5 months of data from my microstock photography and I see the first drop in my earnings despite of the portfolio growth. I didn't get any extended licenses in April while in March I got 3 (~30% of my earnings that month).

iStock remains my strongest performer - 38%. Ignoring the extended license last month, iStock earnings show a linear growth with the size of the portfolio. What concerns me is that the "sell-through-rate" remains pretty low - 28%. It is even worse. I didn't sell a single picture downloaded in April. I am selling the same old pictures over and over again. Perhaps, it is time to improve quality of my photography.

ShutterStock is my second earner with 33%. In three weeks of March and April I grew my portfolio to 164 files, the same size as one I have in iStock. So far, I don't see any relation between the number of downloads and the portfolio size. The April performance was definitely worse than in March. The "return-per-image" dropped from 0.58 (or 0.37 without EL) in March to 0.28 in April.

Fotolia moved to the third place with 13.9% share of earnings despite of a poor portfolio growth. I do not submit all my new pictures to FT. Nevertheless, my acceptance rate is pretty low there due to "type of photograph" reason. They have the most inconsistent review process in microstock industry.

Dreamstime earnings went down while Big Stock Photo earnings were up a little bit. 123RF stays at the same low level. No earnings from FeaturePics and LuckyOliver.

A few days ago I got accepted by StockXpert after 4 failed applications "At the moment we are not looking for pictures as the ones you uploaded". I got tired with typing my bio and info over and over again. So, I just wrote "please visit my website to see my photography and microstock earnings." Maybe, that worked, because I didn't really change my pictures.

Some other bloggers reporting monthly earnings from microstock:
Microstock Diaries, Microstock Experiment, NiltoMil, jrtb, Driftless Ramblings, bankizdjec.pl, Photographing the Earth, one millimeter at a time ...
Anybody else?

Related posts:

• Microstock Photography Earnings for
  July 2008, June 2008, May 2008, April 2008, March 2008, February 2008 and January 2008
• First $100 Earnings from My iStockphoto Portfolio
• What Sells in Microstock? My List of Picture Bestsellers
• How to Get Accepted by ShutterStock? Don't Give Up!