Greetings from Rio and welcome to the December 2023 Brutally Honest Report, where as usual I’ll be discussing news and earnings for the month.

This will be a relatively quick report as I’m putting together an epic year-end review, which will also go on YouTube, to be launched on the first week of the new year! I skipped the November YT video as was in the middle of the cruise and had a huge backlog, plus issues with the internet speed. Anyway, let’s get started!

Monthly Highlights

The epic transatlantic cruise featured heavily on the blog with two monthly highlights:

• Top 5 Reasons Every Travel Photographer should Consider Booking a Cruise
• Case Study: Will I Recover my Costs from my Recent Transatlantic Cruise?

• Also a super post by Taras Kushnir over at the Xpiks blog – Exploring the best-selling stock photos of all times where I was featured among other great microstockers and useful advice for newbies.

Words of truth here, that it really is a quick (kind of) rich slowly scheme.

Can you make money fast from stock photos

By now it should have been made clear that the answer is NO. There’s a very little hope that you will create a best-seller and it will sustain the income for good 10 years. There was no get-rich-quick scheme, at least for the known contributors. It was the hard, consistent work that paid off. In the end, best-sellers are not what brings the lion share of the profits.

– Taras Kushnir

Speaking of the long-term, let’s discuss some drone sales from the past year.

One year on, how have my drone clips from Brazil performed?

It’s been almost a year since I took my drone up in Brazil for the first time and got some cool shots, so will take this opportunity to discuss how much I’ve earned from the content.

Is $183 over 10 months worth it? Well, it’s been a good start and this type of content should keep on selling for the next few years almost certainly. Perhaps this set of 26 will earn $1k over its lifetime, which is pretty good considering the estimated 20 hours of time it took me to shoot/post-process the set.

Grabbing more aerials in Rio!

I’ve been busy this month flying my drone in this beautiful largely unexplored (stock-wise) tropical country, venturing outside the city of Rio de Janeiro to the high-altitude city of Teresopolis.

The most commercially interesting part of flying my drone in Teresopolis was to capture the main training grounds (with clips as well) of the Brazilian national football team and HQ of the Brazilian football confederation – Granja Comary. The hotel I was staying at was only about 1km away so I could easily get the drone to the training ground.

God’s Finger

Another highlight was to capture the iconic “Dedo de Deus”, which translates to “God’s Finger”. It was certainly challenging since this time of the year produces quite a bit of humidity and cloud cover, but just about managed to capture it one evening with my drone!

This is what it looks like on a clear day (not my shot, unfortunately)…

Childhood memories

Also cool for personal reasons to visit the neighbourhood where my parents owned a vacation home. I have vivid memories from there from when I was around 5-10 years old and haven’t returned for some 30 years.

Let’s now move onto my detailed earnings report.

Detailed Monthly Earnings Breakdown

Image Earnings (US$)

Agency	Number of Images in port (images added Dec)	Net Revenue for Dec	Avg Return Per Download
Alamy	15,863 (200)	52	6.50
Arcangel (RM-exclusive)	3,626 (100)	0	0
Adobe Stock	4,509 (103)	71	0.72
DepositPhotos	8,134 (85)	10	0.69
Dreamstime	9,025 (84)	14	0.55
Freekpik	993 (65)	10	0.07
Fine Art America	373 (0)	0	0
iStock (Nov 2023)	8,808 (141)	115	0.55
MotionArray	92 (87)	3	0
Robert Harding (Q3 2023 monthly average) – RM/RF exclusive	475 (3)	4	0.40
Shutterstock Editorial	955 (0)	0	0
Shutterstock	12,127 (200)	129	0.51
Photo4Me	392 (1)	0	0
Wirestock	3,066 (58)	4	N/A
Total		402

Clip Earnings (US$)

Agency	Number of clips in port (added Dec)	Net Revenue for Dec	Avg Return Per Download
Adobe Stock	1,043 (30)	22	5
Pond5	2,590 (126)	45	45
iStock (Nov 2023)	822 (25)	1	Pathetic
Shutterstock	1,944 (110)	57	6
Total		125

Net Grand Total: $527

Let’s now discuss each major agency in more detail.

Robert Harding

Had a nice chat with Robert Harding’s Content Editor about my concerns at Robert Harding, notably ultra-low commissions. I requested that the specifics of the exchange go public but was politely denied. Nevertheless, I can discuss it generally and the justification for lowering royalties is predictably that it’s an industry-wide issue. I’ve also been advised to increase my port size as 451 apparently isn’t enough. Perhaps 45,100 assets may be sufficient?! I then proceeded to ask what I should produce to ensure more/better sales and the reply was that my best bet is to focus on aerial/drone photos, which I’m already going.

So, I’ve had a bit of a change of heart from last month as I’ve decided that I’ll send them some of those once in a while from my current Brazilian adventure. In fact, they’ve accepted this one into the collection from a day at the beach in Leblon along with two others.

Maybe you get tired or confused with my inconsistencies and change of hearts but it’s a brutally honest blog after all and I don’t hold back my feelings. I make mistakes and regret and have the right to change my mind. Perhaps it’s what you appreciate most about this uncensored/unfiltered brutally honest blog!

Shutterstock

Quite average month at SS this month at a combined $184. Relatively low volumes at 250 downloads but at least there were some better-priced sales, including:

As well as the usual Copacabana NYE clip from 5 years ago.

Also a nice price for a recent drone clip.

Alamy

The last quarter of the year was a dud at Alamy and I was really hoping that 2023 would be a best-ever-year and came just short. This month was poor at only $52 net with 8 downloads.

Some highlights include:

Adobe Stock

Likewise, a quite average month at Adobe Stock at just a combined $93. Some highlights include:

Two sales for a quite recent drone highway shoot.

If you recall I wrote in detail about this shoot, see below.

Detailed Workflow Breakdown on Highway Drone Shoot

Pond5

I had a super nice sale at Pond5 for a very popular clip. In fact, it’s so popular that I decided to raise it’s price by some 20% prior to this sale, so it’s nice to squeeze a little extra. Too bad that I shot this in HD at the time though as I didn’t have a 4K camera.

iStock

A quite decent month at iStock with $115 from photos (although just $1 from videos).

Volumes were good at 146 downloads but no major sales with only one producing above $5 captured in my adopted city of Lisbon, Portugal during the winter (I believe it was 2019).

Arcangel

No sales to report this month.

After a huge effort particularly towards the second half of the year, December was a relaxing month in terms of Arcangel uploads and a well-deserve the rest! Nevertheless, a good month with 100 accepted which is still fantastic for a “slow shoot month”.

No highlights of accepted this month as I’m putting together a selection of my 30 fav for the whole year in my year-end report.

Nevertheless, the cherry on the top was featured on a client showcase video, along with other great book cover artists!

Happy New Year!

That’s it for this report and Happy New Year! Stay tuned for the year-end report soon!

Now, I’m off to the beach on Christmas day!

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About Alex

I’m an eccentric guy, currently based in Lisbon, Portugal and currently spending “the winter months” in Brazil, 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 flying a DJI Mavic 2s drone regularly, which I’m likely upgrading to an Air3 in 2024.

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