The September results are in and the big question is whether I managed to maintain my record of beating the earnings in the same month in the previous year? The answer is yes – for the 16th consecutive month I have increased earnings over that same month. I’m not sure how long I can keep this up, but it is a worthwhile goal! To be honest, there is not much that you can do to impact sales in any particular...
This is perhaps a bit of a pretentious title, but what I was thinking about was creating photos and artwork for sale on the Print on Demand sites such as Fine Art America and Photo4Me. Earlier this month I ran out of ideas for new stock shots (yes, it does happen!) so I decided to spend a bit of time looking at my portfolio and adding more images that I thought might look good on a wall as a large...
I promised to split the normal earnings post this month and concentrate on some better earners in this second article. As I was thinking about it, I began to think about what makes for a good stock portfolio. As I cover in my video talk, I see stock photos as falling into three categories – People, Places and Things. I don’t tend to do many People shots even though I think those are probably the most popular images on the...
Yesterday I wrote about my Memorial Plaque from 1918 and how it was unlikely to be covered by copyright. I was basing this on a table on the Cornell University website that says that works published before 1923 in the USA are in the public domain. However, I made a simple but stupid error here – this medal wasn’t published in the USA. It was first used in the UK and so copyright law in that country applies. Copyright in...
After posting my results for August, I had three good questions posted in the comments section: “I have 2 questions could you help to share your thought? – Do you think spreading photos on wide spectrum of agencies is slowing down your sale on Shutter, or it’s just the nature of summertime? – How about your sales on Deposit photo, is this a right vehicle to park your photos?” “From your experience, is it ok to sell an image as...
Another day another dollar as an old American song goes! August may be a slow time of the year with vacations and holidays, but the stock world keeps on turning. I’m going to split the post this month and talk about earnings today and then come back on some of the notable sales – ie those images that earned more than $10, of which there were 14 in the month. As it turned out, August continued my record breaking run...
Looks like this is going to be a good month – at least on the print on demand sites. After my sale of a print of Hanalei Pier in Kauai last week, I received another notification yesterday for a second sale! This one was for a stitched panorama of the town of Avalon on the little island of Catalina off the coast of California. I always liked the image – with a nice contrast between the lights and the sunset...
Jason F recently commented on my Master Class in Stock Photography and added in a series of questions that he would have asked if he had been there! By the way, I screwed up on the “Pay what you want” price – I had intended the minimum price to be $0.49. I’ve fixed it now. But back to the questions. I’ve split them up to allow me to put my thoughts against each one. 1. What are some more examples of reworking...
After a long, long drought, I got an email last night about a new sale on Fine Art America, and what a sale! But before I go onto that, I rethought my plan on charging for the video I created of my Master Class in Stock Photography. It is now “Pay what you want”. I do recognize there is a conflict between me talking about big earnings on the one hand and asking people with much lower earnings to pay...
Earlier this week, I gave a talk to the Winchester Photographic Society on Stock Photography. Originally planned for 40 minutes, the depth of interest as shown by the questions asked throughout the session made it overrun to almost 60 minutes! Through the course of 70 slides, I explain what stock photography is all about, what the legal issues are, in particular with regard to releases and the appropriate marking of images as commercial or editorial, what you can earn, what...
