After a big effort to increase my portfolio by 70% in the last 12 months, I can now finally collect the fruits of that effort. My 2011 average is improving and my files are selling more.

I am aware that not everybody is experiencing growth. In my case, my portfolio is not that big yet, so it is easy to increase it.

Here is the overall picture:

Blue vars are revenues, red line are downloads and grey background is portfolio size.

How are things looking for you?

Happy new year to all! I hope you had a great holiday and a nice time with your family!

January is the time to review the previous year and learn lessons which improve your business. I followed this process last year here and here and it helped me define my goals and measure my success.

In this post I want to review the main items of 2010 and analyse why it turned out as it did. How did 2010 go? Did I meet my targets? What can I learn?

2010: Facts and Figures

I produced 84 images increasing my portfolio by 8% from 1064 to 1148 images. My yearly income increased by 13%. Downloads, however, have plummeted. Here follow two charts which illustrate 2010′s trend:

Royalties started strong in 2010 all the way to August where for the first time they dropped below 2009 levels. In November they even dropped below 2008 levels. 2010′s curve is very different to those from 2008 and 2009. It started strong and ended weak, opposite both previous years.

Downloads have experienced a free fall throughout the whole year. December’s downloads dropped by 50% on December 2009′s downloads.

Analysis

My image production in 2010 has not been as strong as intended. The lack of regular new images and the continuing increase in competition from other photographers and agencies has decreased my portfolio’s exposure to the market. The lack of any Christmas imagery also reduced the chance of new customers viewing my images.

Nevertheless, it seems as if most iStockphoto photographers have not seen a strong increase in sales in their fourth quarter. The following thread on iStockphoto gives you more insight and numbers.

Regardless of market forces, the small increase (13%) in my royalties in 2010 can be linked to my small image production and that is something I can influence in 2011.

Did I Achieve My Goals for 2010?

In January 2010, I set myself 5 goals to achieve. Did I achieve them?

Goal 1: Increase production by 25%
Not achieved I produced 84 images instead of the targeted 138. That is an underperformance by -40% and 25% less images than in 2009.

Goal 2: Sell Exclusively on iStockphoto
Achieved All new images were marketed by iStockphoto. A side-goal was to have 15% of new uploads enter the Vetta collection. Only one image achieved it, meaning only 1% entered Vetta. Making it into Vetta is not as simple as one thinks! Nevertheless, iStockphoto claims that approximately 1% of their collection is in Vetta, therefore making my 1% in-line with the average.

Goal 3: Reduce Production Costs by 25%
Achieved I reduced my production costs by 32%.

50% of my Images will be Produced On Location Outside the Studio
Not achieved Only 16% of my 2010 images were produced outside the studio.

Goal 5: Produce Two Photography Workshops in the Area of Glamour Lighting
Not achieved I only produced one workshop in 2010. Read all about it here, here and here.

Other Highlights From 2010

In 2010 I continued writing my blog and increased by +374% the number of visits I had. That resulted in more than a doubling of my subscribers.

Additionally, I have started a few photography related projects which should bear fruit in 2011. You will hear about them soon.

Finally, at the end of 2010 I was accepted to contribute to all image collections on Getty Images Creative, including Rights Managed photography. Until now I had only been limited to three royalty-free collections. This will certainly play an important role in 2011.

In a follow up post I will set out the goals for 2011 and tell you how I manage to achieve them.

How has 2010 been for you? Have you achieved your goals? What worked well and what worked not so well?

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Picture of the iStockphoto Europe team. Photo from iStockphoto Deutschland Facebook Profile

Today I had the privilege to join an iStockphoto lunch with Jonathan Klein and Lee Martin, founder and CEO of Getty Images and Getty’s Senior Vice President Sales, respectively. Both of them were at iStockphoto’s Berlin office today. It was a great experience speaking with them!

It also comes at a time when iStockphoto has announced some important changes affecting all photographers. Changes in the way iStockphoto pays out royalties to each photographer and a drop in image credits, so images will, in some cases, cost less.

There has been considerable unrest due to these announcements, many people are unhappy. Online you will find lots of people crunching the maths. In my case, I expect a drop of between 10% to 15% in earnings.

