Well, here we are at the end of another year. Christmas day, New Year’s eve and 2016 are now all behind us – onwards and upwards! I hope you all had a very festive, exciting and wonderful December. For me it was all about spending time with my family.

For the past 4 years Christmas has either meant a 12 hour flight from Thailand to England one week before the big day or a very warm Christmas in Bangkok. This year though Jade and I got to experience the entire festive season and it was made even more special with a short trip to Copenhagen with my parents.

As always I had my trusty little vlogging camera with me so I might have some photos to show for it too – now, if only I can find the time to edit them!

This year (2017 – still getting used to saying that) I’m going to keep pushing to upload more on EyeEm. You’ll see in a moment exactly how many images I had on the market in 2016 and my target that I wanted to hit. Spoiler alert: I didn’t achieve my upload target but that just means I have to go at it ever harder this year.

While I agree that uploading frequently is probably the best way to build a strong presence on EyeEm (like any other social platform) I also know that it’s not practical for many people. I myself prefer to upload my images in batches and the EyeEm desktop upload system works really well for that. The only problem with using the bulk upload tool is that you can’t edit your images using the EyeEm app.

I may be relying more on editing my images using Adobe Lightroom this year in an effort to speed up my workflow. I really like the EyeEm editing tools and the filters (shout out to Fresh 2!) but it can take a while to edit a lot of images through the app. I may even try to emulate some of my favourite EyeEm filters and save them as presets in Lightroom. If I do decide to give this a go then I’ll be sure to share them in the ‘resources’ section of this site.

New Year, New Gear

One last little tidbit before we get in to this months stats: this year I’ll be adding a new camera to my EyeEm kit.

Last year my main sidekick was a Canon S120 point and shoot. I’ve been using it non-stop for 2 years as my vlogging camera which means that it’s been almost everywhere I’ve been and has taken a pounding! It’s fell off a bike in Laos with me, it’s been scuba diving a whole bunch of times (in its dive housing, of course) and has had all kinds of knocks. Thankfully it’s a very robust, well-built camera and, aside from all of the paint wearing off and having a repair for getting dust in the lens, it’s still working in tip-top condition.

I’m sure you know the quote ‘the best camera is the one that you have with you’ and while I think that is a little bit oversimplified, I do agree. I’ve been creating a new vlog every week and this camera has always been there. It’s allowed me to get the shots that my iPhone 6 simply wouldn’t have been able to. The iPhone has a very capable camera but it falls short when it needs a bit of zoom or a higher resolution.

Throughout 2016 I told myself that I was going to get the amazing Sony a6300 but for some reason stock in the UK seemed quite hard to come by. Then all of a sudden Sony brought out the a6500 and then that was the camera I was going to get… But there were a few things that put me off. It was an expensive bit of kit at £1,300+, it still didn’t have a front-facing screen and this was important after vlogging for 2 years without really knowing what the camera could see.

So after a bunch of research I decided that the camera which was the closest fit for my needs (interchangeable lens, small, microphone input, front-facing screen) was the Canon EOS M3. I never thought about this camera before because I really do like what Sony offers, but it’s just not the best option for me. What really sealed the deal for me was a Canon sale on Amazon which brought the M3 and 15-45mm lens to £350. Oh, and there was a £50 cash back offer Canon running too, so it wasn’t a hard decision to make.

During 2017 this will be my main camera so expect to see plenty of shots taken with this added to my EyeEm profile.

Alright, let’s get on with this months stats. There’s also a special treat in this months report because I took a look into the stats for the rest of the year too. Check it out…

 

Latest Goings On In December

Let’s kick off with a comment from one of our community members, it’s a question that you may have wondered at some point too.

Readers Comments: How Many Photos Do I Have In The Premium Collection?

One of the brilliant things about sharing my EyeEm Income Report with you here on my blog is the comments and questions I receive. It’s great that it’s not just a one way street with me sharing and you reading, I love seeing your comments too.

Last month commenter ‘domku’ asked:

…what is the total count of photos that you have posted to EyeEm (how many of them qualify for Premium)?

It’s a great question and one that I’ve yet to cover.

So, just how many photos do I have on EyeEm?

My EyeEm Photo Upload Stats

As of this post right now I currently have 762 photos uploaded to my EyeEm profile. I was aiming to have more than 1,000 photos uploaded by the end of the year but if you’ve been following along each month then you know that I’ve been finding it hard to find the time.

This wasn’t really a goal of mine, it was more of a personal challenge and maybe that’s why I didn’t push to get more uploaded. I’m fine with that though because I don’t want to upload for the sake of it – creating images takes time and I’m ok with waiting to get in the right mindset to edit and upload. However, this did mean that it would be impossible to beat my second challenge…

By the end of 2016 I also wanted to have 1,000 photos on the EyeEm Market. A lofty but very achievable goal. The plan was to follow the guidelines that I created in my ’10 ways to jumpstart your EyeEm Market sales’ ebook (you can find it in the resources section of this site) and each image would hopefully be destined for the marketplace. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to upload that many images and so the current number of images that I have on the EyeEm Market is 603.

