June Sales Updates:

The Markellos Tower on Aegina island, Greece

Another steady month in June with a number of my smaller agencies making it into my sales report as well as a continuing good run at Istock.
As ever, well out in front were Shutterstock with another strong month and income circa double of my second place site.

Second place went to Istock with another impressive month of 45 downloads -down from May but much higher than I had been seeing in previous years (and that's with limited uploading in 2017). As previously there were some very low paying subscription sales but others paying much higher than the old $0.28 fixed rate. I said I would see how the new percentage rates worked out in practise and I think it is fair to say that while I am seeing results like these I will be sticking with them.

Picfair took third place with another single sale. Looks like things are picking up here.

Fourth place was for Redbubble with a further three product sales (T shirt, Baby clothes, Sticker).

Bigstock saw fifth place with 13 downloads.

In sixth place were Dreamstime with 9 downloads with all being subscription sales.

Tourist rides in Aegina Town, Greece

123rf slipped to seventh place with 13 downloads (no big sales like last month sadly).

Alamy were in eighth place with a further single sale. Good to see no further refunds and my first sales are starting to show as cleared funds.

Ninth place went to Fotolia with 3 downloads.

Canstock had a single download to put them in tenth place.

Finally we have Mostphotos with two small subscription downloads.

Rhodes Cup yacht race, Tilos island, Greece

June saw little uploading due to spending (yet again) two weeks on the little Greek island of Halki. Whilst there I also took a day trip to Tilos island where I concentrated on photographing the abandoned village of Gera. Last years Tilos images have done well so I hope to continue that success with these. June also saw a General Election in Britain and I received a number of sales of Amber Rudd (Home Secretary) and Damien Green (newly promoted to Deputy Prime Minister). Recent uploads have concentrated on my 2016 images of the Rhodes Cup yacht race on Tilos (rejected by Istock as they deemed them "professional sport") and the famous landmark of the Markellos Tower from my April visit to Aegina. This interesting old building was once the seat of the Greek government during their War of Independence (from Turkey) when Aegina itself was the temporary Capital of Greece.

July looks like it will prove, as expected, the start of the Summer Slowdown with fairly low sales on most sites so far. Updates will follow in due course. Regards, David.

March Sales Updates:

Amber Rudd, constantly in the news

A late posting (again!) for my March stats. I have the excuse that I have just returned from a week in the vibrant Greek capital of Athens and everything has been on hold because of that.

In first place a strong performance from Shutterstock with a good crop of On Demand sales and four Single downloads -including a pleasing one for just under $20.

Istock were in second place with 21 downloads. Again their was a spread of earnings from paltry to well above the 28cents previously earned for subscription sales. A few more months and I should have some meaningful figures to go on to decide if Istock are worth continuing with. For clarity, these figures are for downloads from February-March. As they now only report sales once a month my Istock figures are going to lag behind my other real time figures. Not ideal but no way round that at present. ETA This Istock ranking has been revised upwards due to my looking at the wrong report initially (nothing if not confusing!).

Dreamstime were in third place with 8 downloads. Some credit sales helping to push up the total here.

The White Cats, seventies image still selling today

Fourth place went to 123rf with 12 downloads. Better than some months recently but still a poor return on over 2000 images.

Fifth place saw Redbubble have two merchandise sales -a sticker and a poster. There is certainly a slower
rate of sales than I was seeing a while back but good margins on the products make it worthwhile.

Bigstock took sixth place with 7 downloads - pretty much all subs.

At the bottom were Fotolia in eighth place with just one download. Still no news of them opening the doors to editorial images yet.

No sales on Alamy in March but I continued to heavily upload my back catalogue to them and, in fact, didn't upload to any other sites in March. I'm alternating batches of my regular (mainly travel) images with batches of my old archive politicians/celebrities. My portfolio there has grown rapidly from below 100 images in February to approaching 1400 images now. Trust me that's a lot of work and time invested but I believe it is worth it (or will be long term).  

