Earnings from Stock Photography

I’ve been pretty quiet for a few weeks – mainly because I went on a long vacation to Australia and New Zealand, cruising on the Celebrity Solstice from Sydney to Melbourne, across to New Zealand and then around the South and North Island – great relaxation and pretty good for photography. I’ll write more about the issues of taking good photos when on a cruise in a future post once I have processed the 3500 images I came back with!

Anyway, back to earnings. The changes to the user agreement at Shutterstock now puts a lot of pressure on contributors not to share details of their earnings on Shutterstock, and I don’t want to fall foul of their legal department – especially when SS is such a good earner for me. So, going forward, I’ll have to be more circumspect on what I earn from each agency.

My last post in October reported $2327 in total earnings for the month, and I’m pleased to say that November exceeded that. At the time of writing, I still don’t know what the Partner Program results will be from iStock (late this month) and so I estimate those based on previous months. Assuming my estimate is correct, then November earnings will end up being just over $2500. My previous best month was in September 2013 with $2553, and so with a good set of iStock results I may break that record. I’ll let you know.

Within the results, SS was great – my Best Month Ever (BME) for them. iStock maintains its great run – with about $131 from the main site, but I’m expecting $250+ from the partners. I’ve continued to upload some of my back catalog to iStock as a result – it is hard work going through in DeepMeta to set the keywords, but it looks as though it could be worthwhile. The other main sites were nothing special, unfortunately – nothing else over $100, but all the $80s and $90s add up over the months. Zoonar is still doing OK for me – I usually get one partner sale for $30 to $50 or more. The last 6 months have been pretty consistent now at those levels. Not sure what I did – perhaps it just takes a very long time to get the images into the other libraries? I had another Fine Art America sale in November – I’ll write a fuller post about my experiences at that site shortly.

We are almost through December as I write – I doubt if this month will be great – too much focus on the holiday! However, we need a break, so I hope you all have a great holiday!