I will be the first to admit that I have found Stock Photography less interesting in recent months and have been struggling to identify new trends coming up. As a result, my own uploads have diminished – perhaps 10 images last month! But my ideas for this Premium membership group have been lacking as well, I have thought. As a result, I think it best to close this initiative. If you wish to cancel your regular payment, just go to...
Shall we start with the good news or the bad? Well, the bad, perhaps! This was the lowest month since March 2016, but, having said that, it was quite a step up from last month to end with a total of $2775. Just to put this in perspective though, last March was $3315. There seems to be nothing that can be done about the steady decline in earnings. The overall graph looks like this: What is interesting is how every...
Earlier in March, I wrote about my current strategy for promoting the sale of prints of my work. Basically, I am trying to draw people who are interested in my photography to my blog on BackyardImage which purely talks about the photographs themselves and the background to them. The images do link through to the site where someone could purchase a print, but I am aiming this site at potential buyers, not other photographers. I also want to directly collect...
What, again? Yes, I was invited to speak to a gathering of the Shutterbugs Excursion group via Zoom this week and hopefully educated and entertained the 40 or so people present. The plan was to speak for about 45 minutes, but with the questions and the interesting discussions, this extended to almost 100 minutes! If you really want to learn more about Stock Photography (and selling photo prints), you can find the recording of this session in my YouTube channel,...
It is amazing to me that I have been able to keep this up for more than 2 years now, with one, or occasionally two or more posts every month. If only I had followed all my own ideas – I could have retired! This is a difficult month to forecast new concepts that might catch fire, when the news is full of the invasion of Ukraine. As I have mentioned in the past, only certain hot topics are suitable...
Way back in September last year, I wrote about my experiences in trying, really hard, to use Social Media to boost my sales of prints on Fine Art America in particular. That post also links back to three earlier articles from when I started this effort at the early part of 2021. Now, after more than a year at this effort, has it been worthwhile? I wish I had a clear answer to that question. I did sell more prints...
The shortest month of the year! Does that mean those stock agencies will leave us with a shortfall in our pockets? Unfortunately yes! Monthly Earnings Another interesting month that set a record as the lowest February in terms of stock earnings since February 2013! I know that Alex talked about inflation hitting our payouts in his monthly report, so just think how far I would have to go back to get an inflation adjusted record! February 2022 came in with...
I’ve been busier on new concepts these past few weeks, although there was one that I thought about early on and did nothing about – the online game Wordle. I knew about it, knew that it was becoming something that people were talking about, but never got round to taking a few simple photos of the screen. As it turned out, much discussion in most newspapers and many, many sites around the web. So, an opportunity missed! Increasingly, I think...
Many of us have a portfolio site – perhaps selling prints, direct licensing of stock images, or just where we blog or write articles of interest to our friends and followers. Of course, much happens on Facebook and the like, but with their strong focus on earnings, they are reducing the reach of any posts which are not being promoted via their paid advertizing plans. So, we need to try to build an audience around what we do control –...
A new month, a new year and a new low in terms of earnings from stock photography in January. As the month went on, I knew this was not going to be great, as I just did not seem to break a steady but very slow daily pattern. Of course, the horrible reduction in Shutterstock earning percentage on January 1 did not help at all, although I managed to climb to Level 4 by January 20, which still meant I...
