Thursday, March 15, 2012
Lil' Fincher
Sunday, March 04, 2012
A boy and his dog
I did this illustration for Dreamstime's latest contest:
Dreamstime is a microstock site - where they license photographs and illustrations. And while i have every intention of winning this contest...it's usually the photographs that dominate. There are a select group of artists that submit illustrations to the contest, but it's few and far between that any of us have won.
The payoff for just entering is still worth it - if this file is ever licensed (and my past entries have been a few times), they sell for more - on the low end the price can go from 36 cents to $1.26. So it's a good incentive to participate.
The contest this month is "children with pets." It's important to be one of the first entries (the contest started on friday) so you get more eyeballs on your piece. I submitted it Friday night and as of Sunday, I'm still waiting to have the illustration approved...
This illustration was drawn in photoshop, but cleaned up and colored in adobe illustrator. Microstocks like Shutterstock, Istockphoto, and Dreamstime sell more vector files than any other form of illustration. So it pays to work in that media.
The payoff for just entering is still worth it - if this file is ever licensed (and my past entries have been a few times), they sell for more - on the low end the price can go from 36 cents to $1.26. So it's a good incentive to participate.
The contest this month is "children with pets." It's important to be one of the first entries (the contest started on friday) so you get more eyeballs on your piece. I submitted it Friday night and as of Sunday, I'm still waiting to have the illustration approved...
This illustration was drawn in photoshop, but cleaned up and colored in adobe illustrator. Microstocks like Shutterstock, Istockphoto, and Dreamstime sell more vector files than any other form of illustration. So it pays to work in that media.
Thursday, March 01, 2012
Microstock report for February 2012
Here's the fancy microstock report for February 2012!
I started last month by including the lifetime totals each site has brought me. I've been selling my illustrations through microstock sites since February 2009 - so it's been 3 years and it's brought a total of $11,744.67 since the beginning. It might sound like a big number - but it's just about $3900 a year of extra income. What's nice about it is that I don't spend much if any time at all these days creating new illustrations.
In February I uploaded this image and two others compositions using the same laptop icons:
Shutterstock is the best site to upload files to. Like all of the microstock sites, you have to sign up and upload several images that they'll evaluate to see if the work is good enough. Shutterstock makes you upload 10 images for evaluation and you pass if 7 or more are approved. Other sites vary as well as the time it takes to approve images. Istockphoto has the hardest process to pass (even though they only evaluate three files), and I didn't get approved the first two times I tried (because of open paths).
Anyway - Stock Illustration sites are a good source of extra income - and it all depends on how much or little you put into creating new files and creating good files. When we first joined, we aggressively uploaded and posted our biggest monthly numbers...since then we've uploaded about 1 or so files a month and average $250-$300 a month.
The line of "All Other Stock" refers to Stockfresh, Veer, and Thinkstock which are all sites that I signed up with later on and which don't sell too much between the three of them...I might just add Crestock to that mix as the income from that site is very minimal. The lifetime earnings from "All Other Stock" are boosted by Stockxpert which was sold to Istockphoto and shut down (but not before I made $300 there).
I started last month by including the lifetime totals each site has brought me. I've been selling my illustrations through microstock sites since February 2009 - so it's been 3 years and it's brought a total of $11,744.67 since the beginning. It might sound like a big number - but it's just about $3900 a year of extra income. What's nice about it is that I don't spend much if any time at all these days creating new illustrations.
In February I uploaded this image and two others compositions using the same laptop icons:
Shutterstock is the best site to upload files to. Like all of the microstock sites, you have to sign up and upload several images that they'll evaluate to see if the work is good enough. Shutterstock makes you upload 10 images for evaluation and you pass if 7 or more are approved. Other sites vary as well as the time it takes to approve images. Istockphoto has the hardest process to pass (even though they only evaluate three files), and I didn't get approved the first two times I tried (because of open paths).
Anyway - Stock Illustration sites are a good source of extra income - and it all depends on how much or little you put into creating new files and creating good files. When we first joined, we aggressively uploaded and posted our biggest monthly numbers...since then we've uploaded about 1 or so files a month and average $250-$300 a month.
The line of "All Other Stock" refers to Stockfresh, Veer, and Thinkstock which are all sites that I signed up with later on and which don't sell too much between the three of them...I might just add Crestock to that mix as the income from that site is very minimal. The lifetime earnings from "All Other Stock" are boosted by Stockxpert which was sold to Istockphoto and shut down (but not before I made $300 there).
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