I was happily processing my images from a recent trip to Athens when I came across this one: This was taken in the area between the Plaka district and the Acropolis in a lovely neighborhood called Anafiotika. Tiny paths separate the colorful (although a bit worn) houses and the ancient Acropolis overshadows it all. Something about this image attracted me – not just for stock, but perhaps for wall art as well. But all those cables and shadows of cables...
Sorry for the lack of new posts – I’ve been travelling and have just got back with 3500+ images to handle. Just before I departed, I wrote a new blog post on Dreamstime entitled “Taking Nature Photos that sell!” If you have a Dreamstime account, you will be able to vote if you find it useful. Incidentally, thanks to all who voted for my previous blog entry to their contest about shooting fireworks at events. That contest was pretty strange...
Somewhat delayed, my earnings report for April! But first, a shout out to my good friend Alex, who has been regularly publishing interesting and insightful blog posts at his Brutally Honest Guide to Microstock, and now publishes his earnings each month. Alex has different approaches to me – in particular he is separating out his best images for Robert Harding as exclusive RM as well as uploading specific ones for book covers at Archangel. Interesting to watch how his earnings...
Another month with more sales on Society6! This time, a collection of different products rather than just some wall art (although it is nice to see those sales!). The first sale was actually just that – an art print of the Cherry Blossoms in Washington DC: This one made a profit of $22. Quite a lot less than at FineArtAmerica, but you need to price to match the competition at the place the buyer is searching. I did publish my...
Fame at last…. I’m very honored to be recognized as a featured Videomaker on the Edelkrone blog this week. I’m not sure I would put myself in the same class as some of the other artists profiled in their series – many of whom seem to have serious movie making skills in their background, but it is nice to have a stock photographer highlighted among such luminaries! If you happen to decide to buy any of their equipment (which is...
Late last year I did a lot of research into the pricing that some of the competition used on Fine Art America. That research seemed to suggest that I had been underpricing my work and so I changed all the prices and marked them up, especially for the larger print sizes. The theory was that those large prints were already expensive and so a few more dollars wouldn’t impact the buying decision. Well, that move was followed by what seemed...
I sometimes enter competitions – partly for the prize money and partly because I tend to be competitive in nature! The Dreamstime Blog competition is a tricky one as judging depends on how many people click “Useful” and that seems to depend on how many people you can persuade to go and do that! Not a great way to judge, but there you are. At the moment, I’m in fourth position with 9 clicks separating me from the leaders! If...
I’m becoming more and more impressed with Society6 – I sold two items in March for $24.60. One of them is a digital painting of the skyline of San Diego printed on wood blocks. My profit was $18 on that one: Yes, the site is very manual in terms of how you can upload images and apply them to products, which I have written about before, but with only 32 assets on the site, the earnings have been great. The...
Following on from my previous post about total earnings from stock photography in March, this is the next layer of detail of what worked, and what didn’t. I’ll talk about video first – as I mentioned, this was a great month for video with total sales over $500. In fact, it was actually better than that! Due to the way iStock reports earnings, I always include the money I get from them in the month as the earnings for that...
What a month – $9,650 earned from the sale of stock photos and videos in March 2019! OK – I did give the game away in the title this month…this bit was an April Fools joke (sort of…) Back to earth with a bang, although not that much of one. March did turn out to be a great month for me in both photos and videos with a total of $3663. Easily my best month ever and beating April 2018...
