In December I wrote about my experiences with licensing my photography on Getty Images with a blog titled, ‘Geraint Rowland Photography Getty Sales, October’. Since then I have continued to upload images, both old (from my various travels) and new from my current location in Mexico City to Getty. From personal experience, in addition to listening to the experts and life time contributors on the Getty forum it really does seem that stock photography is a numbers game. The more images you have for license, the more likely you are to make sales equating to the more money you will make each month. Two years ago I had around one thousand stock photographs for licence via Getty images. When I wrote the last blog, relating to my Getty sales in October I had over five thousand images available on the Getty platform. I now have over seven thousand photographs available for sale (license) on www.gettyimages.com.
Due to self isolation in Mexico City because of the coronavirus I have had a lot of spare time on my hands to get up to date with my photo editing, organisation and uploading to Getty. With regards to this I am currently working on thousands of photos from my trip last year around India, so in this time of self-quarantine the size of my Getty portfolio should increase and I should get completely up to date with my photos organisation! By using the new Getty Contributor App you can now see how many views your photos get each day but you do not find out how many sales you have made or how much money you have made until the 20th of each month. 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 February of 2020 in order of money I received, with the first image gaining me the most. Click through the slideshow below to view my most profitable images licensed via Getty:
The month of February 2020 was my highest earning so far with Getty. I sold a total of 43 images resulting in a personal monthly revenue of $313.62 (Getty take 80% of the earnings). February also saw my highest RPD (royalties per download) to date with a $7.29 average. The first image in the slide show, Abstract sunset image taken in Cardiff, Wales earned me $80, not bad at all, if only they could all bring in that sort of revenue! For the ocean abstract taken in Miami I received just under $65 and for the Ostrich just over $40. Even the last photo in the slideshow, the black and white bird abstract made me $6, again not something I can complain about. In contrast the bottom seven earners in February made me less than $0.50 each showing both the randomness of stock photography and the importance of making a few larger sales each month. All of this is completely out of your control and there is surely an element of luck involved here.
My entire Getty image collection, which is growing daily can be viewed here. Uploading to Getty is a mundane and time-consuming process having to add Titles, Descriptions and keywords to each photo and often having photos declined requiring additional information before resubmitting. However, I have noticed a steady increase in my monthly sales as my portfolio grows. It can take a few months before photos that are accepted onto the Getty site seem to get viewed with the potential of them selling. Making low sales of less than $0.50 although frustrating actually increases the chance of that image selling again and perhaps for more in the future. Sold images get pushed up the search criteria for buyers whereas ones that don’t sell get pushed to the bottom of the pile hidden by thousands of other similar images. In addition, I am having my sold images published in national newspapers, Lonely Planet publications and books which can’t be a bad thing.
Apparently, the glory days of stock photography are over with a surplus of photographers, a give-away attitude prevalent with the Internet as well as changing business models the World over. However, I will continue to upload photos that I have sitting on hard drives, and when out shooting I will take images that I believe to be stock friendly: photos that require no model or property releases, images that can be used for backgrounds and so on.
My stock images available on Getty can be viewed here. More of my travel photography can be found on my website, my Instagram, and my Flickr account. If you would like any more information about my photography send an email to: geraintrowlandphotography@gmail.com.