I see this started 6/13 - it was up then with nice sales last couple days but both contributor and customer sites are down here in NY 6/15

I just uploaded some editorial photos and found that the term "Governor Cuomo" only had "Mario Cuomo" as an option, and not his son Andrew who has been governor of New York for the past 6 years now; it also only had 2 towns and Bill Clinton for the term "Clinton" and not "Hillary Clinton" as an option. A tad outdated to put it mildly! I sent them a support ticket. Hard to believe, however, this hasn't come up before now.

I've got about 530 images on FAA and sell roughly one a month.

I have anywhere from a few to several sales a month on redbubble but make more from FAA as I'm usually selling framed prints there while redbubble tends to be more products.

The POD sites don't do much marketing and some like FAA hardly do any at all, so you need to get your work up on social media to make sales. It's different than stock.

I have RM editorial pix on Alamy - both Live News and other editorial - haven't sold through Live News but they have licensed them for me as secondary editorial. They've also helped me get press passes when I wasn't shooting for a local outlet. And I also upload outtakes from assignments.

I also have different RF editorial pix on SS, a handful  of which I uploaded years ago from a local NYC event via their (now defunct I think) "On the Red Carpet" program where they helped me get a press pass. The event was far less interesting than I'd anticipated but I needed to get them a certain number of images and nearly all of them have been licensed at least once - a few several times - over several years - for various uses including a few books. Some of my Alamy images have also ended up in books. SS licenses a lot of my editorial images - Alamy fewer but for better prices.

I've also licensed some via iStock and DT. Some several times - I try to capture the news but sometimes an image can be used to illustrate a concept in a more generic way - lots of my old images that I thought would need to sell right away to be successful ended up having life even years after the event. These are mostly festivals, the marathon, local parades with and without famous figures, interesting events with lots of people.

I've freelanced as a local photojournalist for years, so I usually try to license images to local outlets, but they have less money as years go by, so it's nice to know there's a secondary market for some of this work.

I have some that still sell consistently since they were uploaded in 2009. This includes some editorial images that I never expected to license past the first year. Some of these are editorial and travel images I took as early as 2006.
I don't shoot a lot of lifestyle images, but I have some from 2012 that are still being licensed too.

Alamy
SS
DT
Fotolia
iStock

I had forgotten about Photo4Me after uploading a handful of files  - less than 20 I think - on there a couple of years ago after some European friends with good sales told me about it. I got a sale last month and made $87. It was a travel image from Sweden.

Right now, my most regular POD site for sales is redbubble where I get several sales a month - have had over 100 with a tiny portfolio there (maybe 25-30 images) - but mostly small amounts so it takes a while to make payout.

FAA is still my best POD - I have 500+ photos there so no surprise it's my best earner. Had two large random sales last month - a framed print and a canvas. I've sold some cards and pillows to friends who saw my stuff on FB but most of it is random. I do post images on twitter a few times a week but seem to sell totally random stuff - from flowers to travel and landscape as well as abstracts. I wish I had stuff in their collections.

Any sales on Crated? My last sale there - $168 net profit - was a year ago - but they seem to be doing more social media these days so hoping it picks up - they featured my landscapes about a week ago via their twitter account - and I usually have pix on the first page and in some collections. I really wish they'd get more traffic. I like how the site looks and it's easy to upload. It's free to join.

I've put less time into POD sites this year but I think the effort I made last year in uploading more is starting to pay off. Wish the effort I put into 500px had - no sales there yet. I didn't close my account but haven't added new work since they changed the commission structure. I had such high hopes for them.

I once went to a presentation by Joe McNally where he said the best thing about competition between Nikon and Canon is that it means better cameras for all of us. While the competition between SS and Adobe can unfortunately mean a price war, fortunately it also means they need to stay on top of their game to keep market share and still earn a profit, and concepts like this one will hopefully lead to more sales and income for us. I noticed SS also has an editing software that lets people use filters and text and resize photos, with optimum sizes for social media. I'm encouraged by this.

Congrats!

This past year so far SS has been a fraction of what I'm earning on Alamy (net, not gross) due to both a significant increase in my earnings at Alamy and a sharp decline on SS. My SS sales the past couple of months have been at an all time low - about equal to when I started and had a fraction of the images I have now.

I was happy to see an uptick in SS stock and an uptick in earnings, but the fact that the uptick in number of files online is a multiple of earnings growth does much to explain why many people are seeing a drop in earnings there. To be frank, I've also been concentrating on adding new work on Alamy while my SS portfolio hasn't grown much at all. RM and higher end RF just seems like a better bet to me right now, though I'd still consider putting American editorial images on SS over Alamy as they seen to do better there.

Alamy is also growing at an alarming rate, but a few good sales each month can add significantly to your earnings there while good income on SS relies on volume. I've never seen so many days on SS without a single sale than I have the past couple of months.

Fotolia is growing but it's not "on fire" yet for me.

I'm not on 123rf so can't comment there. 

PayPal has been great for me. I've been with them for years since they started elance way back around 1999.

I had one  small issue a couple of years ago, called them on the phone and they were courteous and helped me resolve it immediately - it was actually my mistake, but they waived a fee anyway, and could not have been more helpful.

I logged in when I was in Chicago, Illinois and then in West Lafayette, Indiana while traveling last year (I live in NY) to invoice two different web clients, and had no issues at all.

I had a dispute on elance with a client who stiffed me many years ago, after making some payments. I was disappointed in their seller protection procedures and complained, and this had no negative effect on my account.

Bank and credit card companies will occasionally freeze an account when you make a large purchase while traveling - it's fraud protection on their part - and a simple phone call will generally resolve the issue. It's not restricted to PayPal. That list doesn't sound like anything out of the ordinary.

I'm sorry you had a problem, and I hope it is resolved, but you shouldn't scare people away from using a reliable company that lets people sell to buyers around the world. In the US, if someone sends you a check in Euros or Pounds or some other foreign currency, you can't cash it, but for a small fee (less than a bank's wire transfer fee which another way to received foreign currency directly), PayPal lets you receive currency from around the world.

I'm not a fangirl but I'm just sharing some examples from nearly 20 years of experience with them.

I voted for wilting lotus before realizing tailed emperor was so far ahead - couldn't change my vote but good luck - lovely images! And the top 25 have a go so you're in good shape. $1,000 for a calendar cover is great!

Although this link is to an article on Forbes.com about the Best Places to Retire in 2015 - what's really interesting is that there are two images by the same photographer - one from Shutterstock and one from Alamy - and there are also a handful from Getty and from iStock - so it shows that even big magazines are looking for the least expensive photo but will pay more for the right image. There are more Alamy images than others but if you have the same images with Alamy and the micros, you'll be likely to get far fewer sales on Alamy.

http://www2.forbes.com/investing/the-best-places-to-retire-in-2015/?utm_campaign=Top-Tier&utm_source=Outbrain&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=45396874&utm_term=740537