It's been a while since I have been here. Apologies!

I decided to come back and see how people are doing and report on my own results. I must admit that the "sky is falling" doesn't really apply to me yet - I have kept at it, and widened my approach to cover various ways of selling photos as prints and "fine art" and so far it is working.

My monthly report is here - I also do a video version that is mentioned in the report but I haven't got round to that for October yet.
https://backyardsilver.com/monthly-photography-earnings-income-from-online-photography-sales-in-october-2025/

And my main chart:


It will be interesting to see how others are getting on.

Steve

Great job! Also interesting in that if I understood your charts correctly, Alamy was a strong contributor to your earnings. I have never been on Alamy and my impression was it is a "why bother" agency....perhaps my impression is wrong!

edited.....just read your info about the "DACS" payment on Alamy....but still, not bad.

Yes, it is an agency that sells relatively infrequently but often for quite large sums. I generally get $150 to 200 a month from that site.

Steve

From my experience, October dips are often seasonal and due to reduced ad spend in certain niches. Quick wins to boost visibility: optimize your first 5 keywords (they matter most)

Started on Alamy a few months back, so far no sales but early days.

Does anyone upload videos to Alamy?  I have clips on there but they are the ones I uploaded to Deposit photos.  Alamy and Deposit must have some kind of deal.  I'd rather upload my videos direct to Alamy but don't know if that's possible.

Thanks
Cat

Quote from: angelacat on November 14, 2025, 10:10
Started on Alamy a few months back, so far no sales but early days.

Does anyone upload videos to Alamy?  I have clips on there but they are the ones I uploaded to Deposit photos.  Alamy and Deposit must have some kind of deal.  I'd rather upload my videos direct to Alamy but don't know if that's possible.

Thanks
Cat

Hi Cat,

It's not possible to upload videos directly to Alamy. They do have a deal with Pond5 though, so just upload there and it will make its way to Alamy (if it's relevant).

Thank you Brasilnut - I already upload to P5. 

I did some rough calculation on hourly rate and it works out to be 2USD / hour

Annual stock sales - expense (travel cost, gear maintenance etc) = profit

profit divided by hours spent (research, capture, process, upload etc..) = hourly rate


I don't travel somewhere to capture stock, but if I spend 10 hours at a location and 1 hour taking stock photos, I add 10% of travel cost to the expense bucket.

From a pure financial stand point, there is no reason to be in stock, but I often learn something interesting about a location during the research step that I might have otherwise missed.

That's a god way to think about it, kenwood. I rarely travel somewhere just for stock and Alex has done some reports on whether the income exceeds the cost, but I do take lots of photos when I am there alongside others I take for myself. So the actual time spent on "stock photos" is relatively low and if I am on vacation, then what other financially productive use of time is there?

Steve

Quote from: steheap on November 26, 2025, 17:56
That's a god way to think about it, kenwood. I rarely travel somewhere just for stock and Alex has done some reports on whether the income exceeds the cost, but I do take lots of photos when I am there alongside others I take for myself. So the actual time spent on "stock photos" is relatively low and if I am on vacation, then what other financially productive use of time is there?

Steve

Same here.
See below examples of vacation trips, also used for stock photos. All of them except of the last 3 are paid in full and more, through stock revenue.

Plus, there are a lot of tax deductions you can claim, such as airfares, travel costs, accommodation, meals, etc, proportioned to what part of the trip is for pleasure and what creates content for your portfolio.

Just check with your country's tax laws on what is allowable.

Quote from: AM24 on November 26, 2025, 21:56
Plus, there are a lot of tax deductions you can claim, such as airfares, travel costs, accommodation, meals, etc, proportioned to what part of the trip is for pleasure and what creates content for your portfolio.

Just check with your country's tax laws on what is allowable.

Yes indeed, but I prefer to keep them low to avoid triggering any IRS alarm bells. Something like 20%, and only of my personal share of these expenses, since this is the amount of time I usually dedicate to this type of photography, while I'm on vacation.