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 12 December 2018

November Sales Updates:

Stone tower at Emborio on Halki island
A pleasing month in November including the surprise return of a long absent market.

By far, Shutterstock held onto first place with a strong showing of On Demand and Single sales (both combined making up some 60% of my monthly total).

In second place were an improved Istock with 51 downloads and an RPD (rate per download) substantially up on October.

Third place was taken by Alamy with 2 downloads (both from my B/W political archives). Two developments at Alamy pleased and dismayed in various ways. On the plus side they introduced new Portfolio pages coupled with the ability to create individual Galleries (sets). These can both be easily shared on social media to help direct buyers to your images. I've already created a good number of galleries along obvious lines such as Aviation, Barcelona, Majorca etc. You can view my portfolio here My Alamy Portfolio .
The second news was the far less welcome cutting of commission from next February. This drops from an equitable 50/50 split on direct sales to 60/40 ( a drop of 20% in income). They claim this is needed to help fund and develop their business with the usual "you'll benefit from more sales" placebo thrown in. Regular readers will know that I put a lot of time and faith in recent months building up my Alamy portfolio so this comes as a blow. As expected the negative comments on the Alamy forum now run to many pages with a hope that they might re-consider this move and find other ways of funding their business rather than making contributors pay for it. We'll see what happens next.


Redbubble came in fourth place with 3 product sales (I know what someone's getting for
Cap de Barcelona, Port Vell
Christmas!




Fifth place saw the surprise return from the dead of FineArtAmerica with 2 product sales (a mug and a towel). My first sales there since December 2015 so not quite three years. Whether this was a one off event or I shall start seeing more sales will be interesting.

Bigstock were in sixth place with 7 downloads.

Sadly, after a couple of strong months Dreamstime fell to seventh place with 7 downloads (mainly sub sales). Obviously the buyer who had been hitting my port in September and October was absent this month.

Dead rat on Paxos island


In eighth place were Fotolia with just a single download.

Recent uploads included a mixed bunch ranging from a tower of stones on the Greek island of Halki through to the Roy Lichtenstein sculpture Head of Barcelona on the harbour front of Port Vell. For something a bit different I also uploaded images of a dead rat found on the Greek island of Paxos. A good image for pest control/vermin features. I can also envisage this ending up on a T shirt at some point :) Regards, David.

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