I’m back with my second-ever brutally honest monthly report, this time for the month of March 2019. Click here to see how I did in February, as well as which agencies I upload to.
Month-end overview
Overall, it’s been a good month in terms of number of total downloads and about average in terms of $. Still a day left (Sunday), but I don’t expect many sales on Sundays…
*No data for month available
– Robert Harding earnings taken from average from last Quarterly report
Lowlights of the month
- Starting off with the bad news, I only managed a $17 HD clip sale at SS at London Heathrow’s Terminal 3 for the whole month, which is hugely disappointing considering I’m uploading dozens of 4K clips every month. Last I checked I had over 600 clips at SS, Pond5 and Storyblocks. Here’s the clip that sold:
- Dry spell on Piss on Demand continues, both at Photo4Me and FAA. In fact, my yearly subscription worth $30 expired and I haven’t worked up the motivation to renew….not sure if I will (it’s reverted back to the max of 20 images on the free package)
- Wemark, Picfair, Canva, Colourbox, SignElements and Storyblocks are dead to me. I expect nothing from them going forward but will still keep uploading since it’s no extra effort.
- Adobe Stock came in at a relatively disappointing $45 on 60 downloads. Total port = 3200 images
Highlights of the month
- Best-month-ever at Shutterstock with 564 downloads, which gives a return per download of 65 cents. Total port = 9352 images
- Best-month-ever at Istock with 288 downloads, which gives me a return per download of 50 cents. Total port = 5,362 images
- Decent overall month at Alamy with 9 downloads for total of $364 gross.
Most Poker images went to Zuma Press
As mentioned in my last report, one of the reasons for visting Rio was to both participate and photograph the PartyMillions Live poker tournament. No luck on cashing in the tournament but very happy with the pics I managed to capture. Hope to receive a report soon from Zuma Press on licenses – here’s a sample of my uploads:
Can’t just rely on stock sales…trying to get myself some poker work!
Pushing for 4K sales
I’m really slowing down my microstock uploads to focus on higher-earning / lower-volume sales as both 4K clips and book covers at Arcangel. I’ve been pushing my Panasonic Lumix to its limit and quite impressed with its capabilities. Happy to show you some of my timelapse clips I’ve uploaded from my recent trip to Rio (always helps to get a high perspective view):
Don’t forget that I take advantage to pull stills out of timelapses, as per this tutorial.
Capturing the reality of the 3rd world
It’s not all pretty post-card scenes though as Rio has serious social problems, highlighted by this short clip I captured and available for license at Pond5, perhaps to be used in a documentary about social inequality. The expressions on the passers-by are what makes this clip most dynamic from an anthropological pov – notice how some are completely indifferent to the suffering of this destitute young man:
Praying for book cover sales at Arcangel
I’m literally and perhaps blasphemously praying for a stronger than average April. Here’s some of my latest book covers over at book-cover-land, Arcangel.
Not much more to report, unfortunately
It’s been steady and quiet…wish there was more to report – until next month, where at the very least I’ll have more than one clip sale – speak soon!
I’ll be adding more metrics to the reports in the coming months, such as number of images per agency / downloads, as well as average downloads per agency (I suspect that value per downloads is falling year-on-year).
This should help to see more clearly which agencies are performing better/worse and make intelligent decisions using the available info. Stay tuned!
Alexandre Rotenberg's Brutally Honest Guide to Stock Photography & Footage 
Leave a reply to victor Cancel reply