Earnings from Photography in March 2023
A bit of a delayed report this month as I only got back from my latest photography trip last night – this time, 5 days in Dubai hoping to capture some of the changing sights in that modern city.
It is obviously a bit of a crap shoot as to whether the sales will recoup the costs, but I had a good time seeing the city, and I hope it will pay for itself over the years. But back to March and my earnings there. Overall, not a bad month, although March is normally one of the better months in the year. So, I just improved on the 2022 figures, but was below the three years prior to that with total earnings of $2856.
As you can see, it is going to be hard to beat the record in April – almost $3500 in April 2022!
I did add a lot of files in February and March this year from my trip to South America and so the growth in files chart looks like this. I include Adobe as they don’t normally take editorial shots (people ones) and also Deposit Photos which take almost everything:
As you can see, I had a spell when I didn’t really add very many new files but now a spurt in 2023. Files per agency looks like this:
Agency Performance
One very clear winner in March – Adobe Stock set a very high new benchmark of $857. Last month was $667 and the highest I ever reached in a normal month was $738. In second place was iStock with $511. I haven’t added new assets there for a long time – ever since Stock Submitter was not able to upload normally to them. There is a workaround and I have used it, but it is pretty complex and I just haven’t got round to doing the special keywords and uploading there. Maybe next month! In third position was our favorite site – Shutterstock with $409. Even though I am now close to Level 5, it still rankles being knocked down to Level 1 each year. Then we have Alamy with $207, Canva with $177, and then we are down in the lower numbers.
Best Sellers in March
I always need to remember to look back into the previous month to find the iStock sellers, and one of those gave me a nice bump in earnings with a sale for $46:
It’s interesting how a simple shot like this keeps selling. I think this was taken after seeing a brief in Image Brief (remember them?) for beer in a plastic cup and I took some water at the same time. This particular shot has earned $156 since.
Alamy took the crown for the highest sale with this one (that has never sold before) for $60:
Then this one sold for $30 on Shutterstock. This was taken in Warrenton, VA and was more of a “fine art” image in my mind. But it sells reasonably well:
However, videos did seem to make quite a difference to the earnings this month with a total of $210. This one sold for $42 on SS to give total earnings of $652:
And this one sold for $28 on Adobe, and has made $544 in total! Just goes to show that you can make money out of a cruise!
This made me wonder how videos have done over the years. I don’t focus on them a lot (although I have a few from South America and other of that Ferris wheel in Dubai to process and upload) but this is the history:
Perhaps I need to do some more!
Fine Art Sales
I’ve been a bit slow on Social Media recently with all the processing and keywording of images, and I think that shows in my sales. However, I do have three sales to report with a total of $225 from those sales. $118 came from Turning Art, who focus on leasing artwork to offices, but they also sold one of my images of Alexandria in Virginia.
I sold this image of Washington DC on Pictorem with a profit of $66:
And also a print of an old map of Morgantown on Fine Art America for $40.
I do need to get back to promoting these things – they don’t often sell if you never bring buyers to your site!
Well, that is all for another month – back to processing and keywording!
Wonderful. What gear do you use for videos? Your cruise video captures look very stable.
I just use my camera, which was the Sony A7R3 in these videos. I always take a tripod with me and so the camera is fixed to the boat and everything looks stable.
Hi Steve
How do you feel about the rise of AI impacts on Stock Photography? I read ‘doom’ on the forums but AI can’t replace natural and actual photos of events or anything else where real-world images are necessary. What are your thoughts?
I think the areas most at risk are simple model shots and product concept shots, bitcoins on fire, things like that. I do have those, but not many, although they do sell. I can’t really see it replacing photos of Morgantown, which sell well for me. So concentrating on reality images of places is probably safe. Also bear in mind that getting the picture you want from a text prompt is not easy and can take time. So why will people bother if there is already a cheap stock photo already there?
Thanks for the update! Are the Dubai photos mostly editorial?
That’s a good question – the city seems to permit signs on every building and so removing them, especially at night when the light from a sign bleeds over the building, is pretty tricky. I want to get them on Adobe, but they still have the Illustrative Editorial only policy, so I’m trying to remove signs when I can, and then see if I can get Adobe to accept some that are not commercial. I may run into copyright rules about the building designs as well, I guess!
Yes that’s what I’m thinking.
Very curious about uploading to iStock through stock submitter. I’ve tried the api key route but even that seems to have stopped working now. Is there still a way?
It’s not easy, but there is a Chrome extension that works with the Microstock Plus website. If you look at agencies when you are in Microstock Plus, and look at iStock, you will see the extension and also a user manual. I need to re-educate myself every time I try to use it!
I’ve been thinking about Turning Art. I believe they have two different programs: Partner and Affiliate. I’ve heard some good and some bad. Any thoughts you’d care to share would be appreciated? Thanks.
I didn’t know about the two programs – it looks like affiliate is more of a hands-off arrangement where you set the price and they somehow advocate for your work? I’m a partner, which means that they set the price and I think they may be more focused on leasing it out to companies. I think it is good, so far, although I think they have most success when they have images of a place where they are stronger in contacting companies to get the work displayed in their offices. I almost only have work that is leased out in Washington DC (in fact they contacted me originally because of my DC work. I think they are strong in NY as well, but I have fewer pieces of work from there. I was recently asked to submit some work from Charlottesville (UVa campus) so it does appear to be driven by where they have potential customers. So it is definitely not an upload everything and see what happens sort of place. I can’t really say if it would work for you.
Thanks. Good info. I’ll think about the possibilities for some of my cityscapes.