April Sales Updates:

Poll Tax Riots sold on FineArtAmerica

A surprisingly strong month overall given the Coronavirus pandemic with an unexpected number two in the rankings.

Just retaining their first place were Shutterstock with a decent but lower amount of downloads causing me to miss payout by just a few cents. Never mind, it will be a bumper payment next month with May already off to a good start. On Demand sales made up some 40% of my downloads as is so often the case.

A surprise second place (only just behind SS) were Redbubble with 10 product sales. I wrote last month that maybe people weren't buying art products in the current climate but April proved me wrong with T shirts, prints and sticker sales coming in every few days.

Istock took third place with a reduced download tally of 22 but a decent RPD and a bunch of Connect commissions pushing up the total.

In fourth place it was welcome back to FineArtAmerica with 4 coffee mug sales. These featured my

Coronavirus letter sold on Bigstock

images of the 1977 Rock and Roll Radio campaign march and the 1991 Poll Tax Riots. Firstly an order for two small mugs and then for the same images on two large mugs!

Alamy made fifth place with 2 modest paying downloads. Both from my B/W archives - tennis player Annabel Croft and Robert Sheldon MP (the latter I spotted in the obituary page of one of the Daily newspapers).

Adobe took sixth place with 2 downloads (one of which was a decent paying Custom use).

In seventh place were Dreamstime with just 3 downloads.

Finally we had Bigstock with 5 downloads (all sub sales as they tend to be on BS but, on the plus side, I had my first two sales of my coronavirus letter image. This is the information communication sent out by the UK Government to every household which I photographed laying on a door mat. Not especially original as I found out later - just about every stock photographer seems to have photographed that letter - so I was pleased to get some interest in mine).

Stormy seas at Cala San Vicente in Majorca

I haven't mentioned Picfair for a long time for the very good reason that I haven't had any further sales there (not since 2017). However, I did think it time to have another play with my pricing using their excellent bulk pricing change feature. I've previously tried the premium pricing of £49 per image (with no takers). Went down to £31 (the same as Alamy's Stockimo images on the site). Nothing. So I am now back to £10 (my cut) which is the price point I had my previous sales at. Worth mentioning that Picfair are currently waiving their commission which normally adds 20% to your own price. This continues until July 9 so helps make the images even better value. We'll see if anything happens. Essentially, I see Picfair as like having your own photo selling site. You upload what you want, price how you want and you can group images into albums to promote on social media. And it is free (unless you want to upgrade to a customisable store front there). Uploading is easy enough so I'll just keep going with it for now.

New uploads recently included my previously mentioned Coronavirus letter. I also returned to my 2018 trip to Majorca for some more images of a stormy sea at Cala San Vicente. Travel? You remember that? Maybe next year. Regards, David.