March sales updates:

A rather late March sales update -you can blame that on too much wine. No, not what you are probaly thinking. I have been completing a course on wine knowledge and needed to get it finished! If you want to know what wine to drink with spicy prawns I'm your man......**

March proved fairly average for sales with the usual exception of Shutterstock which had a very strong month. I only wish I was allowed to give out the actual figures.

Dreamstime ticked over with 11 downloads ($11.70) with a good number of subscription sales dragging down the earnings.

Istock proved dissapointing on the main site with just 6 downloads ($4.18) but pulled in a pleasing 20 PP sales ($7.15). The start of the new subscription sales at Istock has now begun. Of course, in time honoured fashion, they are not going to report these as they happen (as every other site manages to do) but will add them on en masse the following month (as they currently do with Partner Programme sales). I understood with the PP sales because they are happening on a different site, but these are directly on Istock itself so I have no idea why they can't log them as they occur. As I said before, I am quite optimistic that subs sales are going to add not detract to my income here. In another good move Editorial images are now also being sent to Thinkstock -greatly increasing my portfolio there. Again I am expecting a jump in sales because of this.

Bigstock saw a positive 17 sales ($8.09) quite possibly a BME there (It's not such a large amount that I'm going to spend time checking that!) with many of the new subs sales making up the total. Bigstock illustrates why I am optimistic about the Istock subs scheme.

123rf produced 12 downloads ($6.81) with mainly $0.25 sub sales. On the plus side my outstanding non editorial images got reviewed after 2-3 months of Pending and all were accepted. Perhaps they didn't have the heart to reject after making me wait that long....

Fotolia saw 5 downloads (1.20 credits) with a variety of subjects from my small portfolio there being sold.

Nothing from the rest in March I'm afraid.

New shoots in March included the 30th annual Hastings Half Marathon and, even more exciting, I spent four days in Paris capturing loads of images -some of which have already got sales. It was around eight years since I last went to Paris (one of my favourite Cities) and great to be back again. I really should go more often as I can easily get the Eurostar train from nearby Ashford International station and be in the heart of Paris in a couple of hours. Four days was certainly not long enough to cover all the sights I wanted to. I'm planning a seperate post on photographing stock in Paris so stay tuned! Regards, David.

**Try a Gewurztraminer from Alsace, France