The most commonly heard complaint from traditional photographers about microstock is that it is impossible to make money selling pictures for a few dollars. While some pictures are still sold for $1.00, the average microstock-image price is now probably about $6.50. If the photographer receives a 20% royalty, that makes the average payment per download about $1.30.
Augmenting data collected by iStockcharts with additional research to account for known discrepancies between iStockcharts and iStockphoto’s real numbers, Selling Stock estimates that iStockphoto had nearly 3 million still-image downloads during March 2009. (See this table for details on individual March sales of top 157 iStock contributors.) If iStock sustains this pace for the entire year, it can expect close to 36 million total downloads in 2009.
That would mean $234 million in still-image revenues for iStock, but what can individuals earn?
The number one microstock producer, Yuri Arcurs, had 28,170 downloads in March. Yuri is non-exclusive, and iStock represents less than 50% of his total microstock revenue. However, from iStock alone, Arcurs can expect to earn somewhere in the area of $439,000 in 2009.
Arcurs’ division of revenue between iStock and others is not unique. Non-exclusive shooters typically earn as much or more from other agencies, making iStock less than 50% of their total revenues. It is, therefore, logical to estimate that the total revenue of a non-exclusive iStock contributor is twice or more his or her iStock revenue. As such, each iStock photographer’s total revenue can be roughly estimated at $2.60 per iStock download, which represents a 40% commission of an average $6.50 sale.
Based on March 2009 downloads, 21 iStock contributors can expect to earn over $150,000 this year. There are 45 who are likely to earn over $100,000. There are 23 more in the $80,000 to $100,000 range.
Outsiders argue that the only way you can get to the top is to have been one of the early microstock adopters five or six years ago, and that now it is too late to enter. This is not necessarily true, as evidenced by the publicly available dates of joining iStock for each contributor. A number of top iStock shooters have only been uploading for two or three years.
For more on this subject, see “Who Loses by Focusing on Increasing Traffic.”