Back in the Seventies and Eighties I founded and ran several Fleet Street photo agencies specialising in stock images of celebrities from pop stars to politicians. These were syndicated to the National and International press and Television. These days I am active in the Microstock world and this blog charts my journey as well as, hopefully, providing inspiration and ideas to others. Image buyers should also find this blog useful with links to my portfolios and regular updates on new uploads. Unless otherwise stated all images are my copyright and may not be reproduced or copied. Comments are very welcome but will be reviewed before publication. Enjoy your visit. Regards, David.

Wednesday 3 April 2013

March sales updates:

An excellent month overall in March, with the usual suspects doing well and some surprise sales elsewhere.
Way out in front was Shutterstock producing a BME (without any Enhanced Downloads) of 143 downloads      totalling $100.27 in income. Two big factors here: I had a single download of an archive photo of former Prime Minister Edward Heath paying $13.19 and, virtually every day, multiple On Demand downloads which totalled some $46.44 of my overall sales. Especially pleasing was the wide variety of images downloaded -both editorial and commercial. If there was any sort of theme, certainly the Greek islands of Meganissi and Halki sold especially well.
Dreamstime also had a good month of 19 downloads ($31.92) with their levels system working well with three of those downloads paying over $6 each in commission.
Picturenation bounced up the league in March with two medium resolution sales paying £4.00 (GBP) each in commission. Both sales were 1990s b/w images of British politician Eric Ollerenshaw (now Member of Parliament for Lancaster and Fleetwood).
Istockphoto had another dissapointing month with just 7 downloads ($5.59) plus a further $1.12 from 4 PP sales. Not sure where all their increasing editorial sales vanished to.
123rf produced 12 downloads ($5.26).
Bigstock managed 8 downloads ($3.52) with four of those being $0.38 sub sales.
Fotolia saw four downloads producing 1.70 in credits.
Mostphotos produced one sale of Margaret Thatcher - a sub sale paying Euro 0.22. Of significance here is that was my first ever celebrity image sale on Mostphotos.
Finally, Cutcaster produced my fourth ever sale - a large archive image of  British Airways chief Sir Colin Marshall making $1.84 in commission.
Uploading in March saw my returning to my 2008 images of Croatia - complete with a re-edit on a number of images. It was really interesting, some five years on, to see the improved results I was getting from the images. Pictured are the Church of St.Mark at Makarska and boats in the harbour at Brela. We'll see what April can bring. Regards, David.

2 comments:

Lissandra said...

Congratulations, David! Im glad sales are getting better and better. I started working with footage last week, maybe you should give it a try?! It is a lot of fun, no sales yet, but it has been a week only. More sales and success for you!

David Fowler said...

Thanks Lissandra! March may have been a bit exceptional for me but it would be good if it carried on at anything like that rate.
Good luck with your footage - I'm sure that will be another success for you. I just wouldn't have the time for it at present (though back in the 1990s I had a big shoulder mounted Sony Betamax camera/recorder!).