Year in review of Micro stock sales

So last year I had 72 downloads for a whopping $64 on Shutterstock in January.  In January 2019, I've had 4 downloads for a whopping $94.68.  So far, 2019 has been much better.  I hope it continues this way for the rest of the month and rest of the year.  2018 sucked as far as sales.  I sold $1178.76 worth of photography and footage just on Shutterstock alone last year.  I had 741 downloads alone on Shutterstock.  In 2017 I had 1153 downloads for total sales of $1638.17.

In 2018 I had a rough a 28% decrease in dollar value sales and downloads were down roughly 36%.  So I made $460.31 less on Shutterstock last year with 412 less downloads last year.  I increased my portfolio by about 3000 photographs and clips.

In 2017 I was selling on average of $136.51 a month of footage and photography.  In 2018, it dropped to $98.24.  An average loss of $38.28 a month or roughly 28% drop in revenue per month.  This I think is due to me not shooting as much as last year and the increase in competition since Shutterstock now accepts 1 out of 10 photographs rather than 7 out of 10 photographs when I first joined in 2014.

This is just one site that I use.  Pond5 and Storyblocks are two of my other sites.  It's much harder to sell on those two sites as I think they're much smaller stock sites and sales are less frequent.

On Pond5 I had $618.63 worth of sales with 7 sales all year.  On Storyblocks I had 3 sales worth a total of $99.03.  All sales are in U.S dollars so I get a slight conversion bonus when I convert to Canadian dollars which helps.

	2017 Sales	2018 Sales
Shutterstock	1639.17	1178.86
Pond5	587	618.83
Storyblocks	330.1	99.03

	2017 downloads	2018 downloads
Shutterstock	1153	741
Pond5	7	8
Storyblock	10	3

So as you can see, the only place sales and downloads increased is on Pond5.  Basically I only photograph and take footage of wild animals and landscapes.  99% of my portfolio is editorial free.  I don't like photographing people much.  I think for this year I will go to the Ottawa market more often and start photography people more.  Do some more editorial work in black and white and see if that starts selling more.  Thankfully I can be more inconspicuous with the Sony RX100 Mark Vi and its 24-200MM lens since the Sony RX100 Mark VI is an awesome pocket camera.