I'm just finishing up my second full month as a stock photographer and I thought that I would discuss my stats. I have earned $6. I'm averaging 3 dollars per month, but the first month I had four downloads and the second month seven. Over the next three or four days my portfolio will increase from 18 photos to 30+ photos. The new photos are of Tracie, five or so are at the pool which can be seen in my flicker account, and the rest are of her wearing her various nursing uniforms.
This means that the new photos will be more sought after than the old stock photos because they show a smiling face vs. just being a shot of some object. Apparently it is hard to get people to model for you. At least in people's minds, I don't actually know how hard it is if you actually ask around. In any case having a smiling face in your stock photos is very good. Also I'm told that health related images are good to have so the nurse uniform shots should be pretty good.
I've also gone over my ad revenue for the blog. I'm averaging about $3 per month, but October is bringing up my average a lot. I guess pumpkin carving patterns are very popular and people search for them and end up clicking on the ads to buy them when they give up on finding free pumpkin carving templates.
Starting in august, I'm going to be devoting more time to pumpkin carving to drive more people to my site. I get the feeling that even if it is my strongest month by far, my stock photos will have out pace my ad revenue by far.
Selling stock photos is much more appealing to me because I am actually selling a product. Every time someone buys one of my photos it is like they are praising me as a photographer. They are telling me that my images are the best of the thousand or so similar photos for any particular search.
The ad revenue is still fun, but I can't help but think that they are getting clicked by accident. I mean, I have never really been surfing a blog or actually searching for something and seen an ad that was relevant to what I was looking to buy. Maybe I just don't buy things on line very much. Or if I was going to buy something on line I would just go to a site that I already knew about and wouldn't bother clicking on the ads.
-Gary Milner
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