December Sales Updates:

Hawker Hunter - Chinese sale on Alamy

A slightly delayed update for a fairly low key month in December. Hardly surprising when large chunks of the picture buying world shut down for the lengthy Christmas and New Year holidays. 

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

Sa Calobra - sold on Redbubble

down).

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.

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.

November Sales Updates:

Stone tower at Emborio on Halki island

A pleasing month in November including the surprise return of a long absent market.

By far, Shutterstock held onto first place with a strong showing of On Demand and Single sales (both combined making up some 60% of my monthly total).

In second place were an improved Istock with 51 downloads and an RPD (rate per download) substantially up on October.

Third place was taken by Alamy with 2 downloads (both from my B/W political archives). Two developments at Alamy pleased and dismayed in various ways. On the plus side they introduced new Portfolio pages coupled with the ability to create individual Galleries (sets). These can both be easily shared on social media to help direct buyers to your images. I've already created a good number of galleries along obvious lines such as Aviation, Barcelona, Majorca etc. You can view my portfolio here My Alamy Portfolio .
The second news was the far less welcome cutting of commission from next February. This drops from an equitable 50/50 split on direct sales to 60/40 ( a drop of 20% in income). They claim this is needed to help fund and develop their business with the usual "you'll benefit from more sales" placebo thrown in. Regular readers will know that I put a lot of time and faith in recent months building up my Alamy portfolio so this comes as a blow. As expected the negative comments on the Alamy forum now run to many pages with a hope that they might re-consider this move and find other ways of funding their business rather than making contributors pay for it. We'll see what happens next.

Redbubble came in fourth place with 3 product sales (I know what someone's getting for

Cap de Barcelona, Port Vell

Christmas!

Fifth place saw the surprise return from the dead of FineArtAmerica with 2 product sales (a mug and a towel). My first sales there since December 2015 so not quite three years. Whether this was a one off event or I shall start seeing more sales will be interesting.

Bigstock were in sixth place with 7 downloads.

Sadly, after a couple of strong months Dreamstime fell to seventh place with 7 downloads (mainly sub sales). Obviously the buyer who had been hitting my port in September and October was absent this month.

Dead rat on Paxos island

In eighth place were Fotolia with just a single download.

Recent uploads included a mixed bunch ranging from a tower of stones on the Greek island of Halki through to the Roy Lichtenstein sculpture Head of Barcelona on the harbour front of Port Vell. For something a bit different I also uploaded images of a dead rat found on the Greek island of Paxos. A good image for pest control/vermin features. I can also envisage this ending up on a T shirt at some point :) Regards, David.

January Sales Updates:

Wartime defence post at Loggos on Paxos island

An unusual month in January as due to Istock transitioning to their new Enterprise Submission Platform (ESP) for uploading and account management no sales information was available so they are not included this month. Going forward I will include Istock stats in the month I get them notified (e.g. January sales will be in my February report -as that is when I got them). Worth mentioning that I have accessed the ESP site (with some issues initially) and have uploaded a small quantity of trial images -both commercial and editorial. The ability to batch upload and edit is a huge leap forward from the old one image at a time uploader. More on Istock in February.

In January, obviously, Shutterstock took first place as is always the case. Reviews there seem to be fast at the moment with a high percentage of approvals which has enabled a worthwhile growth in my portfolio.

Flying Cat 5 at Patitiri harbour on Alonissos island

In second place were Dreamstime with 8 downloads -again prompt and favourable reviews for my uploads.

Third place  went to 123rf with 10 downloads -sadly not a repeat of my BME in December.

Bigstock took fourth place with 7 downloads. Greek island related images seem to be selling well there recently.

A big surprise when Cutcaster turned up in fifth place with 2 downloads. These were my first sales there since 2014! I stopped uploading there a long time ago now. Even with these two sales my total downloads still only amount to 10 (with a port of 1.4k images). Still a long way to payout there.

The historic Acropolis in Athens

Fotolia came in with sixth place with 2 downloads. Until they decide to accept editorial images this is never likely to be a big selling site for me.

Finally in seventh place were Canstock with I download. My comments on Fotolia also apply to Canstock.

Not a stellar month overall but I am hoping my upload drive will start to pay off during 2017 as new material gets accepted. Recent uploads revolved around Greek images including a wartime defence post on Paxos, the Flying Cat catamaran on Alonissos and finally another image from the Acropolis in Athens. A lot has happened in Microstock in February (hence my late posting) so more of that next time. Regards, David.

