Selling Stock Photos in April 2020

A full month of sales during the Coronavirus lockdown! So how did I do? Surprisingly well! My earnings were pretty solid all through the month and I didn’t really see as much of a drop at weekends this month:

The first week included Easter, which is obviously a holiday in many parts of the world and that was slow, but after that, things were good for the rest of the month. Overall earnings ended up being $2805. This month is more complicated by the move of Canva towards a subscription model and so we won’t know the full impact of that until those earnings are calculated later in May. Direct sales on Canva were well down and so I think I will shift towards reporting Canva sales in the month after they occur (like with iStock) to avoid having to keep estimating them. So I included an estimate of $115 for Canva this month (compared to $150 last month) and I’ll have something more accurate next month. Canva did promise a doubling of March earnings (I think that was the offer!), so I’m erring on the cautious side!

As you can see from the graph, April 2020 was well below 2019 and 2018 and shows that although this felt like a good month, it is also showing the continued decline in earnings over time. Taking the fact of my continuing uploads into account, it is becoming harder to maintain this income level without some luck and a lot of effort! In fact, the last time my earnings beat the previous year was in November 2019, so I’m not expecting great things this year. Still, $2800 is still a tidy bit of income from photography.

Each of my agencies played their part this month. Shutterstock was on top as usual with $850, and Adobe next with $624. iStock was a respectable $462. The other sites continued to play their part with Deposit Photos showing promise with $121 this past month. Creative Market did exceptionally well (compared to the average there) with sales of $81 compared to my normal $20 – $40. The sales were normal images – landscapes, a saving money concept, a social security card – very little that was directly related to the virus.

I continued to develop and upload images this month and added about 120 or so, to give me these totals per agency:

Finally, in the statistics area, Videos didn’t do great in the month. The total was $150 and the sales were a normal mix of cruise ship, gold illustration, opioids and this one that I made a few years ago that probably fits the new normal:

I can’t stress enough the importance of taking and uploading normal activities, especially the “new normal” ones. There is a big demand out there for images and videos that represent the way things are now.

I had six image sales over $10 with this one being the best at $46 on Shutterstock:

As I am sure you know by now, this has been the runaway success story of the past 6 weeks, with total earnings of $613. The rest of my images created in the past 6 weeks have earned a total of just over $1000 (and the iStock earnings still to come) which certainly disproves the notion that you can’t start now and get some earnings in stock photography. I hope you have been following my advice and getting your own images online to illustrate what we have been going through. Many of my recent ones have been composites using images I already have, and recent successes just in April have included about $100 in sales from images illustrating the stimulus payments in the US such as this one (that will probably keep selling!)

This was easy to create (if you keep some US dollars at home) with a home made check from the IRS website in close-up. For some reason, these close macro style shots seem to be a preferred type to illustrate news articles, so give the buyers what they want. I do also create images to illustrate current conspiracy theories as well. I have a few on the Qanon group in the USA (you don’t want to know!) and also have had sales on the 5G wireless networks causing the virus which I illustrated like this:

I do these partly because it is fun to create something from old images and I do get sales (unfortunately!)

It wasn’t all virus related sales in the month though. This cute baby rabbit sold on Shutterstock for $30. I took it a long time ago on a hike through a forest and the rabbit just sat by the path as I photographed it. Nice!

I’m now working on images to illustrate what might happen in the future – with immunity certificates or passports.

Again, all made at home with a pretend certificate and an older image of a hand holding a passport and a map out of focus. Not a big seller yet, but at least it is there in the searches ready to come to the fore.

I’ll close by wishing you all the best and hopefully many more years of creating stock photos in front of you! I realized today that I started this blog 11 years ago this month when I reported earnings of $250 a month (the good old days…). I’m always interested in hearing how you are getting on and any success stories you are willing to share, so use the contact page, or the comments below to update me!