I was always a strong believer in Open Source software. However, last year, my faith had been shaken. I used to spend several minutes fiddling around with slider or even masking in order to remove noise while other software out there can do it in just one single click! I read and bought softwares that were supposed to give stellar noise reduction performance because of their Artificial Intelligent (AI) denoise engine... read more

September 2017 was my second best month ever ($95.02). I was second after February 2017 ($104.46), my only 3 numbers earning so far. I have 738 pictures in my Shutterstock portfolio.
What made this September nice was 4 "Single and Other" download.

Brutally, and honestly, this book is not for you if you just want to learn how to take a picture and how to use your new camera. However, I dare to say that it is one of the best out there if you want to plunge into the world of microstock. This book is a must-read if you plan to turn the piling pictures on your hard drive into money.

This is just a quick note on my Shutterstock earning. I have been a Shutterstock Contributor since end of April 2016. So far I have 500 pictures + movies online. In my first post, I said that I was not doing great with microstock. However, in the last few months, I started to enjoy uploading new pictures, even uploaded more photos at Fotolia, because I started to earning about $30 a months at Shutterstock alone. While it does not sound much, my overall earning of $247 will be enough for another photo accessory (maybe extra flash or second hand lens??).

This is the Part 2 of this article about Shutterstock and Istock earnings. In Part 1, I was analysing the question "why new image are not selling well at Shutterstock anymore?".
Enough bla bla, let's see the stats ...

I became contributor at Shutterstock and Istock in mid April. In the last few weeks, contributors at Shutterstock where complaining about no sale on newly uploaded file and drastic drop in their earning. I felt like my earning at Shutterstock dropped as well while my earning at Istock seems to increase. Also, indeed, new image sale at Shutterstock did not happen any more.

I want to share with you the analysis I made in order to see if my intuition was right. Please feel free to leave a comment or share your experience.

I am using Drupal, an open source CMS (it is FREE), to design, create, and to manage my photo gallery website. I do not agree with web-developers saying that Drupal has steeper learning curve than other CMS available out there. I was creating a blog with Wordpress (supposed to be the simplest of all) and I tell you I was completely lost.
Drupal is easy because almost with all website projects you can imagine, there are already someone who created a ready to use Drupal module for you. Personally, I think the complexity of Drupal starts to appear only once you dive into Drupal programming. In addition, there are plenty of tutorial out there, all you need to do is to follow instructions word by word and you will be fine! In the rare occasion of problem, the Drupal community is very active and in 99.99% of the case, somebody already had the same problem and would tell you how to fix it.
The best part about Drupal is its flexibility. You can create any kind of website and change anything you do not like or does not fit your need. Do you have some experience with CSS? You will be able to customize your theme (the appearance of the website). You do not have any clue about CSS, no problem, just pick a ready to use theme and you are good to go! The main advantage of Drupal is also the full control over user role and permission. It cannot get any better and any easier than Drupal in that aspect! ...

I entered the world of stock photography in 2014 after a long thought (1.5 years) between Alamy and microstock sites. Back then, to my knowledge, Alamy pays decent amount of money while microstock gives you 30 to 50 cents per image. Come on, what the heck 30 cents! Of course, I was aware of those reviews about microstock sites saying that the number of downloads would outweigh the “good pay” at Alamy but I was not convinced. I decided to upload my images on Alamy. I was uploading and uploading and waiting and waiting for some sells but nothing happened. I signed up to become a contributor at Shutterstock, Depositphotos, Istock, Dreamstime, Canstock and Fotolia and was accepted right away. I was quite surprised, but let say I uploaded my very best shots. So I started to upload photo at those 6 microstock sites as well. I uploaded about 200 pictures but did not sell any. The situation pissed me off. With all the time I spent manipulating, uploading and keywording those photos I’ve got $7. I decided to withdraw all my photos at Canstock and Fotolia and cancelled my account. I was also trying to withdraw all my photo at Dreamstime but it did not allow me to delete all of them. So I still have some photos there. I also thought maybe it is not bad to have some photos hanging around there. I had a feeling that some people find my picture at Dreamstime ...