December Sales Updates:

Lech Walesa - sold on FAA

Given the slow days of Christmas and New Year holidays it was a pleasant surprise to have a strong month in December. It was also good to see an unusual front runner this month.

FineArtAmerica took first place with a good value print sale of former Polish president Lech Walesa. A tote bag sale also helped them to top place. I never seem to get as many sales on FAA as I would like but it is certainly worth paying the modest $30 fee each year (which gives you unlimited upload numbers).

Second place went to Shutterstock including three On Demand and four Single downloads. What helped this month was an additional sum from the new Contributor Fund (basically a pool of money in return for AI programmes using SS images to train on. I'm hoping this could prove a useful extra revenue stream going forward).

Alamy made third place with 5 downloads. Four archive images and my recent WW2 food ration book again. It's good to see sales from the latter which my parents kept safe in drawer for all those years.

Fourth place went to my other POD site Redbubble with 6 product sales including mugs, stickers and greeting cards. Bit of a last minute Christmas flurry there I assume.

Istock made fifth place with 28 downloads. My Tentertainment music festival images continuing to

New upload - Ithaca bound ferry

come out on top as always. One curious detail was a sale of the abandoned village of Mikro Chorio on the Greek island of Tilos. For some reason it has been renamed Mikro Chorio, Forbidden island. I checked my Istock portfolio and it has that new title as well. Tilos isn't a forbidden island nor have I ever said that it was! No idea at all how that came about but there is no way of editing accepted images on Istock so that's how it will be staying. 

Sixth place went to Dreamstime with 5 downloads including one of those rare $2 subscription sales. Maybe 2023 is the year we will see a turn around for DT.

Seventh place was taken by Adobe with 5 downloads including two editorial store front images of Monsoon and Woolworths - both taken here in Tenterden (and both now gone as well).

London Daily News launch issue 1987

Finally in eighth place was Bigstock with just a single download. It's now been many months since I had any new images added there since the ending of the Bridge to Bigstock connector. As I have said before, the sales volume at Bigstock doesn't warrant uploading direct (at this time).

Recent uploading included starting to look at my Ithaca island images from my 2022 trip including one of Levante Ferries ferry boat Andreas Kalvos loading in Sami harbour on Kefalonia prior to departing for Ithaca. I have also continued with my collection of old newspapers including the launch issue of the London Daily News from February 1987. Sadly, though it was an excellent newspaper, it only survived for a few months before closing down.

Though it is early days yet my thoughts are turning to trip destinations in 2023. I can safely say there will be a Greek island in the mix and who knows where else. Barcelona has to be high on my list not having been there since 2018.

January has started off very slowly but we'll see where it ends up in due course. Regards, David. 

September Sales Updates:

 

Blair and Brown: New Labour, new print sale

A near full house of results in September with only Picfair and Mostphotos (as usual ) failing to make an appearance.

Back in first place were Shutterstock with a good crop of On Demand sales pushing up the results. Two of these  paid way more than under the old structure so more of those please :)

Second place went to FineArtAmerica with two sales including a print of Lech Walesa the former President of Poland.  

Alamy made third place with a record 6 downloads. Sadly, none of these were very high value hence their ranking. 

Fourth place went to Redbubble with 3 product sales. Two prints including an archive shot of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and yet another greeting card. I'm hoping that the Christmas build up will start soon as in previous years.

Fifth place went to Istock with a disappointing 15 downloads. I keep adding to my portfolio there but

Petrol queues: traditional UK panic buying

never seem to see a big growth in sales.

Adobe perked up to make sixth place with 8 downloads (including three editorials).

Seventh place went to Pond 5 with a single download of the Tentertainment music festival. After my super month there a few weeks back it was nice to see another regular sale. I'm still continuing to upload my back catalogue to them so we'll see what they can do going forward. Still, given that you can set your own prices and get 50% royalties there really is nothing to lose by uploading to them.

Bringing up the rear were Bigstock in eighth place with just 2 downloads and, sadly, Dreamstime in ninth place with just one download. A subscription sale at that :(

Lech Walesa: print sale on FineArtAmerica

New shooting included a visit to the postponed Tenterden Food and Drink Festival (back properly for the first time since 2019). I also visited my local petrol station as the UK went into panic buying mode due to fears of shortages caused by lack of delivery drivers. The resultant queues backing up down the road were too good a subject to miss.

New uploading in addition to the events mentioned above included, as I said, pumping more into Pond 5 (as well as filling in some gaps in my Picfair portfolio and POD sites at the same time). I also revisited my 2013 trip to the Greek island of Alonissos for a few additional shots. Luckily, most of the small Greek islands tend to be pretty timeless so even older images are still valid.

October so far has started off fairly slowly but there's time yet. More next month. Regards, David.

February Sales Updates:

Margaret Thatcher - Shutterstock E.D.

A pleasing strong month in February with a few nice surprises.

A powerful month on Shutterstock as it maintained its usual place at the top. On Demand sales were strong, producing more revenue than standard subs. An Enhanced Download (Extended License) of Margaret Thatcher helped boost things further. The controversial change to the ED payout (from flat $28 to a varied % amount based on your sales tier) didn't make a lot of difference here. Under $3 less than previously -certainly not enough to make me consider opting out of these sales as some have done.

Istock took a decisive second place with a worthwhile 10 credit sales and a further 27 sub/PP downloads. This was one of the strongest months for credit sales in a long time.

