At a time when we seem to be being driven into the ground by Shutterstock and Getty/iStock are hitting us with 1c downloads of images, we should look towards agencies that are doing this right. I just looked back at my April results for iStock and while the month was good at $460 or so, I had 106 downloads that paid less than 10c. All the way down to one at $0.01. And I had three $0.03 videos! In contrast...
I mentioned that I had been submitting more of my images to Yay Images since they seem to be revitalizing themselves under a new leadership. I had seen some $0.05 sales in my account, which seemed to be very different to what they were promising and so I asked their Director of Marketing why that would be. Here is his full response: We have a variety of sales models, as we have recently refreshed the website we have also refreshed...
I think we can all agree that the new Shutterstock earnings schedule has been implemented in almost the worst way possible. Throw it over the wall, make a mistake in the email. Allow a low level forum person to give a few answers to legitimate questions, then say nothing more. Ignoring the way it was done, I’ve been thinking about this some more from Shutterstock’s point of view, which I think is important if you are going to decide how...
We’ve seen all the issues with Shutterstock over the past day or so, and many people are looking for alternatives. Interestingly, I’ve been with Yay Images (was Yay Micro in the past) for many years and over the years I have actually earned $352 with them. It appears that they are under new ownership and I’ve been noticing a lot of improvements as they moved from the old Yay Micro site to the new Yay Images one. My portfolio had...
I’ve been doing more green screen oriented stock photos recently because my travels have been sorely restricted! Why a green screen when it might be much easier to extract against a pure white background? Well, I wanted to produce both videos and stock photos of the various ideas and Premiere already has a great extraction tool with the Ultra Key effect and that seems to do an excellent job with getting clean edges and a smooth video composite as you...
Being isolated at home can be OK for a time, but unless you are active in some way, the days can get very long. If you are able to work your normal job from home, that is great, but if that isn’t possible then what can you do. To some extent I am used to this sort of life, having worked from home for about 10 years now, but I’m missing the trips to see new places and I am...
Talk about being prescient. On January 26th I wrote this: I’m talking about the corona virus epidemic in China. First, I suspect it is a lot worse than we know, and if it spreads in another country, it will be the subject of endless discussions as well as major concerns. I’ve already ordered some 99% dust masks for potential subjects (and potential use!) and I think you could create many images and videos around that and the possible implications. Food...
Firstly – I’ve added a plugin to the site to keep Premium members logged into the site (rather than having to sign in again every two weeks which is the WordPress default). So after signing in today, you should be good to go until you choose to logout using the command in the Premium menu above. Any issues, please let me know! Over the years I’ve had various mixed feelings about iStock. It has always been harder than most sites...
I’m not sure how long I can keep this up, but ideas keep popping up for what would make a new concept for a stock photo. First, don’t forget to choose a few of your coronavirus images (if you made any) and add the extra word Covid-19 into the keywords and perhaps description. This new official name may be searched for, and not as many people will bother to do this. As always, that extra piece of work can make...
At long last I can add a new post to this website! And the lucky post is my review of earnings in January. It turned out to be a reasonable month in the end – most of the month seemed to be slow and behind what I would have expected, but there was a burst of activity towards the end that helped my results. The month ended with earnings from photos and videos combined of $2889. Not too bad at...
