August Sales Updates:

 

Poll tax riots: biggest Alamy sale to date

A slow month in general as you might expect from August (the height of the annual Summer Slowdown). However a couple of bright spots kept things interesting.

Alamy jumped straight into first place with 3 downloads. One of these was my biggest ever ($$$) sale there - a poll tax riots image used for a corporate video. I did have this set for Editorial Use Only but Alamy telephoned me and asked if I was prepared to waive this restriction for this particular usage. The buyer accepted all responsibility for use of the image so I was happy to grant this with a nice payout in return.

Second place went to Istock with 29 downloads. What boosted this was that one of my images of the Greek island of Meganissi was clearly some sort of Extended License judging my the larger amount I got. This, of course, pushed the RPD for the month to a very respectable figure.

Shutterstock could only manage third place this month not least because of only a single On Demand

Meganissi island: extended license on Istock

sale and two tiny Single and Other sales. As I have said before, it is the number and value of these non subscription sales which makes or breaks the month. On a plus note I have now moved up to Level 4 so any of those sales will pay out at a higher rate for the remainder of the year.

Adobe took fourth place but only by a upfront payment for adding some images to their free collection for one year. They actually had zero regular downloads in August which was a bit disappointing.

Fifth place went to Redbubble with 2 product sales (T shirt and poster). Looking forward here to the Christmas boost that I have seen in recent years. 

Dreamstime came in sixth place with 5 downloads. It seems a long time since I saw a big credit sale at DT.

Tom Robinson Band: archives now all on Pond 5

Finally in seventh place we had Bigstock with 4 downloads. My massive aviation inspired boost of a few months back seems like a distance memory now.

Nothing interesting to report in new shooting but in terms of uploading I continued to get my back catalogue onto Pond 5. I have completed uploading all my archival (politics etc) material to them and am now working through modern travel/music festival etc images. Let's see what they can do with them! Meanwhile, they have just launched a new customisable Artist Page. As well as your avatar image you can now add a cover photo (or logo). There is also a 500 character space to write a bio about yourself and your work as well as space to add social media links. I especially liked the Featured items section at the top of the page where you can add six photos/footage clips that you wish to highlight. You can change the sequence of these and change the chosen items as often as you want. For now I've gone with featuring my archive material (Robert Maxwell/Margaret Thatcher/Boris Yeltsin etc) most of which is pretty unique on Pond. Check out the link on the right of the page to see what it looks like. 

September has started slowly so far so we'll see what the rest of the month brings. Regards, David.

February Sales Updates:

Agios Ioannis beach, Meganissi island

A rather late posting for my February updates I know, but other events intervened.
As every month, Shutterstock came out on top by a long, long way. Three modest Single Downloads and a good crop of On Demand downloads helped to make a solid month here.

Second place fell to Istock with 5 regular credit sales and a further 16 sub/PP downloads. What is interesting to see is the decline in PP (Thinkstock.com) sales as the new Istock subscriptions build up. It seems fairly clear where they are pushing the marketing now.

Traditional beach huts, Glyne Gap

Dreamstime came in third with 9 downloads. February saw the long awaited payout on the Google Adwords deal with many contributors reporting floods of $2 sales from the deal. I was full of anticipation but received just a single sale (one of the two images they originally chose last year for the Beta testing). Oh well, maybe the next round will prove better.

Bigstock saw fourth place with 16 downloads (mainly subs). As previously posted, Hastings and
St.Leonards subjects continued to do well here.

123rf were down at fifth place with 9 downloads (again, mainly subs). At least I kept my Level 2 status at the end of the month.

Fotolia managed just one sale to make sixth place in the list.

Glyne Gap from Galley Hill

Finally, a sale at Yaymicro (from one of their Partner sites). This was my first sale from Yay since last August and February also marked a year since my last sale directly on the Yay site itself. The easy uploading and quick batch editing keep me supporting them with new images but really (on a business level) I should give up on them. The trouble is that I still remember the good early years when they used to get me regular sales at decent rates. I just keep thinking the lack of sales cannot continue there forever. Can it?

Recent uploading saw me revisit some images from my 2008 trip to the Greek island of Meganissi as well as a set of images from a local beauty spot here called Glyne Gap. I'm a bit hesitant to admit it was the first time I had visited it since moving to Hastings in 2009. I'll certainly be going again in the near future! 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.

July updates:

Well never mind the Summer slowdown, it was actually a rather good month in July.

Shutterstock produced 88 downloads ($30.25) which was just a few cents short of my BME there. I also passed the payout level again and better still now have less than $2 to go to reach $500 commission -triggering a pay rise on my downloads. Sales were helped this month by (probaly) one buyer purchasing about 21 of my archive politician images. Higher paying On Demand sales were also strong in July.

Dreamstime saw 12 downloads ($14.25) with a frustrating two week period with zero sales in the middle of the month. I cannot remember ever going that long without any sale at all there.

Istock produced a BME for me with 7 downloads ($10.64). Partner Program sales (for June) are yet to be fully reported due to technical problems -so I'm not able to add those to my July report. As previously, it's mainly my Editorial images that are selling there.

123RF saw 9 downloads ($7.41). Again, Editorial images selling.

Picturenation got two sales -a web resolution one paying £0.40 and a high res of Tony Blair paying a pleasing £6 in commission. Interesting that the web one was of the Greek island of Meganissi. That's the first sale I've had on PN with an overseas travel image.

Yaymicro produced no sales but did payout the first quarter Third Party sales which amounted to just under 7 euros.

Nothing elsewhere in July.

Uploading saw new images of Amber Rudd (Member of Parliament for Hastings) accepted at all my agents. I also started to push some of my back images to Cutcaster and Canstockphoto taking my ports there to around 650 and 50 respectively. Still waiting for sales though.

Regards, David.