Happy Chistmas To All:

Wishing everyone a great Christmas and a very happy New Year. Regards, David.

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.

October Sales Updates:

The Red arrows display over Hastings

A positive month in October with some good sales and the end of the long running 123rf saga.

Returning to form were Shutterstock in first place with a pleasing number of On demand sales (making up over 50% of my total income here).

Second place went to Alamy with 2 downloads and a welcome and unexpected DACS payment added to the total. What's DACS? Find out here www.dacs.org.uk but essentially it's a pool of money collected for secondary use of images (e.g. where a university photocopies a text book containing your image). This is then distributed to registered artists. In my case I was happy for Alamy to make this claim for me (they keep 50%) though some who know what they are doing make the claim directly. Worth noting that Alamy would have been #2 even without this payment.

Third place went to Istock with 50 downloads. The RPD (rate per download) was disappointing this month - dropping slightly below the old fixed $0.28 for subscription sales. That's a first as it has usually been substantially higher.

Fourth place was taken by Dreamstime with 29 downloads. Nothing like the huge surge of September

Rough seas at Cala San Vicente, Majorca

but, once again, there was a single buyer who scooped up twenty images of Majorca in one hit. Can't help but think this was the same buyer though - possibly a travel website of some kind. Ironically at the time of writing I have yet to have a single sale for November there!

Redbubble disappointed with just 2 product sales ( a sticker and a baby outfit) to give them fifth place.

Sixth place went to Bigstock with 8 downloads of a mixed bunch of images.

Finally Fotolia made seventh place with just a single subscription sale. Adobe (owners of Fotolia) have recently announced that the Fotolia site will close next year leaving just the Adobe Stock site running. A good time then to register at Adobe and "synch" your Fotolia account as from next February all uploading will be done through the Adobe portal. I'd been putting this off but, in fact, was much simpler than I imagined. That said, I'm continuing to upload via Fotolia while I can. For clarity all images uploaded to either are currently mirrored on both sites.

Llibertat Presos Politics march, Barcelona

So where is 123rf you may wonder? Gone. Consigned to history as far as I am concerned. Once I'd hit payout AND received my payment I set about manually deleting my 2300 images. Remove. Confirm. I did it in stages throughout the course of a single day before emailing them to close my account. I'm sure they would have deleted the images for me anyway but I didn't want to chance having my account closed and the images still there.  In fact, they responded promptly and gave me the correct legal terminology to use to close the account. This done I got confirmation of closure within a couple of hours. Rather sweetly they thanked me for my past contributions and wished me well for the future. At least we ended things on a nice note. They were once a good, fair paying site (they even had a contributors forum at one point). But then the credit sales dried up and they introduced varying commission levels which were never going to work well for a mainly editorial portfolio. Lifestyle and model type images may well be a whole different story.

Recent uploading saw a lot from my trip to Majorca last month including a day of rough seas at Cala San Vicente. I also uploaded a set of a Red Arrows display over the Hastings seafront in July (they were marking the 100th Birthday of the RAF). Backtracking, I also returned to my April images of Barcelona including more from the massive Llibertat Presos Politics (Free Political Prisoners) march.

Early results for November are mixed so far so I'll see how the second half of the month goes. Regards, David.

September Sales Updates:

The Boquer Valley, Majorca

As the Summer Slowdown comes to an end (hopefully) September saw a startling result from one agency and some solid results from others.

Straight into the top spot soared Dreamstime with no less than 112 downloads. Around thirty sub sales of the Greek islands of Halki and Tilos were surprising enough but nothing prepared me for the 89 sub downloads of my home town of Hastings and neighbouring Rye. Not even of a specific subject but just random images of different events and locations from across a wide time period. It was such unusual activity that I emailed Dreamstime asking them to take a look. Their prompt reply assured me that there was nothing to cause suspicion at their end and, at the time of writing, all the sales still stand. I'll update if that changes in the coming weeks.

Second place went to Redbubble with 3 product sales. Two T shirts and a framed print of the Greek island of Skiathos pushed them up the rankings.

In third place Shutterstock had another subdued month with very few On Demand sales to push the earnings up. Early October sales are showing distinct signs of improvement.

Alamy made fourth place with a further 2 downloads - both from my b/w archive images. It certainly seems that the time spent uploading my back catalogue to them was well spent.

Istock made fifth place with 43 downloads.

