Best selling images in April 2011

I’m starting this post early as I have already had a number of enhanced sales in April. I’ll keep the post up to date as the month progresses. An enhanced sale is when the buyer either wants a very large print run, or wants to use the photo on a commercial product (at least that is my understanding! The month started well with this download from Shutterstock. We get the magazine Entertainment Weekly and this Saturday ( 9 April), I saw the same image used in a Royal Wedding Bingo game – enlarged below. It is always interesting to spot one of your pictures in print!

Spot the tankard

English beer in tankard

This early start to a (hopefully) good month for sales was followed up on 7th April with two enhanced images downloaded from Shutterstock (at $28 each). These were both from a recent shoot of our bengal cats isolated against a white background. I can imagine these being used on a cat food package or in a magazine advert, so I will keep my eyes open and hope I spot them somewhere. Click on the images to see them full size on my Fine Art website.

To keep the momentum in this great first week of April, I had a larger than normal sale on 123RF of the panorama at Caneel Bay on the island of St John in the Caribbean. This netted a payment of $14 which is pretty good for 123RF as I don’t normally sell very much on that site. My final big sale this month was on Veer, a site owned by Corbis. This is an interesting site as originally it paid for uploads, and so I made a reasonable amount uploading all my stock images. I now get sales every week or so, but they generally are for $3.50 which is much more satisfying. The big sale this month was for a panorama of Leinster Bay on St John in the Caribbean. I stitched about 5 images together to get this panorama, and the image sold on Veer for $35.00.

Lonesome bengal kitten

Clawing at the air

Panorama of Caneel Bay

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Update 15 April:

April just keeps getting better. I logged onto Shutterstock this morning to see another enhanced download for $28 – this time for one of my images of a Christmas tree with lights and presents in the corner of a modern room. Strange how Christmas images sell in April, but some designer must be planning ahead!

Panorama of Leinster Bay, St JohnUpdate 18 April 2011: One more enhanced sale on Shutterstock today – the lovely picture of the cat leaning its head to the side sold for a second time this month. This makes the earnings from Shutterstock easily the best month so far, and we still have 12 days to go!

Update 30 April 2011: Final day of the month and I checked the Veer site and found that two more cat pictures had sold for a total of $46 each. I don’t fully understand the Veer  licensing system, but this appears to be for an unlimited reproduction license, so I will have to watch out for signs of these images in magazines or calendars!

Christmas Tree in modern room

Waiting for Santa