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.