Livadia onTilos island, selling well recently

Normally I would highlight some recent uploads but as there haven't been any (other than back catalogue to Alamy) I thought I'd pick out some recent good sellers. Livadia harbour on the Greek island of Tilos has been doing well recently across a number of sites. It's a very small island with not that many stock images available. Also doing well is the British Home Secretary Amber Rudd (my local Member of Parliament). With the forthcoming General Election I would expect sales of her to continue. Finally New Wave rock group The White Cats from back around 1978. Sales of them keep coming even though they never had any real commercial success. Whether they sell as pictures of the band specifically or as generic images of seventies bands I do not know but long may they continue. More on my Athens trip next month :) Regards, David.

September Sales Updates:

The abandoned village of Mikro Chorio on Tilos island

A routine month in September without any signs of a big uplift as the Summer period comes to an end.

Starting with Shutterstock, things were slow here with a number of zero sales days through the month including a weekday. I cannot remember the last time that happened and is far from encouraging. A good crop of On Demand sales made up over 50% of sales, along with one modest Single sale.

In second place were Redbubble with four product sales. T shirts, poster and phone case were the products this month. Redbubble has certainly proved to be a site worth uploading to.

Istock took third place with 3 credit sales and a further 32 sub/pp downloads. Images continue to be readily

Pondamos beach on Halki island

accepted here though with a slow review time for non editorials.

Dreamstime managed fourth place with a welcome 10 downloads. Three of these related to media tycoon Robert Maxwell whose death 25 years ago was a subject of a Dreamtime blog I wrote. It's not unreasonable to think that the blog post helped get those sales though it can't be proved, of course.

123rf came in at fifth place with 14 downloads -pretty much all sub sales. Review problems seem to have returned here with several images pending for weeks now.

Bigstock dissappointed with just 2 downloads putting them in sixth place. This was way less than my usual sales with them so I am not sure what happened there

The restored chapel in the Crusader Knights castle on Halki

Bringing up the bottom with just one download each were Canstock, Mostphotos and Fotolia (in that order).

Uploading in September saw me continuing with images from my July trip to the Greek island of Halki. Whilst there I took a daytrip to the nearby island of Tilos where I got some photos of the abandoned village of Mikro Chorio. I was pleased to get two sales of this image within days of uploading to Shutterstock. My images of Amber Rudd also continued to sell following her promotion to Home Secretary and  would expect that to be ongoing given her high profile. Regards, David.

July Sales Report:

Amber Rudd - new Home Secretary 

An average Summer month in July with just a couple of surprises along the way.

First place, as ever,went to Shutterstock with a reasonable though not great month. A good smattering of On Demand sales and one modest (though welcome) Single download.

Racing up to second place were Redbubble with no less than six product sales. These ran the gamut of prints, stickers, iphone case, and my first drawstring bag. A variety of images appeared on these from cats to Greek islands to Thin Lizzy singer Phil Lynott. It was quite exciting to see the "You've made a sale" emails keep arriving throughout the month.

A pleasant surprise from Dreamstime who made it to third place with 6 downloads. Of note here were the return of high paid credit sales with two images netting over $6 each in commission. Been a while since I had seen any of those.

Phil Lynott - popular at Redbubble

Istock took fourth place with just 2 credit downloads and a weak 17 sub and PP downloads - in fact just one sale from Thinkstock. As I have said before, I assume Getty are steering Thinkstock customers towards the subs packages at Istock as the PP sales have steadily diminished.

Bigstock were in fifth place with 10 mainly sub downloads.

In sixth place were Canstockphoto with a rare sale for me.

In seventh and bottom place were 123rf with just 2 sub downloads all month. This was certainly the unpleasant surprise of July. No idea what happened there. June saw 18 downloads and the first few days of August have already produced 6 sales. July did see the introduction of a new contributor interface and I kept hoping my sales just weren't being reported promptly but this was, sadly, not the case. I can't remember the last time (if ever) that I have had such low sales at 123. The danger here is that when the last 12 months credits are calculated in the future my awful July could push me back down to the lower paying Level 1 commission.

