June 2011
Not sure if anyone is really following this or not, but thought I'd go ahead and post an update on my adventure as an independent stock photographer. Since my last update in February, I've joined two new distribution websites -
Veer and
WarmPicture. Veer has been around for awhile and they have a nice offering of products, so I thought I'd try them out to see how well I can do there. WarmPicture is a new site created by another stock photographer who wanted to start a "contributor's collective" where the site is run by the members as a group and commission is 80% of each sale. A great idea - let's hope it gets off the ground!
So, let's take a look at my stats, site by site:
iStockphoto: Number of images online: 1,405. Still my number one site, but monthly income has been dropping steadily since January. It hovered about the same in March and April then plummeted by 50% last month! ugh! what a disaster. iStock seems to be playing around with their "best match" search alogorithm and my portfolio has taken a big hit from that it seems. or maybe I just suck, I don't know. I haven't uploaded much new stuff to iStock lately, but will continue to build there anyhow. I hope the income picks up, that's for sure! What I earned last month (May) was less than I used to earn there in just one week before they changed their commission structure.
Dreamstime: Number of images online: 262. Started a it slow in the beginning of the year, but sales have started to pick up there and I was even able to get my first payout from them last month! (minimum payout is $100, so that tells you abot what I made). I've started adding more photos again the end of last month so hope let's hope the sales keep building there!
Shutterstock: Number of images online: 207. I love this site. although May was slow month there, March and April were awesome and I got one payout already (minimum is $100) for sales through March and will be getting another one for the month of May. They pay monthly. I know a lot of photographers complain about the 25 cents per download for subscription sales, and it seems really low, but it's all about the numbers and volume. Those quarters add up quickly to dollars!
StockFresh: Number of images online: 225. I still really like the ease and look/feel of this site. Sadly I have had zero sales here but I know they are still a new site and even the "most popular" images only have about a dozen downloads so I'm still holding out hope. They haven't really done a major marketing campaign to bring in buyers, as far as I can tell. I hope it picks up in the next few months. I'll keep building my portfolio there in the meantime.
Fotolia: Number of images online: 172. I've made some sales there, not bad for being so new with such a small portfolio, but I have a long way to go before I can get a payout there. It's not the worst earner for me, but let's just say I've not even made $20 there yet.
Alamy: Number of images online: 69. I am not sure about this site. I've had no sales but have very few images online. It's a different way to upload images and not the most user-friendly for contributors. I'll keep trying as I think this could have a good return potential, but unless I can get a decent size portfolio here I may not be seeing much.
Veer: Number of images online: 50. It seems to take forever to get any images approved at Veer. I have heard good things about them so I just joined and made $7 the first month but nothing since. I'm still adding images but it takes about month to get them approved so it may be a long process to see any success here.
WarmPicture: Number of images online: 96. As mentioned above, this is a brand new site. I'm helping to build it (with images) along with other independent photographers so it's got a lot of promise. no sales yet, but it's even newer than StockFresh so I'm not going to complain.
Well that's the rundown where I'm at. I only started uploading more photos to all the sites about mid-May, so there was a few months there where I wasn't uploading at all, so it's no wonder my sales are not up as they should be. If I had more time to work on my photography business/hobby then I think I would be in a better position. But I do have a fulltime job not related to photography so if you're wondering why I haven't uploaded all 1,405 images that I have on iStock onto all these other sites, that is why. The most time consuming part is editing/adding the metadata (keywords, description, title). I had never done that before and just added it after I uploaded directly to the iStock site. I learned my lesson with that, though! once I get the metadata done it's pretty simple to upload to these sites. I may have mentioned that before, so sorry if I repeat. I didn't go back and re-read my old posts.
So, let's see how the summer does for me. My goal is to double my portfolios on each site with the exception of iStock, since it's already got most of my images. I hope to achieve this goal by the end of June or July at the latest. My time and other commitments may hamper that, but I'll give it go anyhow!
