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.

Thursday, 6 December 2012

November sales updates:

A reasonable month overall in November despite the Thanksgiving holiday in the US (Shutterstock are the only site that give you an idea of where images were bought courtesy of their animated world map and judging from that most of my sales are outside the US).
So starting with Shutterstock, they produced a very neat 100 downloads ($58.20). Interesting to note that $30.15 of that came from the higher paying On Demand downloads.
Istockphoto pulled in 10 downloads ($15.98) and an additional $1.12 from 4 PP sales. My portfolio there continues to grow and I have now passed the 600 mark with, in the main, editorial images. I expect to reach my next payout in December - a far cry from the pre editorial days when sales were few.
Dreamstime did well with 18 downloads ($12.38) but a high number of sub sales pulled the earning down.
123rf managed 11 downloads ($6.17) again with a high proportion of sub sales. I will have to review 123 in January when (if?) they introduce their new commission rates/cuts. Being primarily editorial my images are not the ones that get massive sales and, consequently, I expect to drop to the minimum rate of 30% and only $0.22 for subs. Compared to the $0.33 I get for sub sales at SS that is very poor. Though not a big seller there, my portfolio currently fills editorial gaps in their library (Margaret Thatcher etc). We'll see.
Yaymicro sold an archive shot of Body Shop founder Anita Roddick paying a healthy 3.75 euros with an additional 2.48 euros coming from their Third Party programme.
Bigstock managed 4 downloads ($2.50) - a dissapointing result from them. On the plus side their wonky Bridge connector from SS got fixed and all images are now moved over.
Fotolia saw 4 sub sales netting 1 credit in commission. Best selling there seem to be my Greek island images though that is more a result of what I have uploaded and had accepted than any great industry insight.
Nothing from the rest in November. Veer continues to sit at $93 dollars in commission with no sign of even a sub sale to push me to payout level. Their upload has now been broken (for me) for two months -just "not processed/unknown error" messages after uploading. I emailed support but never got a reply.
Picturenation, sadly, reached the anniversary of my last sale there on November 30. Over 2k images, loads of views, nice friendly team -but nobody buying my images. I emailed them as well and, as ever, got a prompt reply from founder Jane Louise Green. Without breaking any confidences here suffice to say that sales there (overall) are fine -it's my portfolio that isn't selling. One theory we both explored is that buyers spot my images on PN and then look for them at cheaper prices on the micro sites. That's certainly a possibility. Either way uploading is quick and simple so I'm keeping on submitting there.
Uploading in November was down due to time constraints but one archive image that I added was from the 1991 Poll Tax Riots in London (pictured) That brought back some memories. Regards, David.
Edit: The Download Fairy appears to have paid a visit. Just days after writing about no sales on Picturenation I had two sales within hours. A 1989 image of British politician Sir Geoffrey Howe got first a Web Res sale (£0.40) then a High Res sale paying a pleasing £6 in commission. I'm assuming it was the same buyer. More of those please!

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