Finally the number of images that I have in the premium collection is 363. I’m curious to know what you think about this, did you think it would be higher or lower? I don’t think it is a particularly high number of images to have for sale across the EyeEm partners. But, the sales are still coming in and if you saw my post about the top selling EyeEm images of 2016 then you will know that stats aren’t everything. You may also be surprised to see the stats below about how much of my income came from the premium collection…

Thanks ‘domku’ for your comment and question, and keep them coming if there is anything else you’d like me to look in to.

 

Where Did My 2016 EyeEm Photo Sales Come From?

As this will be the last income report of 2016 I thought it would be useful to share another piece of information with you guys too.

I started sharing my EyeEm income reports about midway through the year so below you’ll find the stats on just where my sales for the year came from. I hope this fills in some of the gaps that have been left by not sharing my income reports sooner.

My EyeEm Income came from 3 distinct places in 2016, here they are along with the amount of sales and the total income from each:

EyeEm Market (eyeem.com) – 8 images, $284.50

Getty Images through EyeEm Premium collection (gettyimages.com) – 65 images, $854.26

Whitewall through EyeEm Premium collection (whitewall.com) – 1 image, $13.66

Interesting, don’t you think? While most of my income came from the EyeEm premium collection (and mostly through Getty Images) if we work out the average sale per image then we can see that the images that aren’t in the Premium collection are actually better for our income.

Average sales for the Premium collection images is around $13 per image whilst the average sale from the EyeEm Market is around $35.

Many users think that the Premium collection is the end goal or puts you in the best position for sales and, while it is true that you could sell more images, I would say that the standard EyeEm Market is where the bigger sales are going to be made.

One key thing to remember is that whenever someone buys an image from the EyeEm market (directly from EyeEm) that you get a 50/50 revenue split with them. If the image is listed for $20 you get $10, simple. But when your images are in the premium collection both the partner and EyeEm need to take a cut before you get yours. This means that if Getty Images were to sell your photo for $20 then they would take a cut (let’s say $10) and then EyeEm would take a cut ($5) and then you would take what is left: $5.

Obviously that is just an example but I think many people may feel disappointed or maybe even cheated that they receive such a small share from partner sales. Don’t fall in to this trap though!

Remember: 100% of zero sales is $0, so even though the income is lower on the premium collection images it’s still an income.

You only have to look how much I earned from the premium collection to see that it’s worth it regardless of how much of a percentage you get from each sale. It’s easy to look at the $2 Getty Images sales and snub them because they seem so insignificant, but at the end of the year they all add up.

As EyeEm becomes more well known as an image provider our chances of selling photos directly from their service is only going to increase. Until that day arrives, keep uploading those images to the premium collection and taking advantage of the awesome partnerships EyeEm has for us.

You’re In The Right Place

Finally, just before we get into the income report stats for December, I just wanted to reassure you that if you are looking for tips and advice to increase your own EyeEm market income then you are in the right place.

I received a late Christmas present this week in the form of an email from the EyeEm team. It was just a simple mail-out that offered a free €15 voucher to spend on the EyeEm online store (I snapped up a grey EyeEm t-shirt in case you were wondering).

What I found really interesting about this email though was thins line…

‘As a top EyeEm Market contributor, we want to thank you for another amazing year…’

Now, I’m not sure how big their sample size was and for all I know they could have sent this to the top 100,000 market contributors but I’m going to assume that it wasn’t that many. Either way it means that you are reading the income reports of someone who is officially an EyeEm Market top contributor.

So stay tuned because in 2017 I will be adding even more content, sharing even more of my tips and techniques and hopefully getting some other top sellers involved too. Remember, this is all for you so get involved, join in with the Facebook community and be sure to ask any questions in the comments of these posts.

 

EyeEm Photo Sales & Earnings Breakdown

The following figures show the exact earnings I have received by selling my photos on the EyeEm Market. These numbers show the exact amount available for me to withdraw into my bank account.

Total this month: $89.66

The ‘total this month’ amount counts all sales that happened from the 1st calendar day of the month to the last.

Number of images sold this month: 4

The ‘number of images sold this month’ amount is also based on the 1st calendar day of the month to the last.

Total to date: $1,518.16

The ‘total to date’ amount is the grand total of all earnings made from selling photos on the EyeEm Market, from my first sale in June 2015 to date.

 

Images That Sold This Month

Here are the images that sold this month through EyeEm, including how much I received from the sale and which EyeEm Market vendor it sold through.

 

Lessons Learned In December

Another year come and gone, how was it for you? Every year has its ups and downs but it’s on us to make the most of everything, and this is true also for photography. Some months you might feel like you are just wasting your time or that you’re not good enough but keep going!

Sales will come, the market is so big and the demand is so high that there is a place for everyone. Maybe you had a good year? If you did then that’s awesome! What did you learn, what can you share and what are your next steps? Come join us on Facebook and share your story.

For me, December is a time to reflect and reorganise. Does this matter to me? Should I take this with me in to the new year? What do I need to do to be better?

2017 is my year of technically better photography (I’m working on my technique and relying less on Photoshop), better vlogs (because moving from a big city in Thailand to a small town in England was bound to be difficult) and both of these things can be achieved by working on my relationship with my new camera and with you guys.

Find me on EyeEm, share with me the photos you are proud of and make 2017 the best year ever.