LookStat Microstock Trends – Earnings/DL – Summer 2009
Posted on October 9th, 2009 in Uncategorized | 15 Comments »
We analyzed our aggregate microstock sales data from July 1 to Sep 30 of this year and saw some interesting trends in the Earnings/Download number.
$/DL Average Trending Up
This chart shows a 7 day moving average for both total earnings and downloads (values obscured) across all of LookStat. The interesting thing to me was the fact that Earnings/DL was drifting up. I had expected this to be relatively flat but it was interesting to see it rise quite a bit over the course of the summer. (I think this is probably a good thing.)
Earnings/DL – Peaks & Valleys
Our experience suggests that sales peak mid-week and have a bottom on weekends, which seems logical. What was interesting though, is that the earnings/download drops on the weekend as well.
This suggests that not only are there fewer buyers on the weekend, but those that are active are purchasing smaller images. This makes sense when you consider the fact that buyers on the weekends are likely buying for blogs and the web versus those during the week who are probably buying for clients or on corporate accounts. Also, Saturday makes sense as a minimum since that is a weekend day in any time zone.
I’d love to hear your experiences and thoughts.
15 Responses
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Rahul Pathak. Rahul Pathak said: new blog post about microstock earnings/download over the summer http://bit.ly/SRsLW #microstock [...]
Not sure how your earnings per download etc is calculated, but could it be that weekend figures are disproportionately influenced by subscription sales?
Total sales figures accord with my results, but to be honest I haven't really calculated the $/download figures! Thanks for the info
Hi there,
I hadn't considered that there might be more subscription than single download sales over the weekend. If I were to guess, I would have thought it would be the other way around (the assumption being that subs are generally purchased by corporate clients.) I could be way off base there, however.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts regardless!
Rahul
Hi there,
I hadn't considered that there might be more subscription than single download sales over the weekend. If I were to guess, I would have thought it would be the other way around (the assumption being that subs are generally purchased by corporate clients.) I could be way off base there, however.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts regardless!
Rahul
What a average per down… Mine is 0.45$.. Those earnings must have some or a lot of ELS..! Just a newbie talking here… cheers and great trend!
Hello Rahul,
thanks for sharing these insightful data.
My first thought was as well that on weekends mostly private buyers use stock for blogs, brochures and the like, while corporate buyers will be bigger images for posters and print during the week.
Bye, Robert
perhaps another reason for cheap weekend sales is that those with subscriptions want to get the most for their money and keep downloading on the weekends.
oh wait… holgs already said that
.. well I agree with Holds.
Hi Holgs:
The $/DLfigure is computed as you would expect. I hadn't thought about subscriptions being a big driver of weekend sales but it's definitely a possibility.
Thanks fo sharing your thoughts and I hope you're having a great trip!
Rahul
Hi Holgs:
The $/DL figure is computed as you would expect. I hadn't thought about subscriptions being a big driver of weekend sales but it's definitely a possibility.
Thanks fo sharing your thoughts and I hope you're having a great trip!
Rahul
Luis,
It's just a matter of time!
Rahul
Robert,
I'm with you. Those were my conclusions as well. It will be interesting to monitor this as the market continues to shift from print to other channels.
Rahul
Hi Rahul, hi all,
I can say I have a similar kind of weekly trend, subscriptions in the weekends as observed by all of you, but with Saturday better than Sunday (I think due to European clients).
Thanks for publishing your data,
roberto
Yep – over time the subscription value on SS will go up to $0.38 and the RPD figure on other sites will go up as you go (eg. Fotolia) or your files (eg. Dreamstime) through the ranks.
[...] published some interesting analysis of aggregated sales results across all their users on their blog, some of it was no surprise / confirmation of what we can already see, but the upward trend in [...]
Thanks for the stats Rahul. The trends you point out are similar to my sales. Another possible explanation for the summer rise in earnings/dl is that buyers are buying images for Thanksgiving and Christmas ads in the summer, and they involve a lot of print. Perhaps a designer-by-day person can comment on this possibility. It would be interesting to see the rest of the year trend for earnings/dl.