Welcome to this scorching August 2023 Brutally Honest Report, where as usual I’ll discuss my happenings, industry insights and of course earnings for the month. Let’s get started!
Before we proceed to the earnings, I’ll discuss some monthly highlights.
August 2023 Highlights
Last but not least, a usefully detailed post over at Xpiks:
Submitting to a photography competition at reFocus!
It’s been many years since I’ve submitted any of my images to photography competitions. In fact, it was 2017 when I was shortlisted as Travel Photographer of the Year with this entry.
I was approached directly by reFocus Awards who encouraged me to submit a black & white image to their contest. I don’t really do much monochrome being in sunny Portugal and all but after digging through my archives I shortlisted this top-down shot of stormy seas (which is also at AC).
Back to freelance writing
I’m keen to get back to more regular paid-gig freelance writing – see blog post “Combining Travel Photography with Travel Writing“.
I’ve reached out to a few photography publications with pitches for ideas and wanting to hear back. If you’re an editor at a publication and looking for some interesting photo/video stories, please get in touch! In the meantime, thanks Chat GPT for the suggestions of who to pitch!
Without further ado, onto my detailed earnings for the month. Let’s keep in mind that August is usually a quiet lazy month so went into it not expecting any huge results.
Detailed Earnings Breakdown
Image Earnings (US$)
| Agency | Number of Images in port (images added Aug) | Net Revenue for Aug | Avg Return Per Download |
| Alamy | 15,508 (103) | 231 | 7 |
| Arcangel (RM-exclusive) | 3,026 (222) | 0** | 0 |
| Adobe Stock | 4,371 (13) | 80 | 0.81 |
| DepositPhotos | 8,708 (120) | 18 | 0.25 |
| Dreamstime | 8,671 (77) | 10 | 0.23 |
| Freekpik | 925 (0) | 6 | 0.07 |
| Fine Art America | 373 (0) | 0 | 0 |
| iStock (July 2023) | 8,561 (56) | 95 | 0.55 |
| Robert Harding (Q2 2023 monthly average) – exclusive | 465 (1) | Disgusting* | Disgusting* |
| Shutterstock Editorial | 947 (16) | 0 | 0 |
| Shutterstock | 11,853 (70) | 82 | 0.32 |
| Photo4Me | 389 (0) | 0 | 0 |
| SignElements | 1,400 (2) | 2 | N/A |
| Vecteezy | 575 (106) | 1 | N/A |
| Wirestock | 1,960 (0) | 8 | N/A |
| Total | 533 |
Clip Earnings
| Agency | Number of clips in port (added Aug) | Net Revenue for Aug | Avg Return Per Download |
| Adobe Stock | 954 (19) | 6 | 6 |
| Pond5 | 2,351 (40) | 44 | 17 |
| iStock (July 2023) | 748 (35) | 19 | 5 |
| Shutterstock | 1,752 (35) | 30 | 6 |
| Total | 99 |
Net Total: $632
For August this is pretty good. Let’s now break down for the individual agencies.
*Robert Harding
So I’ve just received the Q2 2023 earnings report from Robert Harding and I was shocked, not in a positive way.
If you’ve been following me for a while you’ll know that for the past 10 months or so I’ve sending RH some of my best aerial works, mainly panoramas. These are premium since the angles are obviously unique. I’ve gone down this avenue since RH have connections to printing businesses and this type of work makes sense to go on there instead of micros. Here are my latest on there…
I was looking forward to the quarterly report – here it is….
So, yea it’s $5 a month for premium content, even the turdiest microstock minnow produces better results . They consider themselves a “premium agency” and reject most submissions, so to get this in return for all the effort is insulting. Perhaps 10 months isn’t long enough as they keep the images exclusive in the first 6 months, dunno.
Nostalgic for the good old days
You may call me crazy for insisting with them but once upon a time they really delivered large sales, mainly via Getty.
What do do? I honest know…I’ll stop uploading for them I see anything resembling a “decent return”. Next quarterly report will be out in November…
Shutterstock
Super slow month at a combined $111 – one of my worst months since January (which is also a terrible month). Nevertheless, I’m happy that one of my drone clips sold of an orbit shot of a stand-up paddle yoga class in July.
Rampant thievery at Shutterstock
It’s been over three years since I led a “wackamole” campaign to get rid of copyright thieves at Shutterstock and I’m sad to report that the problem is being almost completely neglected by the SS administrators. Take for instance the image below of an elephant in a forest. How the hell do SS not do anything about it when it’s in 33 different accounts (see for yourself as I’ve inserted a link)! Going into each of those accounts just leads you down a rabbit hole or more thieves…
UPDATE: SS has taken action and shut down these accounts above!
