Microstock photo results for July

July was a best ever month for me thanks to great sales at shutterstock , istockphoto , StockXpert. The increase at shutterstock was expected as I have uploaded a number of new images there over the past two months and have really felt the benefit of the "new photo" effect. istockphoto was a supprise as it really took of this month for no apparent reason. This has happened before (in March) and wasn't sustained but hopefully it will be this time. All the other sites were a bit disappointing but the season pros were expecting the "normal July slow down" (caused by holidays in the US??) so maybe it was effected by this. August is quite a popular holiday time in Europe but hopefully there wont be an August slowdown as well as I have no Christmas shots to enjoy the Christmas rush which lots of people enjoy.

Sales are creaping back at Fotolia following the relaunch of its site. Sales dropped of considerably but in the second half of July, they were almost back to normal. They are still experiencing issues with there search engine so hopefully they will get this fixed shortly, or even better, the buyers find my photos at sites with a higher commission like StockXpert.

Below are percentages for the month to show how I have been going:

34% shutterstock BEM
12% dreamtime
5% Fotolia
23% istockphoto BEM
3% bigstockphoto
4% 123RF
16% StockXpert BEM
1% Featurepics
2% LuckyOliver

I am off on holiday shortly for a few month so posts will be very intermittent if at all. Hopefully i will get some great shots.

Albumo over 100,000 images

Rumour has it that Albumo is now over 100,000 images and the marketing campaign for buyers is going to start once they have reached 200,000.

This company that has come from nowhere appears to be making all the right moves. They offered a great upload facillity (ftp and iptc). they offer a good commission (50%). they are offering incentives to get photogs in when there is no buyers as yet (incentive of $25 for first 250 images and more incentives for those who make the 100 club - the first 100 to have 1000 images).

Basically Albumo is doing everything right wereas Corbis has done everything wrong with Snapvillage.

In the long term, sales are what matter so it will be interesting to compare these two sites in 6 months, 1 year, etc since they both started at the exactly the same time with differing strategies.