Pigs head - large credit sale at Dreamstime

Nothing from Fotolia (or the rest) in July including my seventh month running with no sales on FineArtAmerica -disappointing to say the least (especially when rival Redbubble is doing well).

No new uploading in July as I spent two wonderful weeks on the little Greek island of Halki. This was the second year running I have been there so took less images than I normally would. However, a day trip to the nearby island of Tilos had me maximising my time there to get as many images as possible. In a lucky break, my visit coincided with the arrival of dozens of yachts taking part in the Rhodes Cup yacht race which made for some good images.

The changes in Government which took place while I was away saw my local Member of Parliament Amber Rudd promoted to the senior position of Home Secretary and I was able to see downloads of her racking up in my sales reports from all the agencies that take Editorial (123rf excluded of course). Regards, David.

August Sales Updates:

A slight Summer slowdown on some sites this month but overall not at all too bad.

As ever, Shutterstock led the way with 78 downloads ($51.54) but sadly no ELs this month.

Dreamstime kept up a strong performance with 11 downloads ($19.41) before stopping dead in its tracks towards the end of the month. No downloads at all since then.

Istock produced 12 downloads ($14.73) plus a further $1.68 from 6 PP sales. My portfolio continues to grow there and is now approaching 550 images. I was pleased to get 18/18 acceptance on my last two batches. A softening on the "no celebrities" line there also opened up more of my portfolio for upload so I was able to submit Conservative politician Amber Rudd and a number of bands from the recent Tentertainment music festival. A welcome move on their part.

Bigstock saw 8 downloads ($5.80). The Bridge connector continues to push my Shutterstock approvals over, although it can sometimes take a few days for them to show up.

123rf dropped yet further with just 5 downloads ($3.08). I really don't know what to make of this decline there. They were doing so well for me earlier in the year.

Yaymicro produced one sale through a partner paying 1euro in commission.

And finally, a second sale at Cutcaster -an image of Olympic cyclist Jamie Staff earning $0.46.

Shooting and uploading saw me covering the 20th Eastbourne International Airshow (Airbourne) on August 11. Good conditions this year helped produce a whole bunch of stock images with around 30 uploaded so far including the Hawker Hunter jet and the wartime Douglas C47A Dakota (both pictured).

In September I hope to start seeing some returns on all my recent uploading. Regards, David.

July updates:

Well never mind the Summer slowdown, it was actually a rather good month in July.

Shutterstock produced 88 downloads ($30.25) which was just a few cents short of my BME there. I also passed the payout level again and better still now have less than $2 to go to reach $500 commission -triggering a pay rise on my downloads. Sales were helped this month by (probaly) one buyer purchasing about 21 of my archive politician images. Higher paying On Demand sales were also strong in July.

Dreamstime saw 12 downloads ($14.25) with a frustrating two week period with zero sales in the middle of the month. I cannot remember ever going that long without any sale at all there.

Istock produced a BME for me with 7 downloads ($10.64). Partner Program sales (for June) are yet to be fully reported due to technical problems -so I'm not able to add those to my July report. As previously, it's mainly my Editorial images that are selling there.

123RF saw 9 downloads ($7.41). Again, Editorial images selling.

Picturenation got two sales -a web resolution one paying £0.40 and a high res of Tony Blair paying a pleasing £6 in commission. Interesting that the web one was of the Greek island of Meganissi. That's the first sale I've had on PN with an overseas travel image.

Yaymicro produced no sales but did payout the first quarter Third Party sales which amounted to just under 7 euros.

Nothing elsewhere in July.

Uploading saw new images of Amber Rudd (Member of Parliament for Hastings) accepted at all my agents. I also started to push some of my back images to Cutcaster and Canstockphoto taking my ports there to around 650 and 50 respectively. Still waiting for sales though.

Regards, David.