I just report what I see and most of the thieves come from south Asia, notably India, Pakistan, Bangladesh. If you’re part of the Shutterstock Contributor Facebook Group you’ll depressingly everyday see thieves shamelessly posting their stolen images/ports on there!
Anyway, I’m just reporting what I see but I don’t really care since SS don’t care.
Alamy
Onto happier news, I love Alamy again this month as they produced a fantastic month at $232 net from a whopping 32 sales! The average net download price wasn’t too bad either at $7/each.
Almost half of the earnings came from 5 images of Belmonte (you can see below $20/net each), a small town in north-eastern Portugal with a strong Jewish influence. I published a popular guest-post at MystockPhoto on finding a niche and one of them is finding places with Jewish legacies. So far, this niche has earned me just over $500.
As usual, I chased the usage and turns out the Wall Street Journal purchased a license for an article on the subject. Unfortunately, it’s behind a paywall.
Thank you, Alamy…keep up the great work and don’t even become a microstock agency!
Adobe Stock
Average month at Adobe Stock with no major sales to report (including a tiny clip sale earning me $5.60), although volumes were pretty good at 97 downloads.
Pond5
Two clip sales at Pond5 of content from 4/5 years ago, which is encouraging for my current work to sell in 2028 lol
iStock
Decent month at iStock finally breaking a two-year sluggish spell.
Volumes were good and the highlight was a drone clip from Estoril that earned me $9.80.
Arcangel
Record 222 images accepted Images at Arcangel in August, crossing 3,000 images in my port
No sales to report in August.
Nevertheless, wow, a super strong month at AC and the acceptance trend is on the up and up. As you can see below, what I currently have accepted this month was more than the amount accepted in the whole of 2021 (209)
I’m pretty much submitting roughly the same number of images every month (at least for the past year), the main difference is that many more are getting through. Not keeping track but I would estimate that the acceptance rate is around 35-40%, while a year ago it was around 20-25% and two years ago more like 15% – ouch.
I’ve put together a short reel with 20 of my favourite covers of the month.
What I’ve changed in my workflow to improve my acceptance rate
In order for more to get through (with the obvious intention of later selling – more on this later) I’ve started using a simple yet effective strategy on my workflow, which I recommend for your own work regardless if it’s micros, midstock, macro or footage…or even working with clients.
For the past few weeks I’ve not submitted any of my content on the same day I’ve post-processed them…always the day(s) after. The main reason why is that it’s too easy to overlook silly mistakes when so concentrated on a batch, especially when fatigued.
Only with fresh eyes on the next day (at least) is it possible to look at the images more objectively and correct such mistakes. Writers do this all the time as it lets the “work breathe”. Perhaps I’ll soon be able to get my acceptance rate to about 50% and stay there, although may be tricky with my “street photography book cover style” which produce many hits and misses!
Sweet update
One of my sales is being launched on Sept 1st and there’s even a celebration cake! If there’s something that I never thought I’d see is one of my pics on a cake lol
Need sales, rant alert**
I don’t know what is happening this year with only one sale so far. This time last year I was on a roll with monthly sales from June to December…see the reports here.
At the end of the day I’m running a business here (or at least trying)…and even though it feels nice to receive praise, showcases, likes on social media, etc. if I’m only having sales once in a blue moon then there’s not much point…even if creating book covers has a therapeutic positive effect on my mood.
After all, I can’t pay my bills and travel (especially in this high-inflationary environment) with admiration only. I’m sure you all want me to succeed reporting consistent sales to inspire you should you wish to go down this lane.
Patience is key
As always, I’m speaking my mind and might be even be getting carried away as next month there’s a flurry of sales, but just something that is bothering me as I need to earn (to avoid going back to a boring corporate job). I love Arcangel and grateful for all they’ve done for me and I’m confident things will work out for me and I’ll be a top book cover artist with them (eventually)
I’m still optimistic, these things take time and the fact is that almost half of my currently 3,000 image portfolio is a year old only. Things take longer in the book cover world from acceptance to eventual sale.
On that note you, I must leave you. Hope you had a great month and please comment below.
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About Alex
I’m an eccentric guy, currently based in Lisbon, Portugal, on a quest to visit all corners of the world and capture stock images & footage. 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.
Most recently I’ve gone all in on submitting book cover images to Arcangel Images. Oh and also recently purchased a DJI Mavic 2s drone and taking full advantage and perhaps a Mavic 3 soon.
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
Alexandre Rotenberg's Brutally Honest Guide to Stock Photography & Footage 
Congrats on the good month on Alamy and hope you enjoyed your book cover cake lol.
Good luck with the ReFocus competition!
