I am trying to figure out what kinds of earnings are possible at SS. Does anyone know how many subscribers they have, how many new subscribers they get a month, and how many they lose a month? Does anyone know of anyone that is getting approximately 1000 dl a day at SS.

The reason I am asking is by the end of Jan or mid Feb I should hit diamond on IS. Which means I could double my income by going exclusive. Which would mean I would be earning about the same amount I am now and not have to uploading to five sites. The only reason why I wouldn’t do this is if SS has the clients to really increase earnings.

I am producing about 300 to 400 images a month now and what I noticed on SS is that my earnings are not going up as much as I would have thought with all my increased photos. It could be because the holiday season (I don't have Christmas or New Years photos), or that I need to diversify my portfolio.

I really like how IS shows you how many dl photos have so you see what the clients from that site are looking for. Maybe I should wait until the holidays and over and see what happens before seriously considering going exclusive.

Any thoughts will be most appreciated.

I know Yuri Arcurs has hit 1000 downloads a day with SS. Probably not every day though. Look at his portfolio and you can see why but he does have a few people working for him.
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Andersr is probably not far behind.

I am sure you would make a lot more if you uploaded to more than 5 sites. In another forum I read that Yuri Arcurs makes over $400 a month from Crestock. That is my 8th best earning site.

People moan about the smaller sites but they still have earnings potential with a good portfolio like yours.

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Thanks for the info. At first when I looked at his portfolio I was a bit intimidated. He has 11,014 images. The color and photos are stunning. I looked at the top of the page and saw the sort was by most popular. I wanted to see if he was always this good so I changed the sort to oldest first and was very encouraged.

He used some of the same models in the beginning and the photos were just ok. Some photos the lighting was not so great. I noticed after about 1200 photos his pictures got better and again after 2400, and 3500. With all that said It give me hope.

I have only been doing this a little over a year. But it always feels like it takes so long to learn all the things I need to know to take better photos.

Thanks again.

I have been wondering about the SS model. It doesn't make sense to me.

They can only make money if people don't download their full allotment each month ($199 a month for 750 downloads being 26 cents a download). Won't people eventually catch on, and just stockpile images for a few months at a time? If you have a certain clientele, it seems like you could do a pretty good job of predicting your needs, and then just pick up individual images at another agency to supplement--at 200 a month, you could pick up a good number of extra images and still save money.

Am I missing something, or will they eventually drop off, as people create a store of images for themselves?

To be black diamond at IS you need 200.000 downloads. To get maximun royalties --let's say "plain" diamond--, 25.000 is enough.

Probably if you upload everywhere, five, ten different sites, you will earn more. But I turned diamond at silver and never looked back. I doubt I would earn much more spreading my portfolio through the whole web.
Maybe more, it's possible. Much more, I don't think so.

As for SS, yes, it's true that they have a very small profit margin, even less if you count referrals, but I suppose that if they have worked that way for three years, they will be able to go on.

Sorry, I meant diamond...so lazyann you are with IS only? Did you go exclusive right when you were eligible or did you wait until you hit diamond?

I went exclusive when I was silver --30%-- because I had been waiting to reach payouts elsewhere.

The main thing that has always discouraged me from going exclusive at IS is the fact that they change things too often with mixed results. There are lots of complaints about slow sales after the "tweaks" are made. So to have all my eggs in one basket and to make my business dependent on just one source is (at least for me) a no-no.

Also, they are the only "agency" that requires their RF photographers to be exclusive for them. I could live with image exclusivity (under certain circumstances, as many agencies do), but to be RF exclusive is just too much to ask for so little to gain. It would also mean that you could not sell RF at traditional sites and there are images that are not for micros that sell well at traditional prices at much higher levels.

In the end, there is more in the stock photography world beyond IS and the "extra" comission they offer is just not worth it.

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There is simply no comparison between IS and SS.

Have you not noticed the flurry of sales that take place at SS when you upload a new batch? Then, after a while, those 'new' sales disappear. This is because the subscription model forces a number of clients to download 'almost anything new in case they ever need it'.

By my reckoning, about 70% of sales at SS are not 'genuine sales'.

To test the water (and particularly with such an important decision to make) you should stop uploading to SS for two months. Then you will discover the true underlying long term genuine customer demand for your pictures.

In my case I reckon after two months my income will have fallen 70%.

As such, SS is 'fools gold' but IS is a blue chip investment.

I recently did an analysis of possible customer flows at the big five agencies using amongst other things the data available from compete.com.

IS announced in September it had signed its 2,400,000th member (customer) and that number now looks more like 2,700,000.

In contrast, Fotolia has just announced its 500,000th member and Dreamstime appears to be at or around 450,000.

As far as I can make out (and its a big estimate) SS has a customer base of somewhere between 260,000 and 370,000.

For many people SS is a top earner, but the underlying customer base explains why income drops so much once new uploads stop (it removes the wham bam thank you ma'am factor).

This is only my own amateur analysis, but I hope it helps.

I should have added that I like SS a lot - its great fun, and for many photographers SS provides an immediate sense of achievement.

However I was very surprised when recently a photographer who had an image on the 'most popular of all time' said he achieved that with only 854 downloads for that picture.

To put things in perspective, the top sales list at IS at the moment shows pictures with several thousand downloads in just 3 months.