Back in the Seventies and Eighties I founded and ran several Fleet Street photo agencies specialising in stock images of celebrities from pop stars to politicians. These were syndicated to the National and International press and Television. These days I am active in the Microstock world and this blog charts my journey as well as, hopefully, providing inspiration and ideas to others. Image buyers should also find this blog useful with links to my portfolios and regular updates on new uploads. Unless otherwise stated all images are my copyright and may not be reproduced or copied. Comments are very welcome but will be reviewed before publication. Enjoy your visit. Regards, David.

Wednesday 4 July 2012

June sales updates:

A mixed set of results in June - but overall pleasing.

Shutterstock excelled with 104 downloads bringing in a BME in earnings of $98.26. This was achieved from two Enhanced Downloads paying $28 each. One was the ever popular Tentertainment music festival (pictured) and the other was an archive B/W image of the 1989 Trades Union Congress in Blackpool. June also saw another milestone as my total earnings at SS crossed the $1000.00 line.

Dreamstime produced 7 downloads ($10.90). Frustratingly their review of editorial images has slowed greatly (I now have three batches going back some 14 days in the queue). According to their forum they have seen a big increase in editorial submissions and are training up extra reviewers to catch up with the backlog.

Bigstock continues to show promise with 5 downloads ($7.70) -all editorial images.

Istock dissapointed in June with just 8 downloads ($4.88) plus a further $3.64 from a BME of 13 Partner Program sales.

123RF also dissapointed with just 7 downloads ($5.04). My worst month there since October 2011. Not sure what's happening there - they were gaining me a growing number of (mainly) editorial sales but that seems to have tailed off in the last few months.

Yaymicro sold one image of media tycoon Robert Maxwell, paying a worthwhile 3.75 euro.

Finally, another nice surprise from Mostphoto when an image of The Red Arrows produced a subscription sale for 5 euros. This took me neatly over the 10 euro payout level so I was able to get my first ever payment from them. Annoyingly I had to pay a 0.70 euro fee to Paypal to get this. An email to Mostphotos received a prompt and friendly reply that this was normal on Paypal. Well, no it's not - not unless you are selling something on Ebay or whatever. This did happen once before with a payment from Yaymicro and they (Yay) promptly apologised and credited my account with the fee amount. Anyone else had this issue with Mostphotos payouts?

Recent shoots saw images of the historic Cinque Port town of Rye in East Sussex (some now online) and coverage of the 2012 Tentertainment music festival (awaiting edit).

July has seen a good start at Shutterstock, so I'll see if this continues before the famous Summer Slowdown kicks in. Regards, David.

2 comments:

Lissandra said...

Congratulations for the 2 ELs, and great month earnings, David! More sales and success for you in July!

David Fowler said...

Many thanks Lissandra. As somebody who doesn't get many ELs, getting two in one month was great (especially when one of the images was taken 23 years ago!). Kind regards, David.