Comments on: Microstock Business Metrics – RPI

By: Rahul Pathak

Rahul Pathak — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 06:31:48 +0000

No worries Mauricio. Merry Christmas to you too. I don’t have a good source for 2008 revenues. If you do a search on Google for microstock revenues you’ll find some good istock data from 2007. Another thought would be to check out Getty’s SEC filings. Since they were public and own istock, they probably have something in prior 10Qs or 10Ks (quarterly and annual reports) that might be of value.

If you find something, please share it here. I’m sure others would love to know. I’ll do some digging too when I’m back in the office.

By: Mauricio Jordan

Mauricio Jordan — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 17:52:12 +0000

Thanks Rahul for the super fast feedback. I was’t expecting an answer so soon. It’s Christmas time.

I also would like to take a chance to ask if you know where can be found informations about the 2008 revenue’s of the big agencies?

Thanks Rahul.

Merry Christmas!

By: Rahul Pathak

Rahul Pathak — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 19:04:06 +0000

Also, in case it wasn’t clear, the above half-life estimates are taken directly from Yuri’s great post on Advanced Stock Terminology:

http://www.arcurs.com/advanced-stock-photography-termology-for-photographers

By: Rahul Pathak

Rahul Pathak — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 19:00:44 +0000

Thanks Mauricio. Your question is a great one and one that comes up all the time when trying to think about the revenue potential of a portfolio. I think Yuri’s post (linked to in this article) is one of the best sources of anecdotal data that I’ve seen. The short answer is that this data isn’t readily available (although we plan to make it transparent with LookStat) modeling a 2-3 year lifespan is probably a conservative choice.

Half life speculations (time taken for revenue to decline to 50% of starting revenue):

Non-exclussive microstock: 2 years.

Istock: 1 year.

Traditional stock: 5 years.

By: Mauricio Jordan

Mauricio Jordan — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 18:24:58 +0000

Great article.

I would like to ask a question that till now I didn’t find a exact answer nor a approximated one. I’m working a businessplan for 2009 and I’m having a hard time to find really trustable / representative sources to calculate how long a stock image will live in micro and macrostock in order to predict income in the year to come.
But I haven´t found until now avarage numbers on the “lifetime of a photo”.
How long would be a reasonable estimate for the lifetime for micro and macro agencies?
What I mean is: How long would would be estimated that a photo will sell well until the sales start to decline?

By: LookStat - Official Blog » Blog Archive » Microstock Metrics - Direct & Hidden Costs

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 02:20:14 +0000

[...] the spread between cost and revenue and the ideal situation is when you can produce images with high earning power at low cost. (I know – I’m incredibly [...]