Sales of stock photos in September 2011
The summer lull has definitely passed, and September turned in the best month to date in terms of earnings. Shutterstock roared ahead with a personal best on that site of $415, beating a previous high of $386 set back in April. The sales of the cat images as enhanced downloads certainly helped – all told I had four enhanced downloads from that site. iStock has also turned into a nice little earner. I have tried to upload 20 images every week (the maximum I’m allowed) and I get at least three quarters accepted, so I am slowly building up my library on that site. This month I made $168 in terms of basic sales – iStock reports sales via their partner sites throughout the next month, and I usually estimate around $30 or so – however, the partner sales in August shot up to $56, so I am hopefully underestimating final sales. Then I had a reasonable month on all the other sites – a sale on Alamy, steady sales on Dreamstime, a couple of videos on Pond5, great signs of life on Zoonar with $68 last month and $46 this month, and, finally, another steady month ($36) from iSignStock, a UK based stock site focusing on the signage industry. I’ll write more about that site in coming weeks. The final tally – $1050 for the month of September!
Growth in sales
Sales per site
Files per site
Growth in files per site