On to my lower earners, we had a rare single sale at Mostphotos to give them sixth place for an On

Eco catamaran at Port Vell, Barcelona

Demand sale. I have now opted out of their basic subscription package, so future sales (when they come) should be for higher amounts.

Fotolia took seventh place with 3 downloads. As last month, these were all for higher than the basic subscription rate. In a surprise move Fotolia announced that they are increasing the minimum payout to contributors for sub sales. If I remember correctly the new minimum for my level (bronze) will rise to $0.33. Further news on Fotolia came when a poster at Microstockgroup said they had been told that Editorial submissions were coming in the future. No official information on this yet, however.

Bigstock only managed 6 downloads to give them eighth place. Perhaps that buyer there who frequently downloads images of Hastings went to Dreamstime this month!

Bringing up the bottom in ninth place were 123RF with (you guessed) 4 downloads. The good news there is that those downloads took me over the long awaited $50 payout level. I'm just waiting for the money to come in and then that's us done I think.

Agia Zoni bell tower, Tilos island

Recent uploads included more from my June trip to the Greek island of Tilos this time of the church of Agia Zoni in the abandoned village of Mikro Chorio. Other images included an electric powered Eco Catamaran at Port Vell in Barcelona. The vessel derives some of its energy from wind and solar power -hence the Eco tag.

Also uploaded were a selection of monochrome versions of my images of the Boquer Valley in Majorca. Though I had art sites such as Redbubble in mind these also got accepted at all my regular agencies as well. We'll see if the buyers like these versions or not :)

New shooting was concentrated on Majorca as well having just returned from a week long trip. I made my maiden hot air balloon flight there which, though magical, was a dawn flight which didn't lend itself to much photography. Still, back on the ground, I shot lots of massive waves breaking in the coves at Cala San Vicente during a day of very strong winds. October looks to be starting well so I hope that continues. Regards, David.

August Sales Updates:

Vintage aeroplane ride at Tibidabo, Barcelona

August saw some slight signs of recovery from the Summer Slowdown (Stall might be a better word) with an unexpected boost from one site but a really disappointing result from another.

Back to first place were Shutterstock but with only a single On Demand sale all month (these normally comprise 40-50% of my monthly earnings. Only two modest (but worthwhile) Single downloads on the 31st pulled things around here - about a third of my monthly total in one swoop.

Istock came in second place with a solid 39 downloads. Lots of new image acceptances here giving hope for a steadily improving future. My Istock portfolio is still way behind others in terms of size as a result of (thankfully, now historic) upload limits, no editorial, and constant rejections for everything imaginable -usually "contains artifacts" (when did you last see that as a rejection reason?).

Still in the game Alamy took third place with another single sale, this time of the Greek island of Skiathos. Good to see a travel image selling there as I have long believed that is probably the area that eventually I will do best with at Alamy. Just look at the travel pages of newspapers to see the large number of Alamy credits.

Fourth place (and here's the surprise) went to Fotolia with 8 downloads. Not just subscription sales

Volleyball on the beach, Barcelona

either but almost all paying out at 0.99 credit levels. I'm actually in danger of getting a payout at Fotolia if this keeps up :)

Bigstock produced 8 downloads to make fifth place. Greek island images continue to sell here as well.

Sixth place went to Redbubble with a single T shirt sale featuring (yet again) Margaret Thatcher.

Seventh place was 123rf with (shock!) 4 downloads. Yet another month in which the 4 downloads rule applies. Barely one dollar to payout level now -then it will be time to Shower The Horse (as Anne-Marie didn't sing). You might have to Google that....

Megalo Chorio on Tilos island, Greece

Finally in eighth place ( and the big disappointment) were Dreamstime with just a single $0.35 subscription sale. Two thousand and three hundred images there and one sale. It's genuinely a shame to see what is happening here. They're a nice agency run by nice people (and I'm not just saying that as a former "artist of the week"). It's been reported that they are taking action against Google because of their low ranking in search results - which I'm sure is a factor here. I have no intention of stopping uploading here and just hope things can be turned around.

Uploading (now super-fast thanks to my previously mentioned new broadband connection) concentrated on my 2018 trips with the 1928 vintage aeroplane ride at the Tibidabo park in Barcelona as well as a lively volleyball game on the beach. Also up were a set of Megalo Chorio the Capital of the Greek island of Tilos. The medieval Crusader Knights castle can be seen on the hill in the background.

Hopefully, September will start to see some improved results all round. Regards, David.