September sales updates:

September started off slowly but there were signs of improving sales towards the end of the month.
As ever, way out in front were Shutterstock with my best sales (quantity and income) but, sadly, under their new revised Terms Of Service contributors are now not allowed to disclose detailed results -under pain of having your account closed if you do. The official reason given is that information is of use to competing agencies.  Personally I doubt that Istock executives are waiting in anticipation every month for my blog post so they can see how I did there. Some more cynical posters on the forums suggested that this might be a move to suppress future bad publicity for Shutterstock should they import the Received Credits system they are trialling at Bigstock (as opposed to the current lifetime earnings levels) -resulting in big drops in income for many contributors. I honestly hope they are completely wrong. However, it is their business and their rules. It's actually a great shame as month after month I have reported how well Shutterstock have done for me -with way more sales and income than the other sites. For further information check out this thread on the Shutterstock forumhttp://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=132223

Moving on to the sales I am allowed to post about 123RF takes second place with 13 downloads and a BME there of $32.07 thanks to a Multi seat license and a Print Extended license on images of Boris Yeltsin and the Tentertainment music festival respectively.

Dreamstime produced 15 downloads ($23.55) in a strong month for them.

Istock managed 14 downloads ($8.76) with a further $4.12 from 10 PP sales. Before the price reductions there those 14 downloads would have produced considerably more income as many of them were previously Photo Plus images -now reduced to the basic Main collection.

Bigstock continued to see more activity with 12 downloads ($5.16).

Fotolia managed a couple of sales (1.85 credits).

Veer surprised with another sub sale ($0.25). Goodness. Better still their broken uploader has been fixed and I was able to upload my backlog of (non editorial) images -even getting some accepted.

Yay gets a mention if only to report zero sales for September. This means that since April I have had just one 0.75euro sale there (in August). On over 2000 images? With all those distribution partners? I am truly at a loss to know what has happened there. I really like Yay and have never had anything but friendly and prompt responses to any problems so they remain on my upload list. I just hope things improve soon. Yay also announced their new subscription and streaming packages (streaming as in small users like bloggers paying a modest monthly fee to have images streamed to their site from the Yay library, as opposed to actually downloading the images). This is aimed to appeal to those who would not normally pay for images or just steal them from the internet. Many would say that those users are not going to start paying anything for images -no matter how modest the price. I've stayed opted into this for now to see how it goes.

Uploading in September saw some images of the Hastings Old Town Carnival accepted as well as further Greek island images of Skopelos. I also revisited my archives for further 1989 images of Lech Walesa (President of Poland). Let's now see how October does. Regards, David.

August sales updates:

A rather lacklustre performance across the board for August.
As usual Shutterstock came out on top with 114 downloads ($56.39). A disappointing five seperate days with zero sales didn't help matters here.

Dreamstime produced 12 downloads ($14.14) with some prolonged periods of no new sales.

Istock saw 10 downloads ($8.49) with a further 8 PP sales netting $2.24.

Bigstock had 10 downloads ($6.66). The new subs packages seem to be taking off there with an increasing number of $0.38 commissions being seen. On the other hand, one sale produced a worthwhile $3 commission.

123rf  produced 8 downloads ($4.68).

Yaymicro finally saw a sale - the first since April - with one download netting 0.75euro.

Cutcaster produced a rare (for me) sale with $0.46 for an image of musician Phil Lynott.

Surprisingly, nothing at all from Fotolia in August.

Uploading for me was very limited this month due to two visits to the Eastbourne airshow and spending a lot of time working on my new Greek islands blog (as previously posted). A couple of images that did get uploaded were Greek as well! Looking down into Yialos harbour on Symi island and the harbour on Skopelos island.

Hopefully, the slow days of  August are now past and I'll start to see a pick up through September. We will see. Regards, David.

Farewell to PictureNation:

A sad day here as I have just received my final payment from PictureNation and my account is now closed. I did search for a few of my images but my over 2000 image port has gone.

I said it all when I first posted about them closing down, so I won't repeat it all again.

All the best for the future to Jane-Louise, her team and all the contributors. Regards, David.

New Greek Islands blog launched:

Delighted to report that I today launched my Greek Islands blog with my first posting about the island of Alonissos.

My Small Greek Islands will present a personal (and biased) view of the small Greek islands I have visited and photographed.

As well as providing information and ideas on the islands I hope it will also act as a showcase for my stock images.

It is a long time since I set this blog up and I struggled to get the new one looking how I wanted. One problem proved to be the "About Me" section. I found you cannot vary this across different blogs so I had to make it more generic to fit both. More detailed information about my photographic background has moved to a box under the ShootingStock header.

Now I just have to write about the other islands...... Regards, David.

Here's the link: http://mysmallgreekislands.blogspot.co.uk

July sales updates:

Again, not the big summer slump I might have expected in July.
Out front, as ever was Shutterstock with 133 downloads ($95.68). An Enhanced Download of Margaret Thatcher ($28) on July 31 pushing me over the payout limit once again - that was a nice last minute surprise.

Dreamstime did well again with 13 downloads ($18.36).


Istock produced 15 downloads ($11.87) plus 14 PP sales (for May and June) netting $3.92. The recent changes to pricing took a toll here with a number of my former Photo+ images selling for much lower rates in the Main collection. It might well have been a BME here but for that. Hopefully, some of my better selling images will eventually move up into the higher priced Signature collection.

123rf saw 10 downloads ($5.83). Their low pricing and reduced commission showing in the $ earnings.

Bigstock saw some activity with 8 downloads ($3.04). These were all $0.38 subs payments. That's a bit concerning as the six month period for receiving that amount (for Bridge to Bigstock contributors) is coming to an end soon. Looks like I'll be down to low 123rf type commissions soon.

Fotolia saw 6 downloads (2.45 credits).

Yaymicro continued to dissapoint with another month of zero sales. I had usually seen some monthly activity there either from direct sales or their myriad of partners but things stopped dead on April 28. It may well be that there have been partner sales not yet reported but three zero months is rather concerning. On the subject of Yay, I am still waiting to see my (non editorial) images appear on Alamy. I had high hopes for this partner deal but so far none of my images appear to have arrived there. I did query this and was told they were going over in batches and that it was a complex business (avoiding duplicates etc). I thought they were just going to flick an API switch and mirror the Yay library there -but it seems not.

A reminder about Picturenation - only sixteen days until they close the site. If you have any images there do check for any sales and request payout via the contact link on the site (any amount).

Uploading in July saw a set of images of a Lancaster bomber at the 2012 Eastbourne airshow (Airbourne) as well as a young Herring Gull chick -which has been spending time on my window ledge here in Hastings.
Regards, David.