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| Hawker Hunter - Chinese sale on Alamy |
Leading the way in first place were Alamy with 7 downloads. Six of these were from my archive political shots with the exception being a distributor sale to China of a 1950s vintage Hawker Hunter. Notwithstanding the later horror of the Shoreham airshow crash when another Hunter caused eleven fatalities after crashing onto a road, this is actually one of my favourite aircraft. For anyone aware of the infamous Chinese sales incident when hundreds (thousands?) of sales were suddenly reported on December 30/31 for a sub microstock price of 15cents each ( paying contributors a whopping 4cents after commission deductions) this wasn't one of those and sold for $9 or so. In fact, I didn't get a single one of the 4cent sales I'm pleased to say. I suspect that this is because the bulk of my Alamy portfolio is Editorial. Alamy have responded to questions about these mass low payments and confirmed they are looking into the whole thing. I rather get the impression that they were as surprised as anyone when these sales came in. Further updates on their forum have been promised.
Second place went to Shutterstock (with only 3 On Demand sales and no Single sales pulling the total
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| Sa Calobra - sold on Redbubble |
Istock took third place with 39 downloads. As is usual, music festival and travel images made up the bulk of these.
In fourth place were Redbubble with 2 product sales (last minute Christmas gifts I imagine). A mug of the famous hairpin road down to Sa Calobra in Majorca (beloved by hardened cyclists) and a pack of postcards featuring the (old) Hastings lifeboat taking part in the annual Old Town Carnival.
Dreamstime scraped fifth place with just 2 downloads. Maybe 2022 will be the year sales will pick up again here?
Finally in sixth place were Bigstock with just a single download.
Missing from the ranking is Adobe as I didn't get a single sale after the end of November (and still haven't at the time of writing). This was especially disappointing as it looked like sales were increasing there despite my tiny 400 odd portfolio.
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| Paxos - archives to Pond 5 |
Shooting and travelling didn't happen in December although I did receive an early Christmas present when my new passport arrived by courier on Christmas Eve. At least I am set to go as and when travel restrictions start to ease and which is already starting to happen.
Uploading in December saw me concentrating on getting more of my back portfolio onto Pond 5 including my images of the Greek island of Paxos. Whether or not I ever see much in the way of sales here remains to be seen but I am determined that it won't be because they are not available. Further any agency that lets you determine your own selling price and pays 50% commission deserves to be supported. That said, some contributors there are quite delusional - setting a price of hundreds of dollars for routine travel shots. They probably wonder why they don't get any sales.
More next month. Regards, David.
