Another month quickly goes by and it is time to add up all those earnings again! I didn’t need as big a calculator this month as Shutterstock seems to have dropped back into its old ways. After a great March with almost $1000, I’m back down at $597 on that site. Not a single enhanced license in the month! Overall, things are back to their normal levels as well (normal being “not so good”) with total earnings in April of...
It is that time of the month again, but Spring is in the air! Last month was good for me in earnings, this month actually surpassed that, so I’m definitely walking with a spring in my step! I decided to change the way I report iStock earnings this year and instead of estimating and then correcting the results later in the month, I’m simply going to consider the amount I am paid in the month as the earnings for that...
Like many of you, I have struggled with the move to the Getty ESP, being unable to access the site at all for almost 2 or 3 weeks in February. I mentioned earlier that when I compared the tax forms I got from Getty with my own records of earnings taken each month from the site, it turned out I had earned perhaps $200 more in the year than I expected, and I’m glad to say that has continued into...
These don’t happen very often, but it is always nice to see a sale, especially of a large print, on Fine Art America. Yesterday it was a 36 inch x 21 inch glossy canvas of my images of the Canadian Falls at Niagara. I was walking on the Canadian side of the waterfall, and there is almost always a rainbow there and I waited until the tourist boat was just at the end of the rainbow. It was a single...
Interesting how things change from month to month. February is normally a poor month because of the number of days (although aren’t all months poor months these days!), but this month I actually did better. Quite a lot of that is because I report sales from Getty when they are actually cleared, and so that adds some delay, but overall it was a good month for me with total earnings of $2719. Here is the comparison agency by agency with...
I wish I was feeling better about this business – but January was another disappointing month for me. Perhaps I need to reset my expectations and be happy with getting a regular stream of income – which is considerable, I understand, but the effort of putting new images online and not see any benefit is a bit disheartening. It is a bit hard to see what iStock earnings are going to be as they have delayed the reporting of the...
It is that time of year again for an analysis and report of Stock Photography economics for 2016. What a year….and I’m not talking about stock photography yet! Overall, I didn’t do as well as 2015, which itself was not as good as 2014 so it looks like the best is perhaps behind us! There are some real downers for the year in terms of performance (and yes, Shutterstock, I’m talking about you), but Adobe Stock has really turned Fotolia...
Another month goes by – amazingly quickly it seems. I must be getting used to the new normal of Shutterstock – fewer downloads in total and far fewer enhanced and single sales – which really hits my earnings from that site, but on the upside, Adobe Stock continues to perform nicely. Overall, I increased by a $120 over October to reach a total of $2163 for November. With Thanksgiving being a big US holiday, that isn’t too bad. Pity December...
I recently came across an interesting blog post by Craig Dingle entitled Why be exclusive on iStock? His blog is worth following as Craig is an Australian wedding photographer who also does stock photos as an extra income stream, and chose to join iStockPhoto as an exclusive back around the same time I was starting as a non-exclusive. His reasons are valid, but I’m not sure I can get over one of the biggest issues with exclusivity – you are tying...
September is usually a good time of the year for stock earnings. For me, this month, not so much! I must have really hit a bad patch as I ended the month probably just scraping to the $2000 mark. I’m sure many readers would love to get to that point, but I’m only reporting on my experiences with my portfolio. I don’t have my Alamy/Corbis/Getty earnings yet as I submitted to those via a partner, but without those I ended...
