24. The Average Contributor
Dreamstime provides a list of their photographers stating when they joined, how much files they have online and how many downloads they have. The list can be filtered in several ways.
One of the ways it can be filtered is on the origin of the photographer (per country). So I checked all the Belgium contributors on Dreamstime and the figures are shown in the graphs below.
24.4 The Belgian Contributors
24.4.1 How many and when ?
There were 137 Belgian photographers listed on Dreamstime on date of 4 September 2007. Underneath you see a graph of when they joined.
It's obvious that they started joining since early 2005 and at the moment more and more photographers are opening an account.
24.4.2. How many files have they online ?
In the graph underneath you can see the number of files online for each photographer.
Although two photographers have more than 2000 files in their portfolio, I was amazed that only 20 of them (15%) have more then 100 files online. 87 of them (63%) have uploaded less then 10 photos.
I myself have, on the time of writing, 960 photos for sale. Only 3 Belgian do better :o) (Just for fun, I'm number 222 considering all contributors at Dreamstime)
24.4.3. How many downloads did they have ?
It's obvious then when you have only a few files for sale and/or you have joined not so long ago, you'll probably have less downloads than those with large portfolio's and/or those who have been already a long time in this game. As we've seen on the previous page, most of the top players today joined in the early days.
Despite these variables, I'll show you a graph with the sales of each photographer.
Honestly I was really surprised that only 20 of them had more than 100 downloads. (with one having almost 5000.) This also means that those 20 are the only ones who have had a possible payout.
In total all 137 Belgian contributors had 15.550 sales. 85% of those downloads (14.000) were made by 20 of them.
The photographers who didn't made it to the minimum payout yet had a total of 1.550 download which means that this money is still on Dreamstimes account and some of it will never be paid out.
Keep in mind that, in my case, Dreamstime generates a lot less sales than iStockphoto or Shutterstock. If we did the same exercise on those sites, the numbers will certainly be significant higher. But these sites don't give this information in such a way.
24.5. Summarized
The saying "Many are called, but few are chosen" is really on it's place here. Meaning that many start this adventure, but only a few really make an effort (given that most have only a few files online).
Looking at the numbers of my fellow countryman only around 20 of them seem to take Microstock sites seriously. 20 out of the 137 which opened an account.
On forums it is often told that microstocks doesn't pay. But if you see that so few take Microstock sites seriously, this isn't surprising. You can only get out if what you put in.
But if you look at the left side of the graphs, you'll see that it's certainly possible to be successful and earn more than pocket money. It's even possible to earn a considerable amount of money, as 153 iStockphoto contributors have more than 25.000 downloads.
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