all right in this video i'm going to
walk through my 2020 photo shows i'll
show you month by month site by site
and then i'm going to compare 2019 to
2020
so you can see the best websites to sell
your photos online in 2021.
now in general 2020 was a lower year for
my photo sales
um through most of the year so january
through october
i saw a fairly low sales and they picked
up in the end of the year around
november
and december now if you exclude evanto
elements
i made about 360 dollars less in 2020
than i did in 2019
now the reason that i'm including event
elements is that around mid
2019 they changed the way they paid
contributors and i went from making like
250 dollars a month
to like two dollars a month so it really
isn't a fair comparison because it was
because of that change that happened in
2019
so i'm just going to exclude advanced
elements from the reviews i'm doing
today
and if you've seen some of my past
videos um i'll put a link down in the
description to the one where i describe
what happened with evanto but
it was one of those sites that i was
recommending previously if you were in
there in 2018 it was a great site
but in 2020 it's not great that great of
a site and going in 2021
i don't see much of a change now the
reason that my photos didn't do well in
2020 i think is mainly because of covet
i'll put some links down in the
description so you can see the types of
photos i take
but for the most part i take photos
while i'm on vacations
and because of that a lot of my
photos are used by travel companies and
the travel industry didn't have a great
2020 because of covet so
that's one of the reasons why i saw
lower sales you know if i was the type
of photographer that like ran around and
took photos of people with masks on when
covet hit
i would probably would have seen some
good sales in those types of photos
but i didn't do that and that's because
i do most of my photography on my
vacations it is more of
a hobby that i make a bit of money on
the side at
so take a look at my photos that kind of
explains a little bit about the types of
photography that i'm doing and why i see
them
you might have seen different results if
you do a different type of photography
also to give you an idea about how much
time i spend on photography i uploaded
about 145 photos in 2020 and about 50
videos
uh most of those photos were taken on
vacations some of them you know i went
out a couple of times near where i live
at sunrise and took some photos or took
some videos and i uploaded those as well
so i wasn't really spending a lot of
time you know
uploading thousands of photos i just did
145 and a lot of the sales that 2700
came from photos that i had uploaded in
years past
now that 2700 really just covers my
camera gear
as well as a lot of the software i use
for you know editing my photos
now let's go in and take a look at the
actual sales by site
now this is a huge change from previous
years
as well as a huge surprise that fine art
america
was my top site i've always made some
sales on fire in america but it's never
been
a lot and because of that i have not
uploaded very many photos since like
2016.
so all those sales on finder america
were photos that i uploaded more than
four years ago
now the only reason that i can explain
this is i think
you know people bought more on fine art
america in 2020 than they did in past
years
probably because of covid right people
maybe weren't traveling that much they
wanted some travel photos for their
house
i think a lot of people got stuck at
home so they decided to redecorate and
then they would buy more
you know art photos on fine art america
so
i think that really explains it and
because of this i think fine art america
is one of the sites that i'm going to
focus on a bit more in 2021
because i haven't uploaded there in
about four years i've got hundreds of
photos
that i have on other sites that i don't
have on fine art america
and because i'm seeing such good sales
i'm going to start uploading those
photos
to find out america now one of the
things with that site is they don't have
a great like bulk uploader you can only
upload like five photos at a time
so it will take me a while to do but you
know if i can make an extra four or five
hundred dollars in 2020
from those sales i think it's worthwhile
right one of the things to know though
is that the types of photos that i take
are kind of artworthy i guess one of you
know one of the reasons i take them is i
do print a lot of
photos and put them in frames on my
walls to remember my vacations right and
you know
there was a photo that i took of my kids
on a beach this year that we did like a
huge print and we put it up in our room
so when i am taking my photos you know
one of the reasons i take them is to
hang on my own walls
so i really you know like it when other
people go on fine art american person
decide they're good enough for their
walls as well too
so that's one of the main sites that i
will be focusing on
in 2021 because it did so much better in
2020.
now number two on the list was shutter
stock this isn't
really a huge surprise because shutter
stock is normally in the top three
um it is lower than previous years but
shutter stock is one of the biggest
micro stock sites so
it typically does pretty well for me
number three on the site isn't much of a
surprise either
pixels at the end of 2019 i was seeing a
lot more donations coming from the very
few photos that i had up on pixels
and because of that in 2020 i decided to
upload
all my photos to pixels so those 145
photos that i did i uploaded them to
shutterstock but i also uploaded them to
pixels at the same time and i made a
fair number of donations so i'll
continue that into 2021.
all right so those are my top three
sites in 2020 so i would recommend
that you upload to those sites in 2021
if you don't upload them to them now and
you're looking for new sites
but what i think is more interesting is
going and looking at the trend for some
of the other ones the change from 2019
to 2020. so for that i'm gonna go look
and i've got a yearly comparison
now what you can see here is that fine
art america was the best site again it
was the biggest
increase overall followed by
pixels now next on the list is free pick
free pick i didn't have an account on
free pick in
2019 so i just started that like mid
2020.
