February sales updates:

An average month in February with, as usual, Shutterstock way out in front. A good number of On Demand downloads and a high paying Single download pushed the income up nicely. Meanwhile, the Shutterstock app for Facebook continues to hiccup with just the odd sales update now and again. Forget about the Twitter app -it stopped last June for me and shows no sign of ever being reactivated again! Whether or not either of these helps sales I can't know, but they certainly do not hinder.

Dreamstime did well with 15 downloads but these were mostly subs sales thus only $6.90 in earnings. It's been noted many times how DT sales come in Subs waves and then Credit sale waves (without anyone ever really fathoming why). Think I'm now due my Credit sales period!

Istock perked up with 14 downloads ($10.18) and a further 5 PP sales ($1.40). The big news from Istock is that they are introducing subscription packages from April. Commission will be at $0.28 for non exclusives (in line with the current PP rate at Thinkstock and Photos.com). How this will affect sales remains to be seen. On balance, I expect to see an increase in sales and revenue from this. Parent company Getty Images also announced a plan to make millions of images free to use in "non commercial" blogs and the like. Obviously this produced predictable outrage amongst contributors with suggestions they were trying to drive competing agencies out of business. I take heart in the fact that Shutterstock seem unconcerned about the move and do not see it as a major threat. In reality how many bloggers are going to want to embed Getty images into their blog -complete with links to Getty and (potentially) some sort of advertising stream? I know I would rather just pay for an image for either of my blogs when I need to -without the Getty clutter around it.

123rf produced 12 downloads ($3.97) -again mainly subs sales. As mentioned before reviews of my (non editorial) images have ground to a halt -I still have an images from January/February in pending. A recent thread at microstockgroup.com suggested that they review large batches promptly but smaller batches or single images are left waiting.

Bigstock saw 9 downloads ($4.90). I'm still seeing an increasing number of subsciption sales here which, thankfully, are still being paid (for now) at the enhanced $0.38 rate for Bridge to Bigstock contributors.

Fotolia managed 5 downloads (1.25 credits). I still have a tiny portfolio there, but what does get accepted seems to sell.

Yay surprised with a single download paying 0.75 euros. Just what caused Yay sales to drop off a cliff after last April remains unknown. Google changed their search results at that time and some other agencies reported a fall in traffic after that -so that may be the reason. Even their multitude of partner sites seem to produce little or no sales.

Finally, having posted recently about no sales at Mostphotos for a long time, I had a sub sale in February for 0.27euros. Hopefully, that isn't it for another nine months.

Uploading in February included an archive image of British architect Sir Richard Rogers as well as images of the Krka waterfalls in Croatia and my local event -the annual Jack In The Green festival in Hastings. Regards, David.

 

March sales updates:

An excellent month overall in March, with the usual suspects doing well and some surprise sales elsewhere.
Way out in front was Shutterstock producing a BME (without any Enhanced Downloads) of 143 downloads      totalling $100.27 in income. Two big factors here: I had a single download of an archive photo of former Prime Minister Edward Heath paying $13.19 and, virtually every day, multiple On Demand downloads which totalled some $46.44 of my overall sales. Especially pleasing was the wide variety of images downloaded -both editorial and commercial. If there was any sort of theme, certainly the Greek islands of Meganissi and Halki sold especially well.
Dreamstime also had a good month of 19 downloads ($31.92) with their levels system working well with three of those downloads paying over $6 each in commission.
Picturenation bounced up the league in March with two medium resolution sales paying £4.00 (GBP) each in commission. Both sales were 1990s b/w images of British politician Eric Ollerenshaw (now Member of Parliament for Lancaster and Fleetwood).
Istockphoto had another dissapointing month with just 7 downloads ($5.59) plus a further $1.12 from 4 PP sales. Not sure where all their increasing editorial sales vanished to.
123rf produced 12 downloads ($5.26).
Bigstock managed 8 downloads ($3.52) with four of those being $0.38 sub sales.
Fotolia saw four downloads producing 1.70 in credits.
Mostphotos produced one sale of Margaret Thatcher - a sub sale paying Euro 0.22. Of significance here is that was my first ever celebrity image sale on Mostphotos.
Finally, Cutcaster produced my fourth ever sale - a large archive image of  British Airways chief Sir Colin Marshall making $1.84 in commission.
Uploading in March saw my returning to my 2008 images of Croatia - complete with a re-edit on a number of images. It was really interesting, some five years on, to see the improved results I was getting from the images. Pictured are the Church of St.Mark at Makarska and boats in the harbour at Brela. We'll see what April can bring. Regards, David.