In the short term, this will affect me. But middle to long term, I am not worried for my business. I expect the new rules to value good quality content produced consistently every year. Under the new rules, the better my pictures, the higher my yearly credits and the higher my commissions. Additionally, the lowering of purchase credits will also increase my sales volume (we know that from experience).

iStockphoto and Getty Images value my exclusive commitment to them. The different perks and goodies I receive do create a good business relationship. Most importantly my pictures will grow within the new exclusive iStockphoto and Getty collections. My productions cost me between €400 to €2000. The different price categories allow my pictures to meet buyers at different price points. I welcome the recognition by selling the costly productions at higher prices.

For me, the recent changes have marked a professionalization of the microstock industry and for iStockphoto in particular. Bruce Livingstone, the founder of iStockphoto, promised back in 2007 that he would help istockers become professionals. I think this is happening and is going to open many opportunities to exclusive istock photographers like myself.

I’m back from excellent vacations in Asia! Japan and Thailand are really great places to be. A big thanks to David, one of my blog readers in Tokyo, to take the time to meet me. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to meet more of you during my next travels. Anybody from Brisbane? That’s where I will be next.

Due to my holidays I was not able to post my April statistics on time, so here you have them with some delay. The month of April was weaker and did not continue the upwards trend of the previous months. When compared to 2008 the dip in April appears to be normal. In 2009 April stayed flat with regards to March. So no need to worry with the April 2010 numbers.

The months before summer are usually weak and it is a great time to shoot and get ready for the post-summer large volume sales!

Getty royalties are exactly the same as they were a year ago. These are the numbers for March 2010 (the April numbers are coming out next week). I am happy with that considering the more expensive Getty collections are struggling to keep up with the changes in the stock market.

Royalty per Image slightly down on iStockphoto. At Getty Images slightly up for March.

How has your business been going? Did your April see a peak too? Are you preparing your portfolio for post-summer sales?

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I don’t know whats happening out there but sales keep increasing! March has been a fantastic month. 31 days makes a different, but even if you look at the revenue per image, the numbers went up. Getty revenue decreased, no surprises there. How has march been for you?

Competition is fierce in the stock market and if you want to stand out you have to invest. Long gone are the days where your holiday pictures or nice shots from your cousin’s newborn were enough to earn a comfortable pocket money. For the past two years I have watched the quality of pictures on iStockphoto increase constantly and after discussion with many other successful stock photographers quickly decided that the only way forward is to invest: invest  in reasearch, invest in quality.

This has worked well for me. A good photoshooting will cost anywhere between 700EUR and 2000EUR (mainly model, make up, wardrobe and location). Recently I spoke to a stock photographer friend of mine and enjoyed hearing he had spent careful time researching a topic and then investing on producing the idea in the best possible way. Numbers are working for him.

All this time however, I had had no proper means of measuring how successful my investments were. I knew my shooting costs but I could not measure precisely the point where my investment broke even. And this was always a problem.

The goal is that a photoshooting breaks even within 6 months. That means that the series should generate 16% of your costs each month. How do you measure that?

It was only just recently, about 3 weeks ago, that I had a deeper look into LookStat.com, and was surprised to finally discover a tool to help me improve measuring return on investment (ROI). In LookStat you can set up a collection of pictures (suitably the results of one photo session) and LookStat will tell you how much money those pictures have generated. You have different viewing options and charts, making it easy to understand.

I am still missing some important features which make measuring ROI easier, and so I wrote Rahul Pathak, the founder of LookStat, with some suggestions and was pleased to hear that they are already working in that direction! I’ll keep you up to date on any evolution and how you can use it for your pictures.

Thanks to LookStat here are some examples of my measurements, good and bad (click on the picture for the complete series):

	Earned 61% of investment in 4 months
	Earned 8% of investment in 4 months
	Earned 1200% of investment in 13 months
	Earned 221% of investment in 9 months
	Earned 67% of investment in 8 months
	Earned 585% of investment in 20 months
	Earned 13% of investment in 9 months

How do you measure return on investment? How important is it for you? I would be interested in learning about your workflow and number keeping

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Numbers are out for iStockphoto and Getty Images. iStockphoto has produced very strong results in February 2010. I doubled my February 2008 earnings and achieved one of my best ever months. 2010 is being very profitable on iStockphoto.com!  Here the chart.

Downloads on the other hand remain constant. My portfolio has not grown which explains the low fluctuation in downloads.

At Getty Images no surprises. January 2010 was good but stays within the normal revenue range.

Comparison

When we look at the complete evolution of my iStockphoto and Getty Images portfolios, the trend remains: iStockphoto revenue increases while Getty Images remains constant.

And most interestingly, the revenue per image on both agencies continue their convergeance.

