Making money from Photography – April 2024

It definitely seems to be getting harder to make money from stock photography these days, especially on Shutterstock. Overall, the month was not too bad, to be honest, with total income of $2798, which is quite an increase from March’s total of $2436. Here is my usual historic chart of total earnings:

And of course, some readers will want to know the size of the portfolio. I did add more images in April from my trip into Ohio to photograph the solar eclipse. As well as the sun, I took some stock photos in both Columbus Ohio, and the small college town of Delaware and I’m pleased to see that a few of those have already sold.

I usually post this graph next. As you know, I have been trying to expand my efforts in selling images beyond stock agencies to the Print on Demand sites such as Fine Art America and Pictorem (referral link). I’ve also created an Etsy shop to sell paper and metal/canvas prints but having put much effort into publicizing it yet. So, this next graph shows how the stock earnings have been evolving when my fine art prints are taken out from the totals.

What was pleasing to see this month is that a long decline in stock earnings was stopped for the second time in three months. Not enough to show a trend, but much better than the constant decline I had been seeing over the past year.

Stock Agency Performance

As usual these days, Adobe Stock was head and shoulders above the rest with total earnings of $806. Not the best ever (I got $869 in January), but still pretty good. SS had been terrible through the month and I thought I was heading for a pretty poor result, but one sale of a video for $120 on the 26th of April made a big difference but even so, I ended the month with $484 on SS. How nice it was when SS usually came up with $600 reliably (just last year!). iStock was next with $394 after the disastrous $174 in March. I still cannot believe their explanation about refunds to one customer – makes no sense to me, but what can you do?

Then we have Canva with $181 and Alamy with $130, but Pond5 came from nowhere to actually exceed that with sales of $136! Last month, Pond5 was $19 and the month before $16! However, $94 of that total was a payment for use of my videos and photos in AI training. Then we are down in the weeds.

Best-selling photos and videos

I always think that some higher priced sales is the difference between a good month and a bad one, especially on SS, and this month was no exception. In April, I had just 9 assets that sold for more than $10 for a total of $270. And one of them was the $120 video sold on SS. A year ago, that was $400 for 17 assets. I ought to try to work out some analysis of this, but my guess is that total earnings are falling behind simply because either buyers are not paying for these higher priced licenses, or the agencies are continuing to reduce prices to attract buyers such that more are falling under that $10 cutoff that I use.

The highest sale was, of course, that $120 video taken from my hotel balcony in Dubai last April. Dubai has not been a great seller for me – just $290 in the past year and this includes this $120 sale. Much better has been the trip down the Mississippi in the USA with sales in the past six months of $406. $90 of my earnings in April came from that trip.

The next highest were a couple of editorial shots from Baton Rouge in Lousiana (from that Mississippi trip) sold on Alamy for $20 each. Adobe Stock had two $20 sales last month. One of a barley mash fermenting in a brewery I visited:

Just goes to show you never know what is going to sell!

The other one was of some beer bottles in a white six pack. Just the thing that AI could do, I guess!

I sold an interesting image taken in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria on SS for $18:

I have sold a print of this to someone who lives on the island, so it has proved to be a useful image in my portfolio.

Fine Art Sales

Total Fine Art Sales in the month turned out to be $423, almost exactly the same as last month. What was interesting was this this month, as last month, Pictorem outsold Fine Art America. I have been promoting Pictorem more, especially after I worked out that Pictorem manufacturing costs were generally lower and they had free shipping. I sold three prints there – two of different scenes from Morgantown and one taken in a garden in North Wales. This latter one turned out to be my neighbor and she had spent the time going through my various galleries looking for images she liked, and she picked this one for a 36×24 inch canvas print.

That’s all for this report. Hoping that the small improvement in stock sales continues through May!