Welcome to the December 2021 detailed monthly report during these increasingly dystopian times. Anyway, let’s try to be optimistic.

This will be a quick post since I’ve published a more comprehensive year-end review packed with stats and goals for the new year for your viewing pleasure. Let’s get started!

December Highlights

The Brutally Honest Guy had a relatively quiet month and highlights include just one blog post, albeit a very useful one:

• Comparing average earnings for 20 cities

Recap of previous Earnings Reports

If you’re interested to see how I did in my November 2021 earnings,. In fact, you can see all my earnings going as far back to February 2019!

Golden Turd Nomination – November 2021

For the third month in a row, congrats to Shutterstock for “winning” the coveted Golden Turd of the Month Award, as voted by you, my dear public. Adobe Stock was voted a distant second…interesting:

No Turd of the Month award for December but better yet, you’ll soon be able to nominate the MEGA-Golden Turd of the YEAR Agency at the year-end report.

61 Accepted Images in Arcangel in December!

No sales to report in December but as mentioned many times before this is a long-term game and I’m in not in a huge hurry. Rather to keep focusing on uploading quality content.

Happy to report the following 61 images accepted this month (just 2 shy of a record):

Detailed Earnings

As always, starting first with stills:

Agency	Number of Images in port	Net Revenue for Dec (US$)	Avg Return Per Download (US$)
123RF (REMOVED MY PORT)	0	0	0
Alamy	12,994	33	2.06
Arcangel (RM-exclusive)	1,129 (61)	0	0
Adobe Stock	3,554	55	1.20
Bigstock (INSTRUCTED TO REMOVE MY PORT)	0	0	0
Creative Market	1,524	3	3
DepositPhotos	6,656	14	0.38
Dreamstime	6,898	5	0.42
EyeEm	281 (Partner Program)	0	0
Fine Art America	690	0	0
iStock (November)	7,008	72	0.50
Robert Harding (Q3 2021 monthly average) – exclusive	385	20	2
Shutterstock Editorial (formally REX Features)	857	0	0
Shutterstock	10,618	117	0.58
Pond5	1,759	0	0
Picfair (REMOVED MY PORT)	0	0	0
Photo4Me	336	14	14
SignElements	1,215	7	N/A
Wirestock	1,577	4	0.60
Total		310

Moving swiftly onto clips…

Agency	Number of clips in port (added Dec)	Net Revenue for Dec (US$)	Avg Return Per Download (US$)
Adobe Stock	395 (0)	92	31
Dreamstime	528	19	19
Pond5	1,528 (0)	0	0
iStock	202 (5)	9	9
Shutterstock	1,162 (4)	49	10
Wirestock	49 (2)	0	0
Total		169

Totals: $480 in December vs $647 in November

Now, as usual, lets break it down with results for the major agencies…

Alamy: Another Poor month

Once again, unpredictable Alamy was predictably underwhelming in December (seems to be a trend) with only $33 net on 16 relatively small downloads, including many that were for only 4cents?!

Apparently you can opt out of these altogether by clicking on the “Novel Use” and disabling:

There’s a thread on the subject on the MSG Forum.

One only “large” sale

Only one significant sale to speak of earning me just over $21 for a model kitchen at a design show in Milan.

Adobe Stock: Strong month for clips, at least

After a few disappointing months at Adobe Stock, December was pretty decent mainly in terms of clips with three decently sized clips earning me $92, including one of my fat belly induced from years of corporate-slavehood! The rest were of regular sellers, especially this time of the year, of fireworks at Copacabana Beach in Rio (cancelled this year, again).

iStockPhoto: – continued disappointment…

Another quiet month at iStock with only $81 and again 50cents/download on average for images. Not much to discuss other than two assets.

Has taken just under a year but clips from the huge snowstorm to hit Spain in January 2021 have started to sell.

Shutterstock: Poor/Average new normal month

After a strong start to the month, sales at Shutterstock fizzled towards the mid and end of the month, especially on the image side with a somewhat disappointing $117 on an average of 58cents per download.

Starting with this shot of a very cute ice-cream stand in London, which earned me just over $20 (shot in 2017). These days I would probably clone out the person and logos, change the filters and upload as a book cover.

However, the month was pretty good for clips with the following of quite regular sellers:

Pond5: Where’s the Dancing Bear?!

Dreamstime clip sale!

Last and certainly not least, the leading Microstock agency in 2031 stepped up to the game with an impressive $19 clip sale of lambada dancers in front of the Lapa Aqueduct in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Finally sold after almost 4 years!

Hey, that’s my pic !

Spotted 7 of my pics here used in various publications…

Golden Nugget – December 2021

Until next time…

How did you do in December, please comment below!

About Alex

I’m an eccentric guy, currently based in Madrid, Spain, on a quest to visit all corners of the world and capture stock images & footage, when my current corporate job ends (soon!). I’ve devoted eight years to making it as a travel photographer / videographer and freelance writer. I hope to inspire others by showing an unique insight into a fascinating business model.

I’m proud to have written a book about my adventures which includes tips on making it as a stock travel photographer – Brutally Honest Guide to Microstock Photography