Backyard Silver Latest Posts
I joined Snapwire a few years back when it first launched. It was a bit like Image Brief where buyers could define their requirements and photographers would submit images that met that brief. Image Brief offered some pretty good commisions, and, unfortunately I don’t think there were enough buyers willing to pay and they closed down. Snapwire offer much smaller commissions and even with that there are not many requests for specific commissions. As a new contributor to Snapwire, you...
I’m trying, once again, to earn a little from the Dreamstime blog contest. Thanks to your help, I was successful last time with an article on Taking Nature Photos that sell and had $300 credited to my account at Dreamstime. This particular contest was all about color and how to use it in your photos. Being the business person, I immediately thought about how color can be used to make our images more attractive to buyers, rather that just more...
I published my normal report in two bites this month to avoid giving you all indigestion. Earlier this week I published the financial results, this post has more of the “why” rather than the “what”. First thing to note for me is that I had some days with some great sales. Here is my snapshot of daily earnings from Microstockr Pro. This doesn’t track every agency (and iStock, which is tracked, has the results for the month previous so I...
How much can you make from stock photography in 2019? Full results from an experienced photographer and videographer for September
It is the dream of every stock photographer – host your own images on your own site, set the prices you want for the licenses and cut out the ridiculous percentage that agencies take out of the payment. What could possibly go wrong? Unfortunately, quite a lot! This post is a run through of the history, and the results, of my own efforts in this space. And, of course, my conclusions! I started this venture way, way back in 2013...
Another month in the doldrums of summer with earnings to match! Everyone must have been on vacation this past month as my total earnings just managed to creep up to $2424. Although I expect a drop in the summer, this was well below 2018 and 2017 for the same month. To be fair, though, it would be hard to get another massive sale on Society6 similar to the one last month. Incidentally, that big sale cleared without any issues and...
I wrote earlier about my experiences of what sells on EyeEM, and since then I have been thinking of how it could be improved. Of course, some of these things are only developments that EyeEM can make, but if they are not described then nothing is going to happen! EyeEM sells in two main places – one is their own site, although it has been a while since I got some direct sales there. The main source of income for...
A very nice month for earnings. Of course, one of the big reasons was that amazing sale on Society6 which resulted in $333 being added to my earnings balance in July, but the other sites were pretty reasonable as well. Traditionally, July is a pretty slow month for me – my previous highwater mark was $2500 reached in July 2018. Previous years had been in the $2250 range. So July 2019 came in with a very strong $2866. This graph...
I checked my Society6 earnings page last week and was shocked to see a new total of $333.40 in pending earnings!! Last month it was $16.60! So what is happening over there? Sales so far in the month have been: Profit on that sale – $18.00. Then I had two sales of my Chicago city skyline. One on an X-large art print with a profit of $28 and on an small wall tapestry with a profit of $4.50. The next...
Like many of you, I have a large collection of 35mm slides and negative film that I have taken over the years that are currently pretty much invisible. I ditched my slide projectors with the last house move (they were 240V and hadn’t been used in 20 years!) and so all the slides were stored in their boxes for some sort of future viewing! In my early years I took a lot of black and white films and so have...