October Sales Updates:

Dodekanisos Express departs Halki island, Greece

No prizes for guessing the number one position for October (and every other month).
Shutterstock (by far) came in first, helped by a good dose of On demand sales and an Extended License for one of my Tentertainment music festival images.

A long way behind were Istock in second place with just 2 credit downloads and a further 27 Sub/PP sales. On the plus side, my portfolio at Istock finally exceeded 1000 images. There is still plenty of room for growth for me here -albeit probaly based on subscription downloads with the odd credit sale thrown in.

123rf climbed to third place with 8 downloads. My portfolio exposure probaly not helped by the fact that I am still awaiting review of images uploaded from August onwards. I suppose, that eventually, I'll have to email support but it really doesn't seem right that I have to do this to get reviewed. I can only suppose that they either changed from reviewing in house to an outside company or, if they already outsourced this maybe they changed to a new service. Either way, the days of editorial reviews within minutes/hours seem long gone.

Redbubble hit fourth place with one sale of a throw pillow (cushion) featuring, yet again, Margaret Thatcher.

Rocky coastline at Lakka on Paxos island, Greece

I am forever grateful that I have images of The Iron Lady in my portfolio. Ironic, when I could not be more opposed to her political policies :)

A rather sad fourth place for Dreamstime with just 4 downloads (boosted slightly by $0.65 in referral income). Hard to say what is going on with Dreamstime but sales have certainly plunged over the last year with many of those remaining being $0.35 subscription sales. I really like this friendly agency and hope that things will improve there. Pleased to say that reviews are still being made on a regular and fairly prompt basis.

Bigstock made fifth place with 6 downloads (mainly subs, mainly Hastings area images again!).

Bringing up sixth place were Fotolia with just one download. As this is considered one of the Big Four stock agencies I still have confidence that sales will grow here in the future as I build up my small portfolio. I am really hoping that they decide to start taking Editorial images in the future -when I would be able to dramatically increase my portfolio. They remain the only top agency to not take Editorial images.

Summer images at the St.Leonards Festival

Nothing at all from the rest in October. I still have hopes for Picfair where I now have some 984 images with over 53k views -but just two sales to date. I hope they eventually introduce their long awaited bulk price editor. I would be very interested to see if pricing is a factor here deterring sales. At my standard £10 per use this is obviously higher than microstock prices and may well be putting some buyers off. I have noticed some (unproven) correlation between uploading to Picfair and subsequent sales (of the same image) on microstock sites but not enough to draw any firm conclusions.

Recent uploading included a set of images of the annual St.Leonards Festival (held right in front of my flat!) which, though not of International importance, provides good generic Summer/Festival/Community/Outdoor event type images. I also revisited my 2014 trip to the Greek island of Paxos for a seascape image of Lakka. Greek islands also featured with an image of the Dodekanisos Express ferry departing from Halki during my trip this June. November is starting to look like a challenging month for sales -but there is still plenty of time for things to turn around. I'll update in December. Regards, David.

May Sales Updates:

Anti Austerity march, Hastings

Straight into the May sales to bring me up to date before the end of June is upon us :)

May proved a fairly weak month with even my first place agency Shutterstock down from last month and a much lower number of the higher paying On Demand sales and three modest SOD sales.

Istock leapt to second place with 8 credit downloads and an astonishing 42 subscription and PP sales. PP sales came back strongly after their crash last month.

Straight in at third place came Redbubble with a T shirt sale becoming my first sale on the site.

123RF came in fourth with 11 downloads though without the boost from LEL sales that I had last month. They also updated their uploader which from my perspective didn't seem to have any advantages over the old version. On the contrary, the first seven images I uploaded proved tricky as there just seems no way to include punctuation in the caption field. This is important because they require a specific format for editorial captions (which include comma and dash signs). I have put these in dozens of times but when clicking to save they just disappear. I'm fully expecting them to be rejected for this -that is if they ever get around to reviewing them (been three weeks now).

Protest against zero hour contracts at Sports Direct, Hastings

In fifth place were Bigstock with 14 downloads -pretty much all subs again.

Sixth place went to FineArtAmerica with a sale of two greetings cards. These were of the local island bus on the Greek island of Paxos which I visited last year. Not a fortune but a pleasing sale all the same as it is one of my favourite Greek islands.

Now for the big disappointment of the month. In Seventh place were Dreamstime with just 6 downloads. These were all 35c subscription sales bringing a total for the month of just $2.10 -my worst month ever on DT (even my first month there in September 2009 produced nearly £6 in sales). What happened there? Thankfully June is showing improvements but I am at a loss to account for that May dive.

