Earnings from photography May 2019

Another month passes by and this one was a bit “blah…” For some reason, the last week of the month (ignoring Memorial Day in the USA) was very slow, which hit the earnings overall and so I ended up with a total of $2755 for the month. By the way, it was very nice to see that Alex, over on the Brutally Honest website, managed to beat the $1000 threshold this month – well done, Alex!

As you can see, May has traditionally not been a great month (the start of the summer slump) although looking at the chart above it does seem to be a bit higher than I normally see. I was not very productive at adding files in the month as I was away for over 2 weeks in Europe. I have enough images and videos now to keep me very busy during June so I should see an increase in files online next month.

So what were the highlights and low lights this month? Adobe was a disappointment for the first time in quite a few months (OK, since January!). March was $635, April $453, May $367… Still, it is one of my favorite agencies in terms of how new images get picked up and start to sell, and so no complaints from me. iStock followed a similar trend with $653 in March, $453 in April and $399 this month. Note, these are the months I get the payout, not the month the images actually sell. Shutterstock was fine with $856 and EyeEM (mainly sales on Getty although I did get one from the site itself) had a total of $197. Canva maintained its steady drop because of all the deals they seem to be doing that are having the effect of reducing contributor income and ended up with $95. A far cry from the $295 in May 2018. One brighter part of the picture came from video sales – a total of just over $400 in the month.

$289 of this came from Shutterstock with a lot coming from two sales:

A deceptively simple shot of a wasted Brexit vote that sold for $97.50, presumably as a 4K download, and one of rough seas off the front of a cruise ship from my trip to China last year. This one sold for $53.70.

I also had sales of changing an air conditioning filter and a pan of the terracotta warriors in China from Shutterstock as well. Adobe gave me a sale of the wake of a ship taken from the back of a cruise liner as well this month. Every time I look at my sales I tell myself I must take more videos on my trips, but I rarely do! I’m a photographer at heart and find it difficult to shift my mindset towards thinking of what would make a good video! However, I’ll keep thinking about it and keep reporting here that I have missed my target once again! Just to reinforce this message, I had just 5 images that earned more than $10 in May (at least in the agencies that Microstockr Pro tracks). Two of these were from Alamy with net earnings of $35 and $39. Now that isn’t a good message to leave you with! But I need to get on with my keywording, so that will have to do for my May report!