Earnings from Photography in October and November 2024
I missed reporting earnings from Stock photo and Fine art sales last month, but I do have an excuse. We had just left on a cruise on the Nile River in Egypt with a side trip to Jordan. Plenty of photo opportunities, and I came back with 4000+ images, but I’m not very hopeful that it will be great for stock purposes. I’m not sure there is much of a market for such images, but I did have a great time! I wrote about the first part of the vacation on the Nile over on my Fine Art site, Backyard Image.
So, how was October and November? Pretty good, especially with the payment from Pond5 for AI use of photos and videos – I got $274 in October and $283 in November. I count the full amount in my earnings report for the month, but I also amortize the payment over 12 months when I produce my more detailed view of how stock income has been changing over the months and years. You will see the differences below.
Total earnings from Photography
October 2024 ended with a total of $3078 and November was $3154 on a portfolio that is almost 20K images now on some of the agencies. Here is the usual historic graph:
As you can see, the month was good, but not as good as previous November results. Even so, beating the $3000 mark in three consecutive months is not bad at all.
The files per agency generating this income:
Stock photo earnings versus fine art print sales
Each month I separate out the income from stock photo agencies from the various sites where I sell prints. This graph has the big one-off payments for AI use, or the free image buyout from Adobe removed, and split into 12 equal payments over the rest of the year. So, it smooths out those occasional large payouts.
What is interesting about this graph is how the stock earnings seem to have taken a strong positive turn in the early summer after a long period of monthly decline. Too soon to say if that is a new trend, but I will take it! The fine art sales are higher than they have been, even though they are pretty erratic. I have a new Etsy store now, but getting sales there (apart from friends) has been difficult! I’m trying a combination of a sale plus some Etsy ads at the moment. I’ll let you know if anything comes of it.
Finally, here is a graph just focused on the stock earnings to see if there is any correlation to months:
As you can see this shows that the summer is not great for me and the end of the year, start of the new year is equally poor. Of course, the ridiculous restarting of the Shutterstock earnings percentages has a lot to do with the results in January in particular.
Stock Agency Performance
In terms of the agencies, Adobe, of course, was the best earner in both months with $800 and $739. iStock was pretty good with $447 and $478 and Pond5 with its two payouts almost beat Shutterstock which only managed $418 and $388. Alamy was pretty reasonable with $319 and $223. Perhaps at the end of the year I will do an annual assessment of the agencies in 2024.
Fine Art Sales
Overall, I had $393 and $651 in print sales in those two months with Pictorem coming in with a nice $328 in November. This is becoming a steady source of income and I plan to add more images in the coming months to both FAA and Pictorem and probably to my Etsy store. I haven’t found a gallery for local sales here in Texas, although I did get two first places in the annual competition and exhibition in my local camera club (which has over 300 members) and so that may lead to some sales to local residents who see the exhibit.
Overall conclusions
I’m pleased with the way the second half of the year has developed, but it is hard to say that things are improving overall. I was interested to see a new analysis of earnings from Taras over at XPiks. I haven’t fully studied the results (I did put my numbers forward into the survey) but it is interesting to see that quite a percentage of contributors think that things are improving! Time will tell!
