PhotoDune October - November Statistic And Update

This is a quote from the PhotoDune forum!

Hey guys, with the non-exclusive rate increase announced, I wanted to stop in with some sales and stats updates as a couple of people have requested!

PhotoDune has continued to zip along and the stats keep getting bigger. I’m still in awe of how many photos are out there in the world of microstock photography!

We now have over 400,000 photos up for sale, with the last three months adding 40k, 70k and 100k new photos respectively. So a good solid trend seems to be occurring with contributions growing very quickly.
We now have around 500 authors with at least one sale, and our top author Yuri has just passed his 5000th sale. In fact, in case you didn’t know we have an author ladder where you can see how different authors are stacking up. It’s quite fun to watch as the sales have been mounting up – http://photodune.net/author/top_authors/?ref=hlehnerer

On the subject of unit sales, the total PhotoDune sales count for our five months is:

• July Private Beta – 1,760
• August – 4,191
• September – 7,369
• October – 8,793 + 6,396 bundle sales
• November – 14,908

(For November, I’ve divided the current number by the number of days passed and then multiplied by 30. So it’s extrapolated out on a simple base. I think it may actually be higher as we keep getting bigger with each passing week).

We’ve been doing lots of marketing for the new site with a successful photo and graphic bundle in October that sold close to $130,000 worth. We also ran a big series of photo effects tutorials over on our Photoshop blog Psdtuts+ showcasing what you can do with PhotoDune images. And right now we’re running a promotion where buyers get 50% of their November spend back as marketplace credit to spend again in December.

Over on Microstockgroup we’ve gotten some great feedback (as well as some healthy criticism!) and in case you hadn’t seen I thought I’d share a couple of quotes from MSG -based PhotoDune authors:

”... I am very pleased with PDune. They are the most innovative of all the newer sites. They’re creatively and aggressively marketing their image collection.” – LisaFX (Full Comment)

”... PhotoDune has done me proud, especially for a new agency. Thanks to that bundle, they’re my third biggest earner for the year despite having only five months of earnings, and my ninth biggest earner since I started with microstock. Nobody has come out of the gate with numbers like that.” – Disorderly (Full Comment)

So hooray for some kind words from Lisa and Disorderly

Stuff We’re Still Working On

Of course we’re still n00bs in the world of stock photography and we have tons of stuff to learn. Right now some of the things we are working on, or are planning to work on are:

• Our reviewers are getting slammed again thanks to the consistent increases in submissions. Just when we thought we were on top of the content, it’s amped up all over again. Our valiant Microstock Solutions team is wrestling with the queue as we speak, and I’m certain we’ll get it back down in short order.
• We had a spate of upload problems about a week ago due in part to PhotoDune, but largely due to the rest of the marketplaces growing as well. It’s been another huge year at Envato, and the platform just keeps levelling up in size. Unfortunately the upload and performance problems were timed with an upgrade to our support system which was a case of super bad timing. So while the support team was busy learning our new system, we hit them with a whole bunch of authors wondering what was happening with uploads. Thankfully the problems are mostly resolved and Drew and his support team pulled some big days and are in control of support again.
• I’ve been seeing a lot of feedback about the way we handle model releases. This is clearly an area we need to work on and is going to need some attention in the new year.

And of course we’re always working on more marketing to drive the site along and sell our awesome pool of content. Recently one of our team (Fuad, who is actually my Dad!) went to the recent Microstock Expo and polled some of the contributors attending the conference about what was most important for a new agency. The near unanimous response was that marketing of images trumped everything else. This has really cemented in our minds that marketing is the most important thing we can be doing for PhotoDune. Happily it’s one of our strengths.

We’re really proud to have jumped into the big world of stock photography, and we’re extremely excited by the results so far. We hope that this non-exclusive rate bump will reward those of you who have already chosen to upload with PhotoDune and that we’ll be able to continue to deliver good returns to you. Thank you to you guys for giving us a try, we really appreciate your time and input.