April sales update:

Anyone familiar with this blog or my portfolio will realise that April was never going to be a normal month for me following the death of Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister of Britain. My archive B/W images of her from 1991 were in great demand after the announcement with Shutterstock alone having 72 downloads on the day and many more since.

Starting with Shutterstock then I had a BME with a stunning 278 downloads ($122.79). I'm pleased to say that these weren't all Margaret Thatcher images, with a whole variety of subjects being downloaded. As Summer approaches my other good selling subject, the Tentertainment music festival, saw an uplift in sales.

Dreamstime also produced a superb BME with 26 downloads ($63.22). Much of this income was generated  by the levels system there, with repeat credit sales of Margaret Thatcher producing over $6 in commission each time.

Istockphoto rebounded from its recent slump to produce 12 downloads ($21.01) with a further $1.12 in PP sales. No Thatcher images there yet - though they do now accept "celebrity" images they do require accreditation details (or the images to have been taken in a public place). I'm trying to think of a way round that as, obviously, I don't have accreditation details from 22 years ago.

Yaymicro had a good month with 6 downloads (8.25 euros). Surprisingly, no Thatcher images sold but, on the day, three sales of politicians of the same era -so I presume they were related.

123rf produced 24 downloads ($8.03). I have had a re-think with them. After months of not uploading I was still seeing regular monthly sales and decided that, really, I was just leaving money on the table by not uploading there. The debate, as ever, is do buyers shop around looking for the cheapest sites and are my sales at higher priced sites harmed by having images at 123rf? For now, my personal conclusion is that this isn't the case. Sites have their own sets of buyers that, by and large, stick with that site. Microstock prices are low enough to make shopping around a waste of time (therefore money) for most buyers. Just my view. It took a couple of days of intensive uploading to catch up with the backlog but I'm pleased to say a 100% acceptance on editorials and a surprisingly high acceptance on commercial images as well.

Bigstock did well with 11 downloads ($7.64). The much criticised new subscription plans didn't have much effect with most of my downloads being regular credit sales.

Fotolia saw just 2 downloads (1.65credits).

Mostphotos saw a sub sale of Thatcher (0.28 euros).

Picturenation proved disappointing as despite a number of my Thatcher related images on their home page they got just one web size download (£0.40).

Overall then, an excellent month which demonstrated just how much events can dictate the success of editorial images. Regards, David.