In these troubled times, it is important to perhaps take a break from feeding the stock machine and see if you can process some of your better images for sale as prints or on other products. I upload my best shots to Fine Art America (always), Photo4Me (sometimes) and Society6 (from time to time). I was reminded of this with another sale earlier this month on Fine Art America – this time a large metal print (36 inches x 24...
I know this is quite early in the implementation of the changes, but after 3 full days of the new pricing when the reporting was being properly displayed, there is enough consistency in my subscription earnings to at least estimate its impact on me, as a Level 5 image contributor. I’ve focused on image earnings partly because I don’t really understand how I will see the changes on video payouts and also my video sales are pretty variable from month...
At a time when we seem to be being driven into the ground by Shutterstock and Getty/iStock are hitting us with 1c downloads of images, we should look towards agencies that are doing this right. I just looked back at my April results for iStock and while the month was good at $460 or so, I had 106 downloads that paid less than 10c. All the way down to one at $0.01. And I had three $0.03 videos! In contrast...
Well, Shutterstock started their new earnings schedule as promised on June 1st. Well, to be honest, they screwed that up and didn’t start until half way through that day and even then didn’t properly report the earnings in the correct areas of the earnings report on the site. And so on day 1, we had regular subscription sales for 38c (for me), the Single and Other earnings representing normal single sales plus a mix of 10c earnings. Later in the...
Another month, another dollar. I think the original was actually a dollar a day, which I guess could be the theme song for Shutterstock these days. But how did I do during another month of lockdown in selling my stock photos and videos. Overall, not too badly although there was the one big sale on Fine Art America for $130 that really made a difference to me this month. If only I could manage to get Fine Art sales every...
I mentioned that I had been submitting more of my images to Yay Images since they seem to be revitalizing themselves under a new leadership. I had seen some $0.05 sales in my account, which seemed to be very different to what they were promising and so I asked their Director of Marketing why that would be. Here is his full response: We have a variety of sales models, as we have recently refreshed the website we have also refreshed...
I think we can all agree that the new Shutterstock earnings schedule has been implemented in almost the worst way possible. Throw it over the wall, make a mistake in the email. Allow a low level forum person to give a few answers to legitimate questions, then say nothing more. Ignoring the way it was done, I’ve been thinking about this some more from Shutterstock’s point of view, which I think is important if you are going to decide how...
We’ve seen all the issues with Shutterstock over the past day or so, and many people are looking for alternatives. Interestingly, I’ve been with Yay Images (was Yay Micro in the past) for many years and over the years I have actually earned $352 with them. It appears that they are under new ownership and I’ve been noticing a lot of improvements as they moved from the old Yay Micro site to the new Yay Images one. My portfolio had...
I’ve got to say, from the start, that I have not been very productive in the past couple of weeks. I had a flurry of activity around the green screen work I did and I composited those shots into various backgrounds, but I have not been very motivated. I’m sure you know what I mean! I have even bought a box of 50 face masks to incorporate into my images, but so far the box is unopened. But what I...
I’m breaking the habit of a lifetime by posting some thoughts on the announcement that Shutterstock made today about their new earnings approach to be adopted in just 5 days time. I normally like to see how these changes are explained and then re-explained before commenting, but it is such a train crash of an announcement that I thought I should comment a little more quickly. First, let me say that in 40 years of senior positions in various companies...
