Stock Photography Earnings for June 2014

Well a bit of a welcome spike in June 2014 earnings, still nothing to write home about but encouraging. I continue to work on my portfolio as really I dont have a lot of choice. All earnings from other forms of photography have taken a significant dive over the past 12 months. 

Its been an year of ups and downs, starting the financial year with the birth of my third daughter, then battling through the illness and eventual passing of my mother late February 2014. Then from early May have had some Family legal issues regarding access to the oldest two daughters which has taken its toll.

So haven't had as much time as I would have liked to work on my portfolio, I suppose the other issue holding the portfolio back is that I'm not keen on photographing people, particularly models who expect payment.


The sites I have images on are IStockPhoto, Shutterstock, BigStockPhoto, Dreamstime, 123rf, Canstockphoto, Alamy, Depositphotos, Fotolia and Mostphotos.

Unfortunately most of these sites dont provide with me enough Downloads/Royalties to bother reporting on. Hence the reason I now do not upload to 123rf, Canstockphoto, Alamy, Depositphotos and Mostphotos anymore.

The Graph

The above graph includes statistics from IStockPhoto, Shutterstock, BigStockPhoto and Dreamstime from May 2014 onwards, prior to that all sites are included.

I keep these statistics as it shows over time where I'm best to devote my time. Each of these sites have their own worksheets which include trendlines, so over a period of time i can quickly see where each site is trending.

For example Istockphoto is on a reasonable upward trend, Shutterstock is on a significant upward trend, Dreamstime is on an insignificant upward trend and Bigstock is on a downwards trend. Of course this is looking at the royalties only, you could analyze things to death but $$$$'s is really the only thing which counts. Istock and Shutterstock are on significant upwards trends for downloads, Dreamstime and Bigstock are stagnant.

Based on the latest review it appears that Istock and Shutterstock are the sites I should focus my efforts on and only bother uploading to the others if I have time.

After a big gap I have only started uploading to Fotolia again, so they are not included in the current stats but will be in the future.

So dont get sucked in by those ads that all of these sites run that give you the impression its easy to make money from your photos. Bottom line is that its not easy, the rewards are there if you have some patience and really put some concerted effort into what your doing but it will take some time. I'm not there yet! My first goal is to consistently receive a minimum of $1,000 per month from these sites, so I'm only about 5-10% of the way there.