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2010 started off quite well. The increase in prices at iStockphoto has not yet detered buyers from shopping. My downloads remain fairly constant and inline with 2008 and 2009.

Royaltees, however, have benefited from the increase in prices. January,2010, was very strong. Stronger than December, 2009, but slightly under October and November, 2009.

Here the charts for iStockphoto

My Getty Images royaltees for December arrived a week ago, so I couldn’t post the information earlier. With my December report I can now compare my Getty royaltees for 2009 and 2008 (please note that I got my first Getty report in March 2008).

You will notice that 2009 and 2008 were pretty much identical, even though I had double as many images in 2009.

How have iStockphoto’s price changes worked for you?

Do you have charts with your Getty royaltees? I haven’t found any Getty photographers who share their charts. Does anybody have some links?

Happy New Year!

Chris Guillebeau posted a very interesting review of his year 2009 and encouraged others to do the same. He went through his numbers, his business results and drew conclusions from them. His process appealed to me and I applied it to my photography business. I want to share it with you and would be very interested in knowing how your photography has done in 2009. How has you income evolved? What have been your costs? Has your business strategy worked?

So what are my conclusions for 2009?

Large increase in investment

in 2009 I invested almost twice the amount of money in productions. I always had a wardrobe stylist at each production and bought all the clothes necessary for each photo session. I also worked in rented places more often. These two elements considerably increased the cost of each photo session, some photo sessions costing over 1500 Euros.

Despite the big investment, I produced the same amount of images in 2009 as I did in 2008: in 2009 I produced 110 images (45 for iStockphoto and 65 for Getty Images) and in 2008 I produced a total of 111 images (81 for iStockphoto and 30 for Getty Images).

The decision to invest more was focused mainly on Getty productions. Since my royalties at Getty Images did not increase during this period, I conclude that the investment was not as profitable as I would have expected.

Nevertheless, the risk was necessary in order to best evaluate the profitability of Getty Images.

A considerable increase in royalties at iStockphoto

In 2009 my royalties on iStockphoto increased by 29% while my total download count only increased 2,6%.

Despite having produced half as much for iStockphoto in 2009 as I did in 2008 (45 images in 2009 and 81 in 2008) I still managed to earn a 29% increase! Tell me which employer gives you such an increase working half as much!? There are three main factors explaining the increase:

- The introduction of the premuim Vetta Collection: If you compare 2008 and 2009 you clearly see that between September and November there is a steep rise in sales. My amount of downloads for that period in 2008 and 2009 is identical. But if you look at the royalties it is clear that after the introduction of the Vetta collection in August 2009 my earnings increased.

- The continuous expansion of the microstock market

- The yearly increase in prices: every year prices go up and in 2009 my images sold more expensive. Even though prices increased my total number of downloads remained constant. This is very encouraging since it disproves the claims that higher prices scare buyers.

Poor results at Getty Images

Despite producing twice as many photos for Getty Images as I did in 2008, and the higher investment in production, I experienced no increase in royalties. My portfolio doubled its size but my royalties stayed constant. This translated into a considerable fall in royalties per image. I do not have a clear explanation for this, but here are my theories:

- Getty Images image price decreases: In order to face competition from the microstock agencies, Getty Images has restructured its pricing resulting in a large decrease of prices in certain of its collections and image sizes.

- Descrease in market share of Getty Images

- My images are not appropriate for the Getty market buyer: My images might not satisfy the demands of Getty buyers. This is an assumption but I cannot base it on facts. I would be interested in seeing earning reports from other Getty photographers in order to verify if my image style is the reason I see no increase in sales on Getty.

Specialisation of my portfolio

When I review the images I produced this year I observe a clear specialization in the area of commercial glamour. This has been a conscious decision. It is an area where I see potential and where competition is still low, but where demand is healthy.

This review will allow me to set new targets for 2010 and change my business strategy to achieve those goals. In a second post this week, I will go through my targets and share with you how I plan to achieve them.

Until then I would be very interested in hearing your opinion on my review. Did you see the same trends? Have you performed a review of 2009? What are you results?

Looking forward to hearing from you!

The Getty Images sales report always comes out three weeks after the month is over, so finally here are the numbers, fresh out of Excel!

I always compare iStockphoto and Getty Images earnings reports and these are the numbers for November. The chart shows that both in 2008 and in 2009 November brought a slight dip in earnings. December will probably have another dip before it picks up in January.

The trend on Getty continues, without any major increase or decrease.

How about your numbers? How was your November? Did you experience a dip too?