How was it?

For me, a drop of ~20% compared to March '14. Shutterstock accounts for 73% of earnings.

I'm still waiting for PP (and IS subscription!) results... after those, I think the gap will be around -15% compared to last month. But I'll know that in around 3 weeks.

Still, I like the overall trend:

BME!! 

+29% over March - and it is to Stocksy's credit, as Stocksy brought home 75% of my income and my stocksy income rose by 102% compared to March (all regular sales, no ELs)
One has to love an agency who trades its contributors fairly, pays fair commissions, listens to contributors and ALSO brings home the bacon. Go Stocksy, that was one motivating and encouraging month!

Stocksy 75%
SS 11%
DT 7%
123rf 3%
FT 3% WME

iS: 2 good value ELs (rare for me nowadays) made April by far my BMY.
Compared to March 2014: $$ +63%, dls -10%
Compared to April 2013:   $$ +31%, dls -22%
Even without them, April was 20% better than March's non-Getty total.
Strange month, for the first three weeks, I had a higher proporiton of plue and larger size sales after the 21st, sales slipped a bit, but very clearly RPD was way down, (Main and small size files selling more) except yesterday.
Still about 8% down on last year's comparable $$ and RCs.

GI (March): 4 sales, 1 good, 3 poor (down to 90c). The good sale helped March's originally awful total to rise above Jan and Feb.

Alamy: 2 sales, one tiny. Plus I found an unreported sale from 2011, but that will be low value now.

FAA: 1 print sale, so this year's fee is more than paid for (with an earlier print sale). A Scottish subject (thought it would never happen)  to a USian buyer.

One of my images in an Envato bundle paid out in April.  That was enough to push April ahead of March by 7%, and ahead of April 2013 by 45%.  Shutterstock was almost flat: up 1% on March but up 91% on April 2013.  123RF was down 20% from a record March but still well ahead of a year ago. 

SS was 34% of my total for the month, Envato was 25%, 123RF was 22%, Dreamstime, iStock and Deposit were 4% each, CanStock was 2% and nothing else reached 1%.

Quote from: Sean Locke Photography on May 01, 2014, 09:38

... April is never as big as March.

Thanks, I hope that promises for a good May

That was Sean's past experience,  mainly based on iStock.

In my experience, from 2007 - 2014, April has beaten March six times, March has beaten April twice. But that's iS, and has no bearing on any other agency or any other port.

One of the few remaining IS exclusives .... 

Revenues down 42% compared to March, and 33% compared to April 2013.

Worst month for $s in almost 3 years, and for DLs (not that they matter) the worst since March 2008 when I had < 100 files online. 

I don't expect sales will improve. 

GL flatlined with only $1.50, unfortunately.

Yeah, it was pretty quiet last month. I made more today on there than I did all last month. Who says microstock is a volume business? 

SS had another good month for me - up 7% from a strong March and up 23% over April 2013. My RPD there has been steadily climbing and for the first time was over $1 (by one cent!). It has been in the high 80s and low 90s for the last year (versus 44 cents in June 2011 when I returned from independence). My subscription portion of the total was 33.7% (it's been that low once before but is generally a bit higher) - two of the SODs were large and made the difference). My BMEs are always in November, so it's no surprise that April didn't come close to that, but my rolling annual total keeps going up, which is a better direction than the alternative.

DT was lackluster. 11% down on March and 38% down on April 2013. Downloads were about flat with last April - the difference was in how much each download made. It's nice to have level 5 images, but when the volume of subs goes up, it's irrelevant.

123rf wasn't bad - up 33% from March, although down 10% on April 2013 (download numbers were up 15% over April 2013; I think there were some ELs in there). Given that I haven't uploaded there since Jan 2012 (protesting their RC scheme), it's pretty amazing income has held up. I earned 18% more Jan-Apr 2014 than Jan-Apr 2012 (when I had 50% versus 45%). Perhaps I should just start uploading again?

Alamy was a waste of space - no sales. Although sales from the months before finally cleared so I get paid!

PhotoDune did OK - down a bit - 22% - from both March and April 2013. They don't seem to have as clear a pattern as other sites, but perhaps that's because stock images are not really their big thing and their collection is small.

CanStock had a good month because of one Fotosearch download - but when a $15.80 royalty doubles your monthly income from a site, it's pretty sad.

I left Veer at the end of March (over their lack of opt out from a rip off partner program)

GL stock had 4 sales - not dead but barely there.

I have just 109 files at iStock so saying April was down 27% from March means a difference of $1.64 so who cares?

Overall I was 2% down on April 2013, but if I hadn't just dropped Veer (used last April's number) it would have been up 4%. Don't like dropping income, but I disliked Veer's partner arrangements even more and they wouldn't permit an opt out

Mixed month leaning to negative compared to same month last year  .  SS took a >20% drop compared to last year and yet another month when DT again showed decline.  PD showed positive growth - and got a happy surprise from Veer due couple of Els.  123RF was a lost case for me this month - as in many recent months and wondering if I should even continue uploading there much longer.  Maybe its their ranking system, its doing nothing for me.. Small though positive contributions from Canstock and newer site like Pond5.  Other sites were about average. Alamy zilch.  Bigstock struggling sales and have stopped uploading there since last year.  Have also pulled away from partner sales option on a number of sites.

Is there a decision that Symbio users don't report symbio sales here?
Or ...?

Is there a decision that Symbio users don't report symbio sales here?
Or ...?

March was BME with 2 sales, and I had one sale in April for 2.25. I didnt think it was worth reporting. I am not excited about it and sales slowed down, I only had 3 sales this year, compared to 2-3 sales every month last year (starting July 2013)

I expected a slower month and overall April was 14% down on March. The biggest disappointment was SS which had nearly the exact number of sales as the month before but 57% less royalties. I didn�t get any of the higher 28/80 dollar etc...licenses and only sold one video. But with a solid month on pond5, an extended license on 123rf and more sales on dreamstime the result was a normal month.

Spreading the risk over several agencies really works very well.

Is there a decision that Symbio users don't report symbio sales here?
Or ...?

It was my BME, with several sales. Nowhere near iS or SS, but better than DT. My sales seem to be getting better each month.