Where have I been?

I’ve been very slow in posting new information in the past couple of months – but there has been a reason! I was lucky enough to go on a cruise around Australia and New Zealand in late November/December and then a trip to Hawaii in January. As a result, I have thousands of images to process – some of which were completed and uploaded, but the majority are still being worked on. I’m now back at home again and so will keep up the focus on getting these new images online and also increase the number of posts on my blog.

So, what’s new? I sold another print on Fine Art America in January for a profit of around $120. The print was the same one that sold in December – the moon over Washington DC:

Moon over Washington DC

It certainly makes me wonder if getting a sale on that site helps bring the attention of buyers (or the site search engine) to that image again. I notice that quite a number of people always comment on a new sale – perhaps there is some good SEO associated with that as well? I haven’t made good on my promise to upload more images to that site, but as soon as I have sorted out my various holiday snaps I will definitely get some online.

Now on to earnings. January was a very slow month at the start – the first week went by with very few sales. Later weeks picked up a bit, and my overall sales improved. I have around 4500 – 5000 images on most sites now. SS was well below its best at $896. iStock a bit low at $293 and then 123RF did OK with $115. As mentioned Fine Art America had another nice sale in Jan to net me $121. I also sold $93 (net) on Alamy. So, altogether, I came in at $2076 compared to $2101 in December.

My own stock site – Backyard Stock Photos – finally took off at the end of the month – someone from the US congress (House) bought four pictures of Washington. Hope they will remember me for future shots! Only small ones at $3 each, but a start! I wrote about setting up your own stock site back in November.

I’m thinking of moving my personal portfolio away from Smugmug onto a new site on my hosting provider. I haven’t decided yet which package to use – probably a WordPress theme – but I’ll let you know what I decide.