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Author Topic: Editorial Sports photography experiences including mine and income  (Read 1433 times)

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« on: September 07, 2022, 06:43 »
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Hi all,

I've been a sports photographer for over 15 years.
Seen everything from the Champions league, world cups to formula 1. Currently, i only have around 1.000 images stored on Shutterstock and in the last 5 years earned around 9.000 USD of them.
I'm just curious. What are your experiences with selling these photos on microstock sites? and which are working out for you.

I have some on Dreamstime selling only a few each year so not worth the time, to be honest.
Currently, I'm thinking of uploading a big part of my history on ShutterStock and hopefully others to make some money off my back catalog.


Uncle Pete

  • Great Place by a Great Lake - My Home Port
« Reply #1 on: September 08, 2022, 13:28 »
0
Best site was iStock until Getty ordered them to disable the images from competition. 3,657 of my images were suddenly no longer available for download.

SS most downloads are 10-12 if you feel that's worth the effort. I have most of the motorsports there, over 4,000. You need a case number to upload, which means proof that you have been authorized to shoot the event.

Alamy used to be good and doesn't require proof, because Editorial is News, is Editorial. Since they dropped us down to 20%, I'm not motivated to upload there.

I did a bunch recently to test DT, no downloads, so I stopped for now. Maybe some cold Winter night and I'm bored, I'll send up a bunch more.

I have no good advice of a best site, maybe someone else does? As far as my opinion, news and sports have a limited demand, and that's pretty much same day, then maybe some for the weekly print media. After that, it's not news anymore.

Good Luck

« Reply #2 on: September 08, 2022, 17:08 »
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That's interesting. I tried in last years to push editorial motor sport and other international sports events to microstock.
Not super top events, no Formula 1, but still international events like world championship, european championship, global motor sports category.

After last four years results has been lower than expected: I can't say I get nothing, but I get much more from "microstock oriented" images than from editorial events themselves.

For example, you can sell more an asphalt close up background on motor sport track than a scenic Ferrari racing.

So my answer is yes, it's worth to upload, and no, it's not worth to shoot for specific events. In my experience you can use the events to take unique images, but you will not sell the classic panning of car on tracks. Or, probably, you will sell some, and you will have rare occasional high value sales.
But the best results will be with general, microstock oriented, racing concept images, If you have that, I suggest to go on. At the contrary I don't think it worth to spend time to work on and keywording on classical editorial sport events images.


Uncle Pete

  • Great Place by a Great Lake - My Home Port
« Reply #3 on: September 09, 2022, 20:49 »
0
But the best results will be with general, microstock oriented, racing concept images, If you have that, I suggest to go on. At the contrary I don't think it worth to spend time to work on and keywording on classical editorial sport events images.

I think that's a good point. When I look back, I sell more of concept than news or specifics. Not saying that a specific car or driver hasn't had some downloads now and then, but if I look at the best earning images, they are not dateline news. On Alamy I used to get some good downloads that went to books and magazines, that time has passed.

One of my best continuing downloads images, is from 2009, the cars have changed and the driver has retired. The team has a new color scheme.

I don't want to say, it's impossible but the people who use these images, deadline news, have contracts with Getty, LAT or Reuters. They aren't going to go hunting stock sites, just in case, for a better price. We get the smaller buyers, when they need something, and that's fine with me. Also because of reviews and weekends, the services have images up in minutes, and we might be waiting for a day. Too late



 

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