Just thought I'd ask a question that I already know the answer to. While I still upload photos, I mostly haven't uploaded any vector illustrations in 3 years. I stopped when I was getting $0.25 sales. I used to upload very detailed illustrations. Clearly that is no longer going to make any sense with $0.25 sales. As I look into the idea of resuming vector illustrations, I'm slowly looking into seeing how I can dumb down the illustration by a lot and figuring if that even makes any sense with $0.25 downloads. It isn't obvious to me that any effort makes any sense at $0.25 downloads. Vector work is very labor intensive, whereas photos, takes only a fraction of the effort per image. Once upon a time, in my best year, my vector sales was twice my photos sales for that year. Now photos are almost 3 times my vector sales. My sales of both formats have fallen a lot over the years, though of the two formats, vector has been the most, this year it is trending to end the year 87% down from my best year. I'm mostly posting on this forum now because I'm wondering out loud why anyone would bother creating new vector images in the age of $0.25 downloads.

I can only comment personally - I wouldn't do it, it's just too much work for so little in return. I'd keep it at simple and effective ideas, something that's quick to complete but effective and creative. Other than that, I'd rather invest time in 3D, takes about the same time, for simple things even less and you can derive more images from one scene or model. Not to mention animated scenes sold as videos on stock. You can be just as creative. Just an idea.

Thanks for the input, doing 3D is smart. The only 3D I know is in Tinkercad, which is very basic. I'm not keen to learn more 3D right now but your logic about 3D makes a lot of sense. It definitely sounds much more efficient than doing illustrations.

I can only comment personally - I wouldn't do it, it's just too much work for so little in return. I'd keep it at simple and effective ideas, something that's quick to complete but effective and creative. Other than that, I'd rather invest time in 3D, takes about the same time, for simple things even less and you can derive more images from one scene or model. Not to mention animated scenes sold as videos on stock. You can be just as creative. Just an idea.

Nice input! May I ask you what program do you recommend for 3D and animated scenes?

To the topic: a $0.25 sale sounds bad indeed, though it won't sell just once and with time it can make up in volume. Or at least that's how it used to be, a good one could easily make past 100$ and more altogether, however nowadays due to a lot of uploads new files tend to get little exposure.

I've heard about Blender but didn't really pay attention to it before. Thank you for the recommendation!