Finally in Eighth place I got one of my irregular sales on Canstock photo - a 30c subscription. If they ever start taking Editorial images this could become a much better seller for me but meanwhile I'll just add non editorials as and when I have them.

Greetings from Paxos: card sales at FineArtAmerica

Much of May was dominated by my signing up to Redbubble.com and learning all about how that works. I'll be posting an article on that soon -but early results are encouraging :)

The other event in May was, of course, a General Election here in Britain when to a lot of peoples surprise the Conservative party won a (small) outright majority. None of the opinion polls had predicted anything of the kind so the result was unexpected. This led to a number of protests and anti austerity marches across the UK, including here in Hastings. I photographed the march and have already had several sales on Shutterstock as a result. Regards, David.

November Sales Updates:

Caroline Flint, Shadow Secretary of State for Energy

Top of the field in November was, as ever, Shutterstock. No Single or Other Downloads this month but a good crop of On Demand sales pushed the earnings up.

Dreamstime did well coming in second place with 16 downloads, with several good credit sales in the mix.

At number three we had Istock with 8 regular credit sales and 20 sub and PP sales. My portfolio there is now just over 900 files (mainly editorial).

Bigstock came in fourth place with 11 downloads - mainly sub sales as usual.

St.Leonards-on-Sea Frost Fair parade

Bringing up the rear were 123rf with 13 downloads where my recent drop to Level 1 status showed in the poor amount of actual earnings. Hopefully, a few good sales or an EL or two will push my level back up again. They will stay on my upload list because they are still an agency which get me sales every month.

Surprisingly, not a single download from Fotolia in November.

Shooting and uploading saw a couple of good events in November. Earlier in the month I was invited to a Labour party policy launch in Hastings where Caroline Flint (Shadow Secretary of State Energy and Climate Change) was the main speaker. As well as being an interesting event, this also yielded images of Shadow Energy Minister Jonathan Reynolds and our Labour Parliamentary candidate for Hastings - Sarah Owen. As we approach the next General Election in May 2015, these are all good images to have in my portfolio.I even took the opportunity to get some exteriors of the venue -the impressive modern building of Sussex Coast College.


Arkoudaki beach, Paxos island, Greece

At the end of the month there was a new event here in St.Leonards-on-Sea with a "Frost Fair" to promote local trade in the approach to Christmas. A colourful parade through the streets was followed by horse and carriage rides -both of which yielded stock images (literally on my doorstep).


Meanwhile, I also continued editing and uploading images from my June trip to Paxos -this time featuring Arkoudaki beach near Lakka. You can read more about a walk to Arkoudaki on my Greek island blog. Regards, David.

September Sales Updates:

The Red Arrows, Eastbourne

A very late posting for my September sales updates. I have been busy editing and uploading during October with over fourty new images added to many of my portfolios. I am also making a change to my sales updates by no longer including actual royalties earned. Ever since Shutterstock changed their Terms Of Service making it no longer allowed to give out actual sales figures publicly my reports have felt skewed -with no figures for what is my best selling agency (by far).
So to sum up a rather poor September overall here's how the agencies ranked:

Shutterstock -by a huge amount the leader and, most excitingly, I crossed the threshold to take 

Lakka harbour, Paxos

me into the 36cents per download level. That might not sound a lot but on the volume SS achieves this soon adds up. Better still, On Demand sales rise from $2.48 to $2.70 (or $1.07 to $1.17 ).Those are figures I can give out because they published in the rate schedule on the site.

Dreamstime were runners up this month with 11 downloads. Things did seem to be going well until the 25th when sales stopped dead (right through to October 17). Not sure what happened there but it proved to be my longest ever break in sales at DT.

Third were Istock with just 4 regular downloads and 19 PP/Sub downloads. The recent restructuring probaly had a bearing here and I'm pleased to report that sales seem to be improving now.

Anes Lines ferry Proteus docking at Alonissos

123RF were in in 4th place with 11 downloads.

Down among my lower earners Bigstock saw 8 downloads, just 1 at Fotolia and, surprise, my second download of 2014 at Yay (a partner sale). None of my other sites produced any sales in September.

Uploading in September saw further images of the Red Arrows from the 2014 Eastbourne airshow, more from my June trip to Paxos and backtracking to 2013 for a set of the Proteus ferry docking at Alonissos. Seeing Proteus turn up in the Sporades was rather a surprise as it is operated by ANES lines from Symi (Dodecanese) and was the actual ship I travelled on from Rhodes to Symi back in 2011. It was like meeting an old friend -far from home. Regards, David.

