It is the dream of every stock photographer – host your own images on your own site, set the prices you want for the licenses and cut out the ridiculous percentage that agencies take out of the payment. What could possibly go wrong? Unfortunately, quite a lot! This post is a run through of the history, and the results, of my own efforts in this space. And, of course, my conclusions! I started this venture way, way back in 2013...
A very nice month for earnings. Of course, one of the big reasons was that amazing sale on Society6 which resulted in $333 being added to my earnings balance in July, but the other sites were pretty reasonable as well. Traditionally, July is a pretty slow month for me – my previous highwater mark was $2500 reached in July 2018. Previous years had been in the $2250 range. So July 2019 came in with a very strong $2866. This graph...
EyeEM is an interesting site for photographers with some real negatives, but some positive signs on the earnings. I have been with them since early 2018 and I think I saw my first earnings in April of that year. In 2018 I earned $407 and 2019 so far has been $767 for the month through June. So it has become a steady middle of the road earner – certainly beating many established sites with a much larger portfolio. So that...
After my June report on earnings from Stock Photography was published earlier this week, I worked on my massive spreadsheet to calculate the quarterly results and smooth out some of the monthly variants. The end result isn’t too pleasing, to be honest! The total, $8524 is the lowest since the third quarter of 2017 when I earned $7818. Of course, one quarter may be a blip, but the evidence points to a continued decline in earnings per online file, which...
Another month zooms by (and this was a busy month for my uploads) but there is unfortunately little sign that the industry is improving. In fact, some agencies just collapsed during the month – Canva was earning $200 – $250 a month last year, in June 2019 I earned the tidy sum of $25.90. As you probably know, Canva acquired Pexels and Pixabay, two “free download” image sites and has presumably integrated that supply into their service. As a result,...
I went on a cruise in May between Athens and Venice and over the 14 days we were away, took a total of 3300 images and 26 videos. Ever since I have been working on editing and then keywording/uploading the images (still got to work on the videos…). What surprised me, and hopefully this is a good sign that my skills are improving, is that although the 3300 images included the individual frames of stitched panoramas, and also the multiple...
Sorry for the lack of new posts – I’ve been travelling and have just got back with 3500+ images to handle. Just before I departed, I wrote a new blog post on Dreamstime entitled “Taking Nature Photos that sell!” If you have a Dreamstime account, you will be able to vote if you find it useful. Incidentally, thanks to all who voted for my previous blog entry to their contest about shooting fireworks at events. That contest was pretty strange...
I sometimes enter competitions – partly for the prize money and partly because I tend to be competitive in nature! The Dreamstime Blog competition is a tricky one as judging depends on how many people click “Useful” and that seems to depend on how many people you can persuade to go and do that! Not a great way to judge, but there you are. At the moment, I’m in fourth position with 9 clicks separating me from the leaders! If...
I don’t normally do this (and especially after writing my last post about not wasting money on new camera bodies), but I noticed that there is a sale on the Sony A7Riii and Sony A9 bodies at both B&H and Amazon in the USA. I have the A7Riii and find it to be a great camera. The A9 has some excellent video features. But I’m not here to sell you on the particular bodies – just to let you know...
As a stock photographer you need to be more than a photographer – you need to be a clear-thinking businessman or businesswoman at the same time. In a new blog post on the Dreamstime website I explore the question of what you should buy in the way of new camera equipment. But rather than list equipment that would be nice to have, I wrote instead about how to approach spending money on what will make you more money. After all,...
