I’m a big proponent of watching for what is in the news and trying to think of what the next big story will be. I use Flipboard for this and I like the way the site comes up with the general stories, but also illustrates them with images that may trigger my creative juices! I curate a stock photography oriented magazine with Alex Rotenberg if you are interested in that. I thought it might be interesting to see how my...
I’m asked whether it is worth having a paid subscription to Fine Art America from time to time. With a free account, you can upload 25 images only. For $30 a year, you can have unlimited images and more analytics tools. I currently have 760 images as I find that I have no real idea of which of my many files will actually sell! So I upload all the ones that I personally like and hope they will get some...
I was asked a question recently through my contact page which essentially asked how I manage what I have in each agency and whether it is RF, RM or exclusive? For those relatively new to the game I wrote a post a few years back about the difference between all these “licensing terms” that might be worth reviewing. So, how do we manage all our images (and videos) without drowning in paperwork?
All good records must come to an end! For the first time in 18 months, the earnings in November were less than those in the same month the previous year! Not bad, just not good enough! Overall, I earned $3073 from photos and videos – but less than the $3177 in November 2017. So at least the pressure is off in future months! This is what the picture looks like: Well above previous Novembers but I was really on a...
I always like to see sales on the Print on Demand sites as it gives me a nice warm feeling that my “art” is appreciated! The money helps as well! So the past couple of weeks have been excellent in terms of new sales on Fine Art America – perhaps the biggest of the sites. The first sale was in late October and was for a 14 x 11 inch print of Cheat Lake in the fall in Morgantown: As...
I’m not saying that this is the route to wealth and success, but having created my digital paintings for the Fine Art sites like Fine Art America and Society6, I started to wonder whether these same images would sell on the normal stock sites. After all, they could certainly be sold by others (via an enhanced or extended license) and so perhaps a painting of a city skyline might make some money? This is the image that I decided to...
A friend recently mentioned that they had more success on Society6 than they have on Fine Art America, and after my last post about getting back into Fine Art, I decided to give it a go! But when I checked out the “popular” works under the category “Art Prints”, I found that many of them were actual works of art – ie paintings (or at least prints of paintings). Not to be deterred, I did what I promised to do...
The September results are in and the big question is whether I managed to maintain my record of beating the earnings in the same month in the previous year? The answer is yes – for the 16th consecutive month I have increased earnings over that same month. I’m not sure how long I can keep this up, but it is a worthwhile goal! To be honest, there is not much that you can do to impact sales in any particular...
This is perhaps a bit of a pretentious title, but what I was thinking about was creating photos and artwork for sale on the Print on Demand sites such as Fine Art America and Photo4Me. Earlier this month I ran out of ideas for new stock shots (yes, it does happen!) so I decided to spend a bit of time looking at my portfolio and adding more images that I thought might look good on a wall as a large...
I promised to split the normal earnings post this month and concentrate on some better earners in this second article. As I was thinking about it, I began to think about what makes for a good stock portfolio. As I cover in my video talk, I see stock photos as falling into three categories – People, Places and Things. I don’t tend to do many People shots even though I think those are probably the most popular images on the...
