Making money from stock photography
A full month here in Texas and I’m more settled and there are fewer boxes around. I even got my Epson 3880 printer installed as well, and so color prints are on the horizon! Weather can be a little boring: But onto the main subject with a quick diversion. Taras Kushnir has a survey for earnings and activities for stock photographers that he will analyze and publish on his blog. Worth completing to see how things are going in general...
As you know, I’ve been trying for the past 3 years to expand away from stock photography into the sale of my better photographs as prints via both Print on Demand sites and now with my own Etsy store. I’ve written about setting up this store in previous articles but on one of my trips to Austin looking for a new home I took the time to watch a webinar and a series of videos by the Craig Alexander academy....
I must be in a jolly mood today to start with such a clickbait headline! Although I’m not sure that the actual earnings in May justifies the happy feeling. Earnings from photography in May 2024 May 2024 was okay, but I think some of the underlying trends are not very positive. The month ended with total earnings of $2635, which is the lowest May total since 2017. Get the picture? Here is my graph: I guess you could say that...
I was asked about a month ago, whether I knew what the financial performance of my stock portfolio was when you consider editorial work separately from commercial images and videos. Great question, but I have struggled to answer it! The first issue is that Microstockr Pro does not have an easy way to distinguish between the two types of upload. Although all my editorial images would have a city/state and date in the description, searching for those terms (which are...
It definitely seems to be getting harder to make money from stock photography these days, especially on Shutterstock. Overall, the month was not too bad, to be honest, with total income of $2798, which is quite an increase from March’s total of $2436. Here is my usual historic chart of total earnings: And of course, some readers will want to know the size of the portfolio. I did add more images in April from my trip into Ohio to photograph...
Some months are good, some months stink… After a very poor January, February, even with fewer days, came back like a lion (isn’t that saying supposed to be about March?) And then March came along, and I ended up with total earnings of $2421, a big drop from the $2995 I saw in February. The graph looks like this – which shows how far this March has fallen from previous years: In fact, this is the worst March earnings total...
It’s a common question – how much can you really earn from stock photography these days? And I must admit that it is getting harder year by year. But after a particularly difficult January performance, especially on Shutterstock, things have taken a turn for the better in February with total earnings for the month of $2986. I was updating my spreadsheet to add in 2024 and noticed that my total earnings from selling photography since I started in 2008 wasn’t...
A new year and what a poor start to the year! Yes, I know that our favorite agency resets all the commission percentages in January, but even so, January 2024 turned out to be pretty poor. Total income ended up being $2243 with my normal chart looking like this: And my file count chart: So, what went wrong? A couple of things really – the main one being that SS slumped from $610 in November to $407 in December and...
What an intriguing month! Firstly, I had a lot of Fine Art print sales that I reported on last week, then I had the conclusion of a private sale of files for prints that I’ll mention below and finally, an OK month for stock photos. The end result was a record $3940 for the month, all told! My normal chart first: And, for a change, a graph showing the growth of files from an agency that accepts most images –...
This would normally be part of my monthly summary, but it has been an exciting month in the world of “fine art” and selling online via Print on Demand Sites and so I decided to cover those separately. I have been mortified in the past 2 months with having published a book on selling fine art online and then getting nothing in sales on either Fine Art America or Pictorem in September and October. Now I find that November has...
