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.

Saturday, 3 September 2016

August Sales Updates:

BBMF takes off at Bigstock
August saw a steady month with one surprise re-appearance from a long dry source.
Obviously Shutterstock was way out in front by a huge margin with a good crop of On Demand sales and one worthwhile Single Download.

Second place this month went to Istock with 4 credit sales and 20 PP/sub downloads. August also saw the deadline pass where you can no longer delete individual images without good reason. This was billed as a move to improve customer experience with images they had bookmarked not having dissappeared. Cynics suggest that this was a precursor to a major change that would lead to contributors deleting images in protest. I expect we'll see soon enough -especially as Istock have form for announcing major changes in September.

Third place went to Dreamstime with 4 downloads. It was a tense month with no sales at all until the 18th
Nikos Express arrives on Halki island
when I had one 35c sub followed by another long gap right to the last few days of the month. Like July, a higher paying credit sale turned things around -a bit.

In fourth place 123RF recovered from my WME in July to get 12 downloads. It's still a puzzle why I only got 2 downloads the previous month.

Fifth place went to Bigstock with 11 downloads. My various images of the BBMF (Battle of Britain Memorial Flight) did well with 7 downloads over several days - presumably to the same buyer.

Sixth place was taken by Fotolia with 2 downloads -both paying reasonable amounts.

Redbubble dropped to seventh place with just one sale of a sticker. I had hoped my July run of sales would continue but sadly not.

Livadia harbour on Tilos island
The surprise came in eighth place with Yaymicro producing their first sale of the year. In fact the first sale on the Yay site itself (rather than Partners) since 2014. Strangely, the sale was dated from May but has only just appeared. I recently took the sad decision to drop Yay for my new uploads because, frankly, there was little point in continuing. It will take more than one sale to change my mind though especially as editorial uploads are not even being placed for sale on their site - reviewed and accepted yes but not for sale.

Finally in ninth place were Mostphotos with one very small sub sale. I'd probaly drop them too but they do provide another form of back up with the ability to download your own images there.

Limited uploading in August saw me working on images from my July trip to the Greek island of Halki with uploads of the Nikos Express ferry arriving at Emborio harbour and also some of Livadia harbour from my day trip to Tilos island. Hopefully, September will see the end of the slow Summer months though, as yet, I haven't seen any signs of that. We'll see. Regards, David.

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