July Sales Updates:



Gaios harbour, Paxos

A rather late update of sales in July -which as regular readers will know usually indicates that the month didn't prove very exciting for sales. The so called Summer Slowdown certainly seemed to be in full swing in July. That is, if a Slowdown can be doing anything as lively as a full swing (full snooze maybe?).

Shutterstock proved the exception with a good number of downloads and good revenue buoyed up by a number of On Demand downloads and two Single Downloads. I am also, finally, getting seriously close to the next sales level -when my basic subscription download rate is increased.

Dreamstime saw some long gaps between sales and eventually amounted to 10 downloads ($12.37).

Dende Nation samba drummers, St.Leonards-on-Sea

Istock proved lively in July with 10 credit downloads ($10.40) but then added 18 PP sales ($5.04) and 8 sub sales ($2.24). My portfolio there is now circa 850 and I am starting to see the results of Editorial images now being available on Thinkstock (PP) and the new subs packages at Istock itself.

Bigstock managed 7 downloads ($4.28). Pretty much all subscription sales.

123rf saw 8 downloads ($4.78). Again, mainly sub sales, which at Level 2 only pay at $0.25.

Fotolia produced 3 downloads (1.85 credits).



Ilida II hydrofoil, Corfu

My uploading saw an increase in July, however. I do not hold the belief that because sales are slow you should hold off uploads. Some contributors feel that the new images just get buried in quite periods (and Weekends) and never connect with buyers. Because of the mainly Editorial nature of my images I am confident they will get picked up in keyword searches in the future regardless of when I uploaded them. As well as the Eastbourne Pier fire images previously posted I also uploaded images from the 2014 St.Leonards Festival (a local community music and entertainment event)
. Samba drummers Dende Nation took part in a seafront parade during the event. Also uploaded were more images of my June trip to Paxos island including the harbour at Gaios and the Ilida II hydrofoil on which I had just returned to Corfu. Hopefully, August should prove the last of the quiter months before an upturn in September. Regards, David.

May sales update:

Reversing the usual order here I'll start with some agencies I don't see see that many downloads with but all three produced some action in May.

Fineartamerica, saw my second ever sale -a framed print of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher netting $30.00 and a further $3.22 commission on the print materials. That's my second years paid membership covered in one sale.

Cutcaster sold a recently uploaded image of the Eiffel Tower ($0.46). Just wish this agency could produce more sales.

Over in Sweden, Mostphotos saw three downloads (12.84 euros). Two small value subscription sales and, more interestingly, my first full price single sale for 12.50euros. Yet again, another Margaret Thatcher image. It's starting to look like there may be a bit of a pick up in sales here.

Bigstock continued to get regular sales with 14 downloads ($6.18). A good number of subscription sales with a sprinkling of regular credit sales.

Fotolia only managed two subscription sales netting 0.50 in credits. As previously posted, my images are now opted out of the Dollar Photo Club there so some drop in sales might be expected. A price I am prepared to pay to be out of DPC.

123rf saw 9 downloads ($6.22). Pretty much all subscription sales at $0.25 each.

Istock produced 10 downloads ($7.75) but with a further $3.92 from PP (Thinkstock) sub sales. None of the new Istock subscription sales for me in May -though I have since had my first ones credited during June. For anyone new to Istock -the PP (Partner Program) and Istock subs are paid out the following month en masse (which is when I include them in my sales report). Thus subs sales that occurred in May will be in my June sales report.

Dreamstime had a good month with 14 downloads ($28.47). A lot of Greek island (especially Halki) images sold and the highlight being an I-EL for $13.35). This was for my Italian street party image featured in my last post. I-EL? I had to look it up -the I stands for "Increased" (basically a bigger print run than is allowed with the standard license).

Needless to say, the big one as always was Shutterstock with numerous downloads and a good crop of higher paying On Demand sales as well as one pleasing Single sale.  If only I had a whole bunch of agencies with the mass selling power of Shutterstock!

New uploads in May included, finally, my images of the derelict Lazy Days boat on Symi island. You can read more about this lovely old boat on my Greek island blog ( mysmallgreekislands.blogspot.com ). I also edited and uploaded more images from my Paris trip including the iconic Sacre Coeur cathedral and the Pont Neuf (the oldest bridge in Paris). I'll be posting my June updates soon - a month in which uploads (and blog posts!) came to a halt while I enjoyed a wonderful two weeks on the little Greek island of Paxos. Regards, David.