Earnings from Photography in November 2022
Continuing the theme of widening the story beyond stock to include other photography related earnings, I had a good November (even though last week, Thanksgiving week in the USA) was very slow. Almost like 3 extra weekend days that week! However, I can’t complain about the results as I earned $3002 in the month. Not the best November either, in fact, the lowest November since 2016 as this graph shows:
This is the sixth month this year with earnings over $3000, so I can’t complain about this level of earnings in a difficult market for photography.
My portfolio increased in November as I added in more images from Vermont and also fall colors from West Virginia, so this is my current portfolio count:
Stock Agency performance
Adobe Stock didn’t disappoint this month with total earnings of $738, not the highest ever, but pretty close (ignoring the free image buyouts). As usual SS was reasonably good with $582 closely followed by iStock with $497. Then as usual, there is a big drop down to the middling earners, with Alamy at $236 (which included some of those DACS payments for 2022 but also included some deductions for affiliate charges for some higher value sales in the previous month. These were $12 each and I have never seen that before with Alamy. If anyone can fill me in on what those are, please comment below.
Canva continues its month by month decline from the heights of $260 or so, down to $194 this month. And, as usual, I have no idea why, or what sells, or what doesn’t!
The one everyone hates comes in at $102 (Freepik) but then a very nice surprise to see Dreamstime with earnings of $94 this month. Then we are in the weeds.
Fine Art Performance
As you know, I have been putting more effort into uploading images to both Fine Art America and Pictorem. I have 2916 images on FAA and now 1405 on Pictorem. I have also been adding more to RedBubble although I do need to think more about how photos would work on the products that Redbubble sells. I might have to do some images with transparency to make this work better.
I’ve been publicizing my portfolios on social media, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and I found that although I have almost always been including a link to the image in my Pictorem site with its free shipping, all my sales have been from Fine Art America! I wrote about my analysis of this strange result here, but it does suggest that the social media stuff is doing very little and most sales come from a Google search and FAA tends to appear earlier than Pictorem. I’ve also joined Mastodon, a sort of Twitter replacement that is much more relaxed than Twitter. My ID over there is @[email protected].
In November, I sold 11 items on Fine Art America. I have written about them over on BackyardImage, but before you get too excited, 4 of these were mugs and small items. Still, I sold 6 prints and a jigsaw, and my total income from there was $316. I also earned $12 on Society 6 for a couple of items, but nothing much has changed over there.
So, I will definitely continue this adventure and concentrate on getting more work online and continue to link to them so that Google sees them more often!
What images sold for the most money in November?
I had 3 images sold for more than $10 on Getty/iStock in October. One was for $41 and was an image of my old house (the current owner did ask me why he kept seeing it online, so it is a good job a property release for an image applies even if you no longer own the property). I then sold this image of a cellphone tower (taken from the ground) for $41 as well:
The star of the show in November was undoubtedly this image of a cat, which sold for $100 on SS:
Those cats have been good little earners for me!
Then a nice Christmas sherry bottle and glasses image that sold on Adobe for $26.
On the stock video front, I earned $139 in total, led by this opioid video:
There were a couple of $19 sales of a steam train, but the rest were small value sales.
Well, that rounds up November. Hope you had some good sales and I hope we can look forward to the December results. Not one the best months, but we can dream!
Great result as usual Steve. Have you done anything with ai yet?
Thanks! I don’t do anything with AI – it is a bit unclear what you can upload to stock, and although I have seen some good images online on FAA for prints, I sort of feel it is cheating. A bit like those people who get high resolution scans from old artwork and upload those. Yes, they probably sell, but where is the satisfaction?
Great read. I’m still trying to get m+ organized. I can’t get iStock to work. And once I do, don’t they have their own keywords dictionary?
Yes, iStock do have their own controlled keywords and so you do need to assign each of your keywords to one of theirs. It is a real pain, but M+ does help a little, but even that is pretty complex to be honest. I ignore iStock when I first upload new images and then when I feel like a challenge I go back and do some of them!
Thanks for the transparent info, I started contributing to 12 stock sites 6 months ago, and it’s getting confusing with a lot of images, I’m now using https://upstock.guru to upload to all stock sites at once, do you have the same problem?
I hadn’t heard of that site – I have used Stock Submitter for a long time and I’m used to it. I don’t get confused with the uploads. I don’t really check on approval status or anything like that. Just upload and leave them alone.
How do you deal with editorial with Stock Submitter? For Shutterstock, for instance.
In what sense? There is a check box over on the right that makes an image editorial and then when the image is uploaded, the system completes the right check boxes on each of the sites that accepts editorial images.
Thanks, somehow I missed the check box when I looked. It will automatically only upload to sites that accept editorial if I check that box?
Not exactly – it warns you that certain sites don’t take editorials if you try to include them in an upload. So, you need to upload the commercial ones to all, and then select the editorials and upload those to the relevant sites.