More and more video sales are going to subscription or whatever the hell the sub dollar sales are.

January yes I had level 1 sales but those were 15% of the normal video price.

15% of ~$90 is significantly more than 25% of $10 or even 25% or $1.

Oringer has stated the future is subscription and theres very little incentive for a buyer to stay as a single clip purchase.

Its the ratio of old tier prices to "new" thats killing it.

Images are down due to the huge increase in $0.10 subs more than anything.

 

[Steven Tritton]

I just calculated my video sales for March and it is $7.80. That's way down on what it use to be which was way more than double that. Hence my poor earnings for March 2021 compared to March 2020.

@Former_Postergood on you for taking some action with your best selling vids. How frustrating to see them go at such pathetically low prices.