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...
I’ve created calendars in the past with reasonable success, but I think I made the mistake of identifying the year for the calendar on a specific cover page which means that I had to update the calendar each year to make it saleable again. Of course, I didn’t bother! This time I have used my best pictures of Kauai in Hawaii and made a front cover that is suitable for any year and put it for sale on Zazzle in...
I noticed an email from Fine Art America announcing that our unique portfolio pages have been given an updated look. Sure enough, when I checked it out, you can update your site to the new design and customize many pieces of it. I’ve never really publicized this site, but I like the new look of it and I’ll see if I can spread the URL around! If you have a Fine Art America account, I think it is worth investigating...
One of the mistakes we often make as stock photographers is to think that we know what the buyers want. Of course, we often do, and we see those sort of shots online each day, but a key message is to always be on the lookout for something unusual or different. If you can think of a use case for it, then take it to the best of your ability and get it online! I was reminded of this today...
I gave an hour’s presentation to the Winchester Camera Club last summer and recorded the audio of the presentation. The video I created overlays the audio soundtrack on the presentation slides to give you a solid overview of the stock photography business, my approach to finding subjects, some of my best sellers and my thoughts on how best to make money in this increasingly difficult business. This has been available on subscription for a while, but I decided to make...
I checked my account at Society6 this morning and found another sale. This time a woodblock print of a digital watercolor image of the San Diego skyline. Net profit – $18. Not the high margins that I have set on Fine Art America, but when I think about it, I haven’t sold a print there since January! That reminded me that a number of you have asked if I will write more about my approach to uploading to this site,...
Another month zooms by, and time for the February earnings details. February has always been a pretty consistent month for me and this year is no exception. That sounds good, but of course I have many more images and videos online each year and the ideal performance would be a steady increase. But these days, we take what we can get from stock photography! Total earnings were down a bit from the previous two years, but not by much, and...
