December Sales Updates:

Professor Stephen Hawking -new biopic

Inevitably, December was never going to be a great month with so many slow days over the Christmas and New Year holiday period. However, taking that into account there were some good moments.

As ever, Shutterstock was the number one agency -by far. A great start on December1 with an Enhanced Download of Professor Stephen Hawking. Sales of this image have increased a lot recently presumably due to the new biopic film The Theory of Everything which has just been released. I also had a good number of On Demand sales and two nice paying Single Downloads through the month.

Dreamstime performed well to take second place with 20 downloads. Greek island images seem to be doing especially well on Dreamstime of late -possibly as a result of the on-site blog I wrote on the subject.

Istock took third place with only 4 credit sales but a good 24 downloads through the PP and Subs schemes. Istock also had some big news that it was to be integrated further into parent company Getty Images. The main change for many is that commission payments will no longer be made "on request" but on a fixed monthly schedule (subject to reaching the $100 payout level). I don't get enough sales on Istock for this to be an issue but for high performers used to requesting weekly payouts this will not be a popular move.

Sopwith triplane at Dunsfold

Bigstock continued strongly to make fourth place with 15 downloads -pleasingly not just sub sales but a
number of credit sales in there as well. It's interesting to note that a good number of my sales on Bigstock seem to relate to my local area of Hastings and St.Leonards.

Coming in fifth were 123rf with a miserly 7 downloads. Sales there seem to be falling below what they were a year or two ago -despite increasing my portfolio size. Especially noticeable is the fall in editorial sales. Just to add to the fun, there currently seems to be a hiatus on editorial reviews with several of my batches still pending since January 1. Normally these get reviewed within hours.

FineArtAmerica came sixth with a sale of a greetings card. Some lucky person was due a Christmas or Birthday card featuring the Poll Tax Riots in London back in the early 1990s!

Rousoum beach, Alonissos island

Bringing up the rear I had a rare sale at Canstockphoto (my first in months) and just a single sub sale at Fotolia. To be fair, I only have small portfolios on those due to them not taking editorial images.

Uploading in December saw me revisiting my 2012 trip to Alonissos island with a set of images of Rousoum. I also carried on working my Dunsfold airshow images with a set of a 1916 Sopwith triplane (it's actually a 1997 replica but certainly looks the part).

Though I am writing this post well into January I'll use this opportunity to wish all readers of this blog a very happy and enjoyable 2015. Regards, David.