Earnings from Stock Photography in September 2012
Back on the normal cycle of publishing my earnings at the start of each month!
September and October tend to be two of the best months of the year, and my September isn’t quite there, but is quite an improvement from August, which had plummeted down to $1425. September has come in at a much more healthy $1632, which is not my best month ever, but is nicely positioned at number 2. It will be a while before I reach the heights of $1761 earned in June.
This month was helped by a very strong performance on Shutterstock. I uploaded about 140 of my Lake District (in England) images and perhaps got 125 or so accepted on the site. Although they were accepted on a Saturday morning, I still got some good sales that weekend, and that has continued during the past week. I also managed two enhanced licenses – not as good as earlier in the year, but at least we are moving back into a better result. Overall, SS ended the month with $686, which was $50 higher than my previous best in May. iStock came in very strongly at the end – although as I write, I am still not sure of the reason for the final few day’s bump in income. I always request payment at the beginning of each month, which resets the “earnings” counter to zero. I can then see, at a glance, my monthly earnings on iStock. This month, it grew to $343 (with around $65 of partner sales) but I cannot find all those downloads in my reports. Still, I’ll go with the cash! So iStock came in with a great month that almost hit the best ever.
Other sites of note: 123RF is great for me, with a third month over $100. Alamy had three smallish sales to come in at $40. My most promising site is one that is “by invite only” – WarmPicture. This site is more of a co-operative of stock photographers with a 50% payout, and I only joined in August. September earned $29, which is more than many commercial sites. So if any image buyers are reading my blog, please check out WarmPicture for your next stock image – the prices are similar to the major sites, but you can feel good that the artists are being treated properly!!
Here are my usual graphs. I think I may still make $18K for the year, but it will be a tight race:
Growth in Earnings
Earnings per site
Earnings for 2012
Images per site
Hi there,
I see you didn’t include smugmug in this list. You have a portfolio there and a link to it on your site though. Does it mean that there are no sales on smugmug for 2012?
I have an account with them as well that’s why I’m interested.
Thank you.
Alexei
Hi Alexei
Good question. There are a couple of places that I don’t include in my stats – Zazzle and Smugmug. For some reason I never get round to looking at Zazzle – although when I checked just now I see that I made $34.09 profit mainly from postcards plus one print in the month of September! Perhaps I need to start including that in my totals. Smugmug is a much more variable animal. I’ve only sold one set of prints in 2012 – the Space Shuttle over Washington shot that earned $34 back in April 2012. Prior to that, I earned $70 in 2011 from a couple of print sales. I also have images on Fine Art America, but have only had one sale there in the summer of a waterfall in West Virginia.
I’m not sure if Smugmug is worth it – especially at the new pro pricing that they introduced this summer. I may shift to something else when my current membership expires – perhaps Photoshelter – and really try to add some more of my better images to the site.
Steve
Steve,
As always, thanks for sharing! My September was also very good, I sold my first traditional licence on Alamy (not royalty free). The image is licensed to be used in a textbook.
Check out my stats: http://dasharosato.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/stock-photography-journey-september-2012/
Thanks!
Dasha