Over the last few months I have been spending a large amount of time increasing my stock photography portfolio on Getty images. In October of last year I wrote a blog about my experience with Getty titled, ‘Geraint Rowland on Getty Images’. At the time of writing the blog I had around one thousand images available for licence via Getty which was double the amount that I had a year before. I now have over five thousand images for licence and am attempting to upload more whenever I have some free time. Payday for stock photography via Getty is on the 20th of each month. September’s sales being paid on the 20th of October, October’s sales being paid for on the 20th of November and so on. The easiest way to analyse and view these sales is using the 3rd party website, Today is Twenty. Here are my top seven earning images via Getty in October 2019, they are in order of money I received with the first image gaining me the most. Click through the slideshow below:
In total in October I sold 48 images via Getty resulting in a personal revenue of $196.04 with an average of $4.08 per image. The first image in the slide show earned me $70.88, the teddy bear $59.24 and the remainder in the slideshow $5 - 10 each. A large number of my sales netted me less than $1 per image, a micro-stock price that would be ok if they were sold in large numbers but unfortunately they did not. My entire collection of images licensed by Getty in October can be viewed here. I have noticed that my monthly payout is steadily increasing as my portfolio grows. It can take a few weeks before newly submitted photos get seen on the system. Images that sell once do seem to sell again as they get pushed up the search criteria for buyers. Listening to the regular and lifetime sellers on the Getty Contributors bulletin board, they general consensus is that the glory days of stock photography are over, stock photographers are now selling more images and earning less than even a year ago.
However, from a personal perspective it is worth me carrying on as I have hundreds, if not thousands of potential sellers on old hard drives that can be uploaded. I believe a key to regular income with stock photography is regularly uploading a variety of images. On my latest travels in both Budapest, Hungary and Kyiv, Ukraine I started to take more stock friendly type images purely for this purpose. With this I mean images that can be easily uploaded without any legal issues, images that do not contain people, personal property or anything with a trademark. I am also going back through old hard drives and editing and uploading images which I now believe could be used for stock photography purposes.
My travel images available on Getty can be viewed here. More of my travel photography can be found on my website, my Instagram, my Facebook Page and my Flickr account. If you would like any more information about any of my images please send an email to: geraintrowlandphotography@gmail.com.