April Sales Updates:

RAF parachute team The Falcons

A fairly average month for April with the usual dominance of one agency, ticking over from some of the rest and no action at all from a number of sites.

As ever, Shutterstock was way, way out in front of the rest. A strong comeback for On Demand sales made up around half of the total and just a couple of small Single and Other Downloads. No Enhanced Downloads at all in April.

Istock performed well to make second place with 5 credit sales and a very strong 45 sub/partner sales (in fact, a record month for those).

Dreamstime was some way behind in third place with 9 downloads. With a portfolio there approaching 2000 images I would really expect to see a much better performance from Dreamstime - a view that seems to be echoed in the forum there. Their levels system (where images with more downloads move up in price) seems to be working against them -at least in my case - as I rarely see those big sales anymore. Just lots of 35cent sub sales.

Peaceful harbour scene on Halki island

Close behind in fourth place were Bigstock with 10 downloads. As usual mainly sub sales. At least I don't have to do any work for them as all my accepted images on Shutterstock automatically get added there as part of the old Bridge to Bigstock program - I consider myself lucky to have got on that.

Fifth place went to 123rf with 10 downloads. The problems with not getting uploads reviewed seem to have been resolved for now with both commercial and editorial images being looked at within a day or two. Editorial continues to do well here and that might explain where my Dreamstime sales have gone.

One for the art sites, an inverted colour forest

Finally in sixth place were Fotolia with just a single subscription sale. Though I only have around 150 images in my port there I would expect a top ranking agency to be making more regular sales than this. I'm waiting and hoping for an announcement that they will start taking editorial images - seems like a logical move as they are the only large site not to accept editorials.

Uploading in April saw me continuing with my images from the Greek island of Halki including one of small boats moored in the harbour. I also revisited my airshow files for some images of the RAF parachute team The Falcons in action. For something a bit different I experimented with some inverted colour images. These weren't very well received by the main agencies but I'm hoping they might get some interest on the art sites like Redbubble. We'll see. May has been a busy month so far for shooting with more images of our newly opened pier, the Jack In The Green festival and then a last minute trip to Athens for good measure! More in due course. Regards, David.