Quick Update

November has been pretty good so far. According to the Yuri Arcurs Projected Monthly Income Calculator, I'm on track to meet my $20.00 goal (if my sales continue through the end of the month, of course).

The front runners for this month have been surprising. iStock has dominated my sales, followed by Fotolia, BigStock, and Dreamstime. Last month, the big site for me was Stockxpert. I have yet to get any sales at SXP this month. So it's interesting how things are flopping back and forth between the agencies.

I am in love with iStock. I have made 4 sales totalling $7.44 (my portfolio only has 10 images). My views seem to be consistent (even though I drastically cut down my keywords) and my commissions have been outstanding - even on subscriptions. Granted, it's a little tough to get images approved through them, but once they're in, they do seem to sell. I hope the trend continues.

Also, I downloaded DeepMeta last week for my iStock uploads. I highly recommend this program to anyone that uploads to IS. As you already know, after uploading your images, you have to go back in so that you can clarify keywords, select categories, etc. DeepMeta allows you to do this for your entire batch of photos at one time so that when you click submit, you're done. You don't have to follow through with the extra steps. They also have great reporting features that allows you to check all of your sales, approval ratios, lightbox additions, etc. And it's free, so that's always a plus :-) One downside, though, is that I can't seem to opt-in to the partner program through DM. I have to go back in and do it through the IS website. Does anyone else have that problem?

Finally, I'd like to voice my disappointment over one of my agencies, CanStock. I hardly get any views and have yet to make a single sale. They seem to approve pretty much all of my submissions, so I wonder if they're just overloaded with images and the buyer can't locate my contributions. Or maybe there are no buyers. I've decided to give them 6 months. If I don't see an increase, I'll probably drop them.

People have often said that if I like iStock, then I will love Shutterstock. My next application is coming up in a few short weeks, so hopefully I'll have some good news to report!

Here are the links to my current portfolios:

iStockPhoto

Fotolia

Dreamstime

BigStockPhoto

Stockxpert

123RF

CanStockPhoto

November Stats So Far

November is off to a great start. I've had 7 sales so far (compared to 11 for the entire month of October) and I've already earned 25% toward my monthly revenue goal. Fotolia is my #1 earner for this month, which is a bit surprising. Following closely behind is BigStockPhoto and Dreamstime. I'm hoping Stockxpert picks up, since they were my #1 agency last month.

I recently submitted a batch of images that includes a little of my Photoshop work, so as soon as they are approved, I will share them.

Finally, I'm waiting on my first batch of iStock images to be approved. And my Shutterstock application is pending, of course.

So far, so good!

Off to a great start!

Already I've sold 4 images this month! My best site is still Dreamstime with 3 sales. The other one came from BigStockPhoto - this was my first sale with them. So here they are:

Dreamstime:
Cowboy Hat (sold 2 times)
Ace Up The Sleeve

BigStockPhoto:
Cowboy Hat (slightly different than the above image)

4th Sale on Dreamstime!

Dreamstime is totally exceeding my expectations. With a portfolio of only 17 images, I've managed to sell 4 this month. Since this is my first full month in microstock, my only goal was to just get a few views. So I've been really lucky! I'm trying to beef up my portfolio a little bit, but I only have about a 50% approval ratio and my newest batch still has 116 hours to go before approval/rejection. But it's worth it!

The image is HERE

The rest of my portfolio can be found HERE

New Sale on Dreamstime!

Today I sold a 4 credit image on Dreamstime!


You can see the rest of my Dreamstime portfolio HERE

Sales!!

Much to my surprise, I had a few sales this month. Honestly, I wasn't expecting to get a sale until my portfolio was a bit bigger. But I must say - getting a sale is a HUGE motivator. It means that there are people out there looking at my photos and at least 1 of them spent money to download one!

My first sale was through Fotolia. It's a photo of a prickly pear cactus that was taken while on vacation in Arizona:
The second and third sales came unexpectedly from Dreamstime. These photos were uploaded less than 24 hours before the sales.