so it actually looks pretty good that i
made a hundred dollars on it however
unfortunately i made that hundred
dollars in like the first
two months that i had my photos up on
free pick and then after that i've only
been making a couple dollars a month
um on top of that they've made it very
difficult to get
payments and it's a bit difficult to
upload there so although it is high on
this list
it's not really one of the best sites
that i see a lot of growth
for 2021. now next on the list is pond5
um i don't think that pod five is
probably growing overall
but it grew a bit for me just because i
started doing some more video uploads
so pond5 i've had my photos up on pond5
for quite a while
um but pawn fight isn't really well
known for like still photos and i don't
get a lot of sales on there
but this year one of the things i wanted
to do was try to learn more
video and so i got out and i took more
video clips
and i did prohibited processing on them
and uploaded them to pond5 so this is
just me
trying to learn how to do video better
and put them up there
and pond5 you know i just made a couple
sales and ended up being 67
so that's why it was a larger down
probably more so because i started
uploading
videos there as opposed to you know it
being overall growth from
from past years uploads that being said
i am going to continue doing
pond5 i think if you do video clips
pond5 is a really good spot to upload
your videos to
um and you should be uploading there in
2021 however
if you're just doing still photos i
wouldn't recommend uploading to pond5
because i just don't think you're going
to get that much sales and it's really
just not worth the effort
now the other thing we want to take a
look at not just the top of the list but
the bottom of the list
and this is a huge surprise i did not
expect that this was going to happen
in 2020 especially as much as it did but
adobe stock was my largest decreasing
site
so i made less on adobe stock more than
any other site
this year and that's somewhat surprising
because i think you know if you follow
the stock industry
one of the big things that happened in
2020 was shutterstock
changed the way that they do payouts
mid-year and a lot of people thought
that i was going to see a huge decrease
in sales and i did see a decrease in
sales from shutterstock
but not as much as adobe and adobe had
been doing fairly well
so i think this is kovit related but
you know adobe was my biggest loser
i guess of 2020
um followed by shutterstock and if you
look at all these ones on the bottom
it's a pretty clear trend that the
traditional stock sites all did
worse for me in 2020 than
they did in 2019 so the question becomes
you know is it still worthwhile
to upload your photos to microstock
sites in 2021.
personally i am going to keep uploading
my photos there you know i use our
photolu
app to upload the photos to the
microstock sites
and then the same photos that i upload
to like flickr and instagram
so is you know i'm going to be creating
these photos anyways and because i use
fotoloo to upload them it only takes me
like a couple extra minutes
each photo to upload them to these sites
and for the extra 650 bucks that i make
on shutterstock and adobe stock
i think it's worth the two or three
hours of work that i put in each year to
kind of keep those sites relevant by
uploading photos there
so i've gone through and talked about
you know which site's going to be
focusing on a little bit more based on
my past sales
but one of the things i always do this
time of year is decide whether i'm going
to start uploading my photos to any new
sites or any sites that i haven't been
focusing on in the fast past
so one of those sites that i already
talked about was find out america i'm
going to start focusing on that again
i hadn't done it in a number of years so
i'll kind of get the rest of my photos
up
there but i think because fine art
america did so well
in 2020 i'm also going to start focusing
on some of the other print
on demand sites like for example
redbubble i've got
maybe a dozen photos on redbubble um
that you know i uploaded you know six
seven years ago but i haven't really
been keeping up with that account
so what i plan to do in 2021 is upload
more and more photos to those sites
and see if i can get similar results to
what i've seen on fine art america
right you know once you get your photos
up on these sites it just becomes
passive income right so the photos that
i upload this year
you know i still could be making yard
sales on them four years down the road
just like what happened with fine art
america
so that's one of the things that i will
be focusing on differently
in 2021 versus 2020.
now the other thing i think about this
time of year is are there any sites that
i'm gonna stop uploading to
okay um and right now my uploading
workflow is
pretty streamlined i use photolube
upload all my sites so i
you know uploaded photo and then it
pushes my photos to all of the different
sites right away so it's not a lot of
extra effort to upload all these sites
the only site that i currently upload to
that i can't do with fotoloo is pixels
um it doesn't take me that long to
upload each photo there
manually and you know it's worth it
because it's one of my higher sites
so i'm not going to take away any sites
right now i don't think um free pick is
one of those sites where i might decide
to you know take out mid-year if it
doesn't pick up
but i'm gonna probably do it for at
least the first half a year to give it a
chance and see
you know if the sales increase and go
back to like what they were the first
couple months the other thing is
although i saw like a dramatic decrease
in my sales in the microsoft in 2020
i think a lot of that might be coveted
related and you know as the vaccines
roll out and people are able to travel
more
you know i think i may see my sales go
back
up in 2021 you know as things go back to
a bit of normal as hopefully they will
sometime later this year so i really
hope that you found this useful
if you're new to the channel this is
what it's about you know selling your
photos online i talk about tips and
tricks
as well as how my sales are going um if
you found this useful at all make sure
you give it a like
and best of luck selling your photos
online