November updates:

November saw a slight drop in sales at Shutterstock. 49 downloads compared to 67 in October. However, thanks to three On Demand sales income remained virtually the same at $16 odd. Considering I have uploaded few new images to them recently I was quite happy with this. More importantly I hit my first payout at the end of the month and now have $82 on its way to me!

Over at Dreamstime (which I have been concentrating on) my portfolio has reached 547 images, netting 23 sales in November and an all time figure of 34 sales. This amounts to nearly $23 in earnings in just a few weeks (nearly as much as I have ever earned on Istock!). I have now started uploading my non editorial images with (as I expected) a lower acceptance rate than my editorial ones. All the same, I am getting plenty accepted and had my first non-ed sale this week (a landscape shot of Hastings beach).

One or two sales at Istock and Bigstockphoto and a pleasing 11 euros from the Yaymicro "third party sales" scheme (basically, selected images are going to a third party seller and contributors get a quarterly payout). Veer marketplace sales remain at just 1, though my portfolio there has now reached 98. Still getting lots of rejections there ("not quite Veer") and very few views.

Istocks "partner program" with Photos.com is now underway and first results/sales should be available on our Istock page at the end of December. They will normally be updated monthly but because it was mid November before the scheme launched they are merging November/December results. I'm pleased to say my images show up well in searches on Photos.com so I am optimistic about getting some sales there.

Meanwhile British site Picturenation.co.uk remains offline in mysterious circumstances (see earlier posting). Their last Twitter update was on November 1 "back next week". Well that didn't happen. On November 24 they updated the apology notice on their site, again saying they would be back up "next week". They have long weeks in Staffordshire it seems. Just don't know what to make of the situation but I am still keeping my fingers crossed for this site.

Finally, much fun to be had at http://microstockgroup.com/ this week, after they moved to a new server. Most of us have been bounced back and forth from the new server to the old one where founder Tyler Olson (Leaf) has set up a "graveyard chat" page. It's been like being in a parellel universe all week and quite weird. I expect Picturenation would be glad to just have one version of their site up, yet alone two. Regards, David.

Istock Partner Program goes live:

Istock have just announced that their long awaited "Partner Program" will go live tomorrow (November 12). Announced many months ago, this program allows Istock contributors to also have their images for sale on Getty owned subscription sites Photos.com and Jupiter Unlimited. You only have to submit once (to Istock) and tick any that you want to be available on the other sites. You can opt out totally if you want or put all or just selected images on. I've opted in my entire (small -138 ) portfolio on the basis that it is potential extra sales for no extra work. I'm looking forward to seeing how many extra sales this brings. The losers here are the contributors who have portfolios on micro site Stockexpert (also owned by Getty). Their images are being pulled off the two other sites in favour of Istock contributors. Regards, David.

ShootingStock goes viral:

Decided this weekend to start using more technology to promote this site and (hopefully) my various portfolios. So you will now find a ShootingStock page on Facebook and on Twitter. The links are further down on the left of the screen. Twitter is really easy to set up but, I must admit, I struggled with Facebook. Way too many settings and options to contend with. Still it's done and I have linked the pages up with my photo agency sites and other photo related sites. Now let the "viral marketing" get going!

Meanwhile September (that seems a long time ago) saw a total of 71 downloads on Shutterstock despite hardly any new uploads, whilst I concentrated in building up my Dreamstime portfolio. My port on Dreamstime has grown to about 480, with 17 downloads to date, so a good start there I think. So far I have only uploaded Editorial images, with an acceptance rate of about 96%. I expect that rate to drop (fast!) once I start sending my landscape and cat images. We'll see.

British image agency Picturenation is having a bad month. They went offline on October 9, and are still not back. This obviously caused the usual speculation about their future. However, as best as I can piece together from their Twitter and Facebook pages there has been some kind of legal dispute going which locked them out of their own site. They have moved to a new host and say they should be back in the next few days. Probaly best not to go into further detail here but you can read it on their pages. Ironically, I had my first sale there in a while, just before they vanished. Anyway, fingers crossed for a swift return online. Regards, David.

Now at Dreamstime:

Last week I extended my roster of agents by joining http://dreamstime.com. This agency is generally listed in the top two or three earners by most photographers, so it seemed time to check it out. Of most interest to me was that they take Editorial images, so they looked like another possible outlet for my celebrity photo archive. I really didn't know if they would be interested in old B/W shots of Margaret Thatcher etc , but of my first 41 archive shots submitted all have been accepted. They even put three of them on their home page today. Best of all, I have already had six sales in just a few days of being online. I'm sure I will get my fair share of rejections in time but certainly a great start. There is also no application test to endure on this site. Just sign up and upload! Regards, David.

First sale at Veer Marketplace:

Having said just yesterday that I hadn't had any sales at Veer yet I logged in today to find my first sale! A pleasing $1.75 for a shot of two Jack Russell dogs that I had grabbed in the street in Hastings (grabbed the shot, not the dogs, obviously). Suddenly all those pretty little graphs Veer provide on their "dashboard" page looked much more interesting. They'd been flatlining up to now. The first sale on a new site is always the most exciting and this had been a few weeks coming. I am still concerned about their rather erratic review process (see earlier posting) but hopeful this could turn out to be a good earning site. Regards, David