October Sales Updates:

For a few days in October I thought we were going from the Summer Slowdown to an Autumn Abyss as the month started off so slowly. However, things picked up and October ended up being a strong month.

123rf get first billing here as I had a BME of $28.76 from 13 downloads. Two PEL sales of $11.25 each achieved that (Hastings pier and Dungeness lighthouse) though, in general, sales were busier there than for a long time. Hopefully, there is a return to form going on at 123.
Shutterstock (obviously) excelled with 103 downloads ($56.23). What else to say about this agency? They sell - that's it.
Dreamstime produced 10 downloads ($14.09). The search engine changes that favoured my images a few months back seems to be swinging the other way now.
Istockphoto picked up 8 downloads ($13.58) plus 2 PP sales ($0.52). Editorial images continue to grow here and my portfolio is now just off 600 in number. A far cry from the days (pre editorial) when I only had 150 images there and a rare sale. They (editorial) are currently getting excellent review times -often just an hour or two.
Bigstock saw 5 downloads ($6.90). I am still waiting to see the anticipated big boost in earnings here now that the majority of my portfolio has been transferred via the Bridge to Bigstock program, but I still feel that this is an agency that could do good things in the future.
Fotalia achieved 3 downloads (2.45 credits). This is still a very small portfolio for me but sales are encouraging on that small amount. I'm still bemused how any agency can not have a description field for uploaded images. How do buyers actually know what the image is of? My response is to have longer than usual image titles in which I try to cram in the required information. Probaly just my editorial instincts here as I want to explain the Who?What?Where?When? for my images.
Yaymicro had one download (1euro) and new tougher reviews resulting in a number of rejections for lighting/artifacts. Reminded me of the old days on Istock.
Canstockphoto produced my second ever download ($0.30). I still need to build my portfolio there.

Uploading in October saw more images of the Sussex town of Rye including the famous Mermaid Inn (pictured) and, of course, further images from my September trip to the Greek islands of Skiathos and Alonissos (pictured). Regards, David.

Bridge to Bigstock -Crossed:

Unlike some top flight contributors I didn't receive a Christmas card from Shutterstock or Bigstock this year (unless it is still in the post) but I did receive an excellent Christmas present, literally on Christmas Day, when I had an email from Bigstock confirming that they had transferred my images over from Shutterstock under the Bridge to Bigstock program.

Over 300 images were added taking my Bigstock port to some 1066. As previously posted, most of these were my B/W archive celebrity/politician images which do well on Shutterstock but were originally rejected at Bigstock for being grainy.

The transfer didn't work 100% perfectly as there are still some images missing on Bigstock (which I estimate at around 109 in number). My understanding is that this was mainly a manual rather than fully automated process so I guess there was scope for error on such a large number. Going forward, I'll try and identify the missing images and re-upload directly to Bigstock to fully complete my portfolio there.

Bigstock have been pulling in increased sales of late and this transfer can only help boost that. For the future, the other benefit gained is that all new acceptances at Shutterstock automatically appear in my Bigstock portfolio as well -thus saving uploading time. I have already put this to the test and all worked as it should. Sadly, there isn't a "Shuttle to Shutterstock" option as there are a number of images in my Bigstock port which got rejected at the parent site.

It will be interesting to see how my sales go at Bigstock in 2012. On that note, I'll wish everyone a happy and great selling New Year. Kind regards, David.