As I mentioned in an earlier post, I created a new 2012 Kauai calendar and put it up for sale on Zazzle about a month ago. Four sales so far! I also noticed that the choice of calendars for Kauai is not great and the others are priced higher than mine, and so I’m planning to put up the commission from 15% to 25% shortly to see if the market can bear a new price. I’ve given a short talk...
The summer lull has definitely passed, and September turned in the best month to date in terms of earnings. Shutterstock roared ahead with a personal best on that site of $415, beating a previous high of $386 set back in April. The sales of the cat images as enhanced downloads certainly helped – all told I had four enhanced downloads from that site. iStock has also turned into a nice little earner. I have tried to upload 20 images every...
I was doing my usual viewing of the sales on the main sites yesterday, and was surprised (and very pleased) by the number of large value sales of cats this month. I had a really good session with our bengal kittens back in February, and the images from that shoot have sold well on most of the stock sites. Here is a sampling of sales this month: This one is the winner of the bunch, with total downloads of 166...
Many of us have a collection of great images, and one interesting opportunity is to create a calendar and sell that. I’ve tried to interest local shops with calendars, but it is a hard business with the need to print the calendars, persuade shops to take them and then deal with any overstock. Last year I created a calendar on the Zazzle website, and sold 8 copies with no marketing effort. Now will 8 copies make a fortune – no,...
The subject of what objects and buildings can be submitted for commercial stock and what is prohibited is a complex and ever changing feast! One of the sources of information that is kept reasonably up to date is on the Shutterstock blog – Shutterbuzz – known image restrictions. Well worth reading and bearing in mind as you plan your shoots!
I’ve created a monthly newsletter that has just been sent to all the buyers of my eBook. Its purpose is to keep the book up to date by highlighting changes in the industry, new tips and tricks to increase revenue, new sites worth considering and any notable products I have come across that will make your lives easier in feeding the Stock Photo monster….
I was very fortunate to be able to present a session on Stock Photography to the Manassas Warrenton Camera Club in Virginia last night. If you are ever in the area, please come along to the Club meetings on the first and third Thursdays in the month to meet a great bunch of people and hear some fascinating speakers… I wanted to keep the talk light-hearted but still informative and so put together a PowerPoint presentation trying to cover the...
The August results are now complete, and this has been a pretty reasonable month. August is never a great month because of vacations in many parts of the world, but this has been a month marked by steady progress on most of the sites. There were no one-off specials like the rights sale for $100 on Dreamstime and the $120 Alamy sale last month, but overall each agency played its part in getting to a total of $892. Shutterstock broke...
One of the advantages of being in Northern VA (apart from the earthquakes) is the closeness of all the monuments in Washington DC. So, I got up early this morning to be first in line for a tour of the new Martin Luther King monument that has opened by the side of the Tidal Basin. I managed to get some shots of his grandson (Martin Luther King III) who was touring the site before it opened to the public and...
In my various articles and even in my eBook, I rarely talk about Zoonar. This German site originally had a deal with another German agency called Polylooks, where each image uploaded to Zoonar and then accepted by Polylooks earned a small payment. In the end, with some sales with Polylook as well, I earned $136 from the site last year. Then Polylooks closed its door and since then – zero… Zoonar has continued to add partners, including some higher paying...
