Mostly Instagram is an album for self promotion and discovering other artists and their styles. Followers do not translate to opportunities. The more successfully working illustrators in general have "low" follower counts on there.

Australia does have a tax year of July to June. I have the reverse problem, that all the US companies tax reports are not in keeping with when I have to report.

Ha, true.

Yes, the statement Canva sent worked out to a 5% withholding.

Any thoughts on the new email update? It covered the backlog in reviews, their proprietary web uploader, metadata uploader, and a possible upload status checker.

I'm not sure that an upload status checker will help. I only want to know whether something is approved or rejected. The stages in between while in review don't mean much beyond the psychological. If the status checker can provide a reason for rejection (highly unlikely), that would make it more useful, imo.

Last I checked, they were 6 months behind on reviews. The explanation for the delay was very vague, but it seems they believe reviewing metadata is a bottleneck separate from reviewing the actual images. If so, their plan to make approved images live before reviewing metadata should help. But what happens if they reject your metadata after approving the image? Will the image come down? How will you know what terms to remove or change?

I've never used their uploader so I have no opinion on that.

Oh, nice! There's definitely a market for that in literature and gaming, even POD, but not really in microstock that I've seen. I'd like to invest different styles and subjects, like fantasy paintings, but illustration for me is work. I'm not innately great at it but I continuously study and practice a lot at my craft.

How do you balance creating for work/money and creating for personal fulfillment? I sometimes feel guilty when I take time away from building up my portfolios.

Hi, fellow illustrators in microstock. Let's have an ongoing chat.

Tell us about your style. Your favorite subject to illustrate? What are you working on now?

I work on paper and digital. I sell vector illustrations with minimal lines and highlighting, heavier on cel shading, lean towards realism. I also aspire to have a giant port of glitterized illustrations because glitter is fun.  My favorite subject is figure drawing. I'm currently illustrating a set of figures getting vaccinated--nurse, doctor, patients.

Who's next? And feel free to leave a general question for everyone to discuss.

Did y�all know there�s a huge group of people who use canva to create simple designs which they offer for sale as digital downloads on Etsy?  Nothing extra to the contributor.

Wow. Thanks for the heads up. Template design as a service, I get. But not as a product.

Ha!

 I forgot to mention, any threshold below $100 USD incurs a $2 fee, which is a annoying but that's the trade-off.

I upload the same type of photos over and over again, year after year, over a decade now. I sell tons of this stuff. If this stuff didn't sell day in and day out, year after year, I would stop.

Fascinating. How do you find fresh ways of covering the same subjects?

Lots of great ideas here in the thread. I hadn't even thought of using some of those keywords. I'll definitely try to compare sales of illustrations with and without eyes. And overall I'm getting that I need to keep my portfolio balanced, with both uniqueness and salebility in mind.

Also thanks a lot for the complements on style quality. I worked really hard on it without many people to get feedback from, so it's helpful to know I'm at least on the right track.

Thanks for all the replies. There's a lot of food for thought here. I guess where I'm having the most trouble is in thinking like a buyer without creating the thousandth version of the same illustrations already available. Am I overly concerned about market saturation?

I started out selling stock art to the individual buyer--social media, blogs, etc. But I recognize the big agencies like Adobe and Shutterstock have different clientele and I don't quite have a handle on their needs. Aside from looking at top sellers, how can I learn more about how businesses/industries choose and use stock art especially on these subscription models? Much of what I've read is out of date and emphasize selling decorative sets.

Thanks again--and I'll certainly take the eyes thing into consideration!

Read more here: https://status.canva.com

They suggest changing your password. 

Does it ever make sense to include text in your illustration? What is the general reception of illustrations with text?

I understand if you want to include text you have to make an outline of it or expand it, but I'm trying to decide whether to include it or not. I'm making a set of dad badges with title banners. The icons inside the badges illustrate the trait but I'm unsure whether titles are necessary.

Are you on PC or Mac? On PC, unless you are good with coding, I know of know way to automatically tell the program which files to zip. You have to manually select them.

News from Canva on the problem with the portfolio page (contributor email):

Our engineers are working hard to fix the issue, however in the meantime you can use this alternative URL to see your images: www.canva.com/h1-content/portfolio. Use this for the next week and after that the usual page should be working just fine.