In third place came Dreamstime who, as previously posted, had a record sales day for me with 54 subscription sales of my archive rock band images. A further 10 subscription sales during the month helped reverse the poor showing for DT of late. It was interesting to see the flurry of unrelated downloads after having that big day. It may be that my images got pushed up in the search rankings because of that. Or just a co-incidence :) If you are on Dreamstime never miss the chance to post good news using the sites Blog facility. New blogs get listed on DT front page and can help to draw a lot of attention to your portfolio. Also, do not forget to make use of the social media sharing buttons on your blog posts to draw in Twitter, Facebook and Google+ readers. To date my post has had over 1600 viewings and gained a place in the "hot" topics listing -again bringing in more attention to my work. DT also rewards popular/useful posts with a free credit which can be put towards image purchases there. Several of the images on my Greek Islands blog have been obtained in this way.

Vintage car - Laptop sleeve sale on Redbubble

Fourth place went to Redbubble who pleased with a further two product sales. Margaret Thatcher on a baby outfit (lucky baby!) and my vintage American car image on a laptop sleeve. It's taken a while, but my images seem to be gaining some traction at Redbubble of late. My only disappointment so far is not selling any of my range of calendars. I had felt sure that Christmas would have seen a few sales of these.

123RF took fifth place with 14 downloads. Editorial images making a strong showing here. It's a shame then that, once again, I have a backlog of over twenty editorial images awaiting review -some for weeks now. Seems I keep going down the same road of waiting forever for reviews and then having to email support to get something to happen (sigh).

Lech Walesa - multiple sales in February

Bigstock made sixth place with 7 downloads. Steady tick over site this. Never really excites or surprises and I have never had an extended license there in all the years I have been with them. Maybe one day?

Finally in seventh place were Fotolia with just a single download. I am prepared to be patient with this one as I still only have a small portfolio and there is everything to play for in the future -especially with all images being mirrored on Adobe Stock and available directly within Photoshop. They just need to start taking Editorial images and I'll be really happy.

Images used this time show the Enhanced sale on Margaret Thatcher at SS and the vintage American car sold at Redbubble. Lech Walesa, former President of Poland, makes an appearance after a flurry of sales on Shutterstock, Dreamstime, Bigstock and 123rf. A good example of how archive images can sell when the subject is in the current news. Regards, David.

September sales updates:

September started off slowly but there were signs of improving sales towards the end of the month.
As ever, way out in front were Shutterstock with my best sales (quantity and income) but, sadly, under their new revised Terms Of Service contributors are now not allowed to disclose detailed results -under pain of having your account closed if you do. The official reason given is that information is of use to competing agencies.  Personally I doubt that Istock executives are waiting in anticipation every month for my blog post so they can see how I did there. Some more cynical posters on the forums suggested that this might be a move to suppress future bad publicity for Shutterstock should they import the Received Credits system they are trialling at Bigstock (as opposed to the current lifetime earnings levels) -resulting in big drops in income for many contributors. I honestly hope they are completely wrong. However, it is their business and their rules. It's actually a great shame as month after month I have reported how well Shutterstock have done for me -with way more sales and income than the other sites. For further information check out this thread on the Shutterstock forumhttp://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=132223

Moving on to the sales I am allowed to post about 123RF takes second place with 13 downloads and a BME there of $32.07 thanks to a Multi seat license and a Print Extended license on images of Boris Yeltsin and the Tentertainment music festival respectively.

Dreamstime produced 15 downloads ($23.55) in a strong month for them.

Istock managed 14 downloads ($8.76) with a further $4.12 from 10 PP sales. Before the price reductions there those 14 downloads would have produced considerably more income as many of them were previously Photo Plus images -now reduced to the basic Main collection.

Bigstock continued to see more activity with 12 downloads ($5.16).

Fotolia managed a couple of sales (1.85 credits).

Veer surprised with another sub sale ($0.25). Goodness. Better still their broken uploader has been fixed and I was able to upload my backlog of (non editorial) images -even getting some accepted.

Yay gets a mention if only to report zero sales for September. This means that since April I have had just one 0.75euro sale there (in August). On over 2000 images? With all those distribution partners? I am truly at a loss to know what has happened there. I really like Yay and have never had anything but friendly and prompt responses to any problems so they remain on my upload list. I just hope things improve soon. Yay also announced their new subscription and streaming packages (streaming as in small users like bloggers paying a modest monthly fee to have images streamed to their site from the Yay library, as opposed to actually downloading the images). This is aimed to appeal to those who would not normally pay for images or just steal them from the internet. Many would say that those users are not going to start paying anything for images -no matter how modest the price. I've stayed opted into this for now to see how it goes.

Uploading in September saw some images of the Hastings Old Town Carnival accepted as well as further Greek island images of Skopelos. I also revisited my archives for further 1989 images of Lech Walesa (President of Poland). Let's now see how October does. Regards, David.

February updates:

For a short month February provided excellent sales.

Shutterstock had a BME in quantity of downloads with 113 sales ($59.65). It fell a couple of dollars short of BME in earnings with last September still holding the record thanks to an EL sale. A large chunk of earning came from On Demand sales and one Single Sale (paying $4.75).

123rf produced a healthy 23 downloads ($16.55) taking me to a second payout.

Dreamstime perked up with 12 downloads ($15.34). A Tiff sale of Margaret Thatcher for $9.20 helped push that earnings figure. The extra portfolio exposure there was very welcome.

Bigstock pleased with 6 downloads($11.10), all Editorial images. The Bridge connector continues to do its job there with SS approved images showing up in my Bigstock port a day or two later.

Istock proved a bit dissapointing with no sales up to Feb 16. A flurry at the end produced 8 downloads ($6.52) with a further $1.12 from four PP sales.

Yaymicro saw 2 downloads (both of Margaret Thatcher) earning 2euros.

Fotalia also saw 2 downloads (2 credits). Clearly there are sales to be had at FT if I could just get more accepted.

Uploading in February saw another delve into my archives with colour images of Lech Walesa and former Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine amongst them. I only have a limited number of colour archive images available compared to my B/W files but it certainly made a change. Regards, David.