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Impressive that growning numbers at Arcangel. Sincerely, those last months I’m very frustrating with micro, few satisfactions with they. My eyes are on Arcangel. Iit’s a hard work to be more images in my portfolio!
Nice cake! If it was my first sold image I would be waiting at the door for the moment when the bookstore opens to buy the book!
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3000 images on Archangel looks like quite a large portfolio. And you don’t have monthly sales is a bit worrying. I saw you had some large sales here a few months ago, but they are very inconsistent. It looks like the demand on Archangel is too small compared to the number of uploaded images. Do you know other contributors there that are having monthly sales? How big is their portfolio? Also, are the images from Archangel appearing in Google search, or only in the internal search? If they appear only internal, is hard to get new customers.
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Dave Wall and Abigail Miles, both interviewed on here have regular sales.
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Alamy is technically a shambles with increasing lag for payment and notification of sales with monthly sales now being posted on the last day previously up to a week earlier often the sign of financial difficulty worryingly
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For those that are with Arcangel and have access to all of the weekly briefing challenges, editors choice videos, free tutorials, trends information, guideline videos etc. I would suggest the following:
1. Grab a pen and paper and list down all of the weekly challenges that you see, then compare your uploads to see how many you may have responded to with a good set of uploads, then compare the quality of the uploads to the covers that you see in the market.
2. Watch the editors choice videos and list all of the genres we covered (there are lot) and look at what you have uploaded over the last few months that are similar to the images we talked about. Then, compare the quality to the covers/posters we showed you.
3. Make sure you watch the tips and tricks videos that we put out, my latest one had around 35 points to help you understand the market a little better.
4. Be consistent about researching covers and that will show you what clients are buying. There is no mystery when it comes to what publishers buy all around the world. You just need to look on the book publishing websites / book stores that break down genres, again comparing your work to ensure the quality is equal.
5. Provide work that is highly likely to sell based on everything you see above. The quality must be high as expectations from clients are high, the relevance to their needs is down to you when shooting/editing etc. Colours should be on trend, framing should be consistent and small errors should be eradicated.
That will give you a really good indication of where you’re at as a contributor and what you might need to do to be more effective.
I often see on this blog that people talk about lack of sales or lack of understanding around the market and this is understandable. Not everyone can be a top seller of which there are a good number. But if you’re not selling at all or very very rarely, I would refer you back to all of the information we put out.
The path to consistent sales isn’t easy in a library that holds the most talented contributors in the industry. Your competition is fierce and you are up against professionals who are consistent and have figured out what they need to do be relevant and stay relevant. You’re also up against other libraries.
Clients from all over the world are on our site daily (including weekends) so the buyers are there, the need is there but and it’s a big but, you need to provide the highest quality of work on a consistent basis to achieve the desired result.
Know the market, Know your skill level. Amend appropriately.
If you are submitting work that you think might (possibly) work, you need to do more research. We give our contributors more information than any other library but the responsibility is down to the contributor. We have the attention of the buyers, we promote work through traditional marketing means aswell as bespoke services via Picture research and through our Account Managers and much more. We sell a lot of work around the world and we’ve been doing this for twenty years so we know the market.
Guys, it really does come down to you. We can’t promise that a designer will see your work and want it for their project, we can’t make a designer choose your image over another one they downloaded from us. All we can is provide the best service to our International publishing community and try to give contributors the most transparent information we possibly can to help you produce relevant, high-quality, saleable work.
The consistency of uploads, the quality of your work and the saleability and relevance of your shoots is all down to you.
Guys, it’s always interesting to pop into this blog and read the comments. I hope that over the last few months some of you will have developed a better understanding of how the industry works and what our clients need.
It is very competitive and this market will not be for everyone who reads the blog. It’s a tough old game but get all the components right and it is a much more valuable one than any other library discussed.
Best of luck to you all and take care.
Nash
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Thanks Nash, great tips and encouraging words! Even though of course I would like to see sales it’s something that is completely out of my control…what is within my control is what you’ve mentioned, uploading work that is high-quality and relevant. I’ll keep pushing and am super happy to be part of Arcangel.
3,159 accepted images now and 4,500 by the end of 2024! :))) (also hoping to be eating lots of my book cover cakes haha)
Wish you a nice weekend and thanks for commenting on my blog and supporting us contributors!
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Very valuable information. Thank you so much!
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Great tips as always and nice to see all the info from Arcangel as well. Every time I read your blog, Alex, I think I really ought to try my luck there. I’ve had a few images licensed for book covers over the years but it would be a great challenge to shoot with that in mind. Congrats on the cover – what fun to see it on a cake! I’d guess like most higher end sites, sales are less consistent when you start out but will grow over time – you’ve shot some wonderful work – especially love your drone shots. Best of luck.
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