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February was a better month again and the earnings total beat January with a total of £7.45 ($11.29).
At long last a sale on Canstock. (Actually 4 sales). That's been a long time coming. A.R there is 80%.
A little slow on Dreamstime during Feb. AR now 71.4%
Another sale on GraphicLeftovers and one for Istock (which i tend to get every once and while. Not bad when you consider only 4 images online with Istock.)
I can't, currently, add Vectors (EPS) files to sites like Fotolia and Istock etc due to the fact that Inkscape can't retain blurs and transparencies when saving as EPS. Hopefully that will be resolved in a later release.
First sale on BigStock netted me approx £0.32p. AR still 100%.
Shutterstock downloads a little less than hoped but still an increase at 12D for the month.
Still no sales yet on, Yaymicro, 3DStudio, Picturenation, Alamy, FeaturePics (although plenty of views there) or any of the others.
So, Feb was certainly a best month ever (BME) and i am really hopeful that with some quality submissions and some creative thinking i will push into double figure earnings for March... watch this space.
By the way. I tidied up the chart. Hope it looks more intersting and visually clearer.
I thought i would write a little about the books i have read to expand my understanding of the microstock business. It's not a massive list of reading so don't worry.
Actually my book shelf currently contains 2 books on microstock specifically, a few on photography in general and one on the 3D software 'Blender' Program.
As i do hope to get back into 3D at some point in the future i thought i would add my thoughts on "The Essential Blender" publication also. But first:
Microstock Photography - By Douglas Freer
The title captures your attention in the first instance: "How to make money from your digital images". It starts off by giving a little background on how the microstock industry got started, how it has grown and progressed into what it is today after which you start to get an idea of what it takes, or rather, what mental attitude to take, to be successful at microstock.
There is background info on the top microstock sites out there and how they function (subscriptions/credits etc) and although that part is slightly out of date due to changes in pricing and the like its still helpful to read through especially if you are completely new to microstocking.
Chapter 3 "what sells and what does not" is very useful in that it reminds us that even the greatest landscape photo in the world probably wouldn't sell very well for stock if there wasn't any 'copyspace' to one side of the image for the potential buyer to stick their company logo or text on! There are plenty of full colour images as examples downloaded from, yes you guessed it, istock/shutterstock etc to show what sells and more importantly WHY it sells.
There is a chapter on the technical side of submitting photos to sites: The noise reduction, white balance, checking histograms etc as well as further advice for the home photographer on setting up a modest home lighting studio.
I particularly like chapter 10: Case Studies. In which a number of microstockers give their experiences and their earnings details from 2006 across all the sites they had a portfolio. Certainly that was 2006.. and it's now 2010 but all the same.. interesting reading.
The last chapter is all about copyright, trademarks, model releases etc.
These are by no means all the chapters or a complete list of everything in the book. It's just the parts i recall and remember stuck in my mind when i read it. Of course, i still read it and go back for inspiration when i feel the wheels are turning a little slower than i would like them to.
All in all i found it a good book. Interesting and useful but not patronising or overly detailed with a 'light' writing style that didn't make unrealistic and grandiose promises of massive amounts of money 5 minutes after putting it's principles into practice . I would recommend it to anyone already starting out in microstock. And if you haven't even started uploading your images to DT or SS yet then i would seriously consider reading this book more than once before you even attempt at submitting your images to stock sites. It will save you a lot of rejections!
Well it took 8 weeks for them to review my initial 10 submissions but i am now approved at Stock Photo Pro with a 100 % AR to date.
In fact, i emailed them yesterday to ask when my submissions would be looked at so maybe that did the trick.
Their site still seems rather slow (with Firefox) and i am uploading the rest of my portfolio one image at a time as using the multiple uploader (which they state is configured for Internet Explorer) doesn't work well and the description is replaced by the title. Don't have that problem with single image uploads although haven't tried out a different browser to see if it works better yet.
Anyway, another site to add to the list and i will post again if i get any sales there.
By the way, this months earnings are better than Febs and a surprise sale on Scandinavian Stock Photo as well as a large sale on Canstock. All will be revealed in my earnings report due out beginning of April so watch this space.
I also haven't forgotten about the second book review which i will post up this week.
bye for now, D
Well, March was pretty good and better than Feb.
I had slightly less downloads on Shutterstock than i would have hoped for considering the larger portfolio size in comparison to the previous month but still had the most ever downloads of 13.
I was very surprised to get a large sale on Canstock via fotosearch which netted me $19.80 (aprox £13.25) as well as my first sale at Scandinavian Stock Photo which sold for 3 Euros (my commission being 1 Euro/90p/$1.37).
Sadly no sales at Graphic Leftovers this month or any other site not shown below but i am currently uploading (finally) jpeg illustrations to Fotolia and Istock and getting views there as well as working on more images to get my portfolio to that all important 100 file milestone as quickly as possible.
Had the first sales in the last couple of days at Fotolia and 123RF. Been a long time coming at 123RF.
I do dislike Fotolia's credit system though. It's overly confusing. Why they just can't use pounds or dollars is anyones guess.
Apparently a credit is equal to 75p ($1.15) and now my balance after one sales states 0.216. ugh how unhelpful.
If i am correct then, if that means cents and you round it down, i am about 13.5 pence better off today?! OR is that 0.216 of a CREDIT? Which would mean 21% of 75p = 15.5p? hmmmm either way... what should i buy first though? A motorboat or go straight for the villa in Spain. Decisions, decisions!
The one sale at 123RF gave me 0.36 (a sub sale) so i am 23 pence better off. That clinches it.. looks like I will go for the motorboat after all! ;-)
Not much has happened lately. I have come to a crawl as far as uploads and haven't added anything new to the sites during April as yet.
I think 3D is going to take me longer to master than i had thought and 2D via inkscape is slow and also never really gives me the images that are in my head as i would expect. Lack of experience there i suspect in graphic design perhaps.
More approvals on StockphotoPro although there site is down for maintenance for a few hours at the moment (21st April - 13.20pm GMT). No views last time i looked there tho.
More rejections at iStock but can't complain as the look and feel of their approved images are way off the simple designs i put together. I feel i am going to have to up my game and create nothing less than 'stunning' to get my approval rating looking more healthy there.
This month so far a little slow on sales and i don't see myself beating last months total if things continue at this rate. I am certainly re-thinking my approach and dusting off the Canan camera with a view to getting out there in this lovely sunshine. I just have to motivate myself to get up at 4am to get that perfect shot! ;-)
Well, as expected, April's total wasn't very impressive. Without uploading any new material for the whole of the month i didn't even come close to the previous months figure.
I have spent the time looking closer at the Photomatix program and playing with the camera settings with a view to creating some decent HDR photos. A work in progress.....
