#EyeEmPaid: My June 2017 EyeEm Income Report

Hello you! Wow, is it almost July already? This year is just flying by, don’t you think?

But the year is far from over and we have plenty of things to look forward to. I know I sound like a broken record (and I’ve even started getting on my own nerves!) but by the time you read this my girlfriend and I should have the keys to the first ever house we’ve bought. Yep, that’s right, the wait should finally be over and we’ll have our own space again.

So what does this mean for you?

Well, it means more content, more tips and more tutorials. I’ve still got heaps of images saved up that I’ve been taking over the past few months and I want to go through them with you. I use a variety of different processes – I still haven’t worked out the way I like to work the most – so you’ll get to see how I edit images in Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop, with RadLabs and with the EyeEm app itself. These won’t be planned and will be mostly off the cuff, just me showing you my process in real time.

Now, I’m not some super famous photographer who you should copy if you want to succeed but I’m hoping that you will find something useful in those editing sessions. I have no doubt that eventually you will surpass me and viewing my editing sessions won’t be useful to you anymore (although, you still may find them interesting) so I’ll also try to provide resources for you to check out when you need something more.

Alright, let’s keep this intro brief and get to the good stuff: the sales this month!

As you can expect I haven’t uploaded to EyeEm for a while – I’m stashing my images to record the editing sessions – so any income this month is again totally passive. I haven’t done anything recently to earn it, I just have certain images which keep bringing in the sales.

A Few Quick Things

Ok, before we get to the sales this month there are a few things which are really cool that I’d like to share with you. I’ll try to be quick, I promise! Here goes…

• This month the EyeEm team announced a new feature called ‘EyeEm Selects’. It’s awesome if you take photos with your mobile device and if you have used the EyeEm app ‘The Roll’ before then you will have a pretty good idea about what it is. Find out more about EyeEm Selects.
• EyeEm have announced the date for the 2017 EyeEm Festival. The Festival will take place over a weekend from the 15th to the 17th of September. Find out more about the 2017 EyeEm Festival.
• Our EyeEm Awesome! Facebook group is getting quite lively and there are some great Q&A going on in the community. The EyeEm community is one of my favourites and it’s really great to see members helping others in this group. If you’re a part of it already then I want to say thank you for asking and answering questions, you are awesome!

Alright, alright, here’s we go…

*New* Community Images That Sold This Month

As many of you who follow this blog may know I also run a private Facebook group where members of the EyeEm community get their questions answered. Facebook is great for this because it is much easier to have discussions about a whole range of topics. This month I asked our community to share some images that they too had sold…

For the second month in a row I’ve also asked our private Facebook group to share images that they too have sold. When EyeEm Market payday came along there was some very happy members of our group and for those who didn’t get a sale I’m sure they were feeling inspired.

Our group member Ovidiu was kind enough to answer some questions regarding recent sales and there was some really great insights for our group to consider.

Here’s a some of the images that our community members sold this month –

Congrats to Liam for selling four of his images this month. Liam also shared with us that sales from his EyeEm Market images will be used to fund his new phone – a great way to spend it I’d say!

Jenna beat me this month by earning more from her sales than I did – congrats Jenna! Her image above sold for $65.63 and I love how simple it is. How many times do we walk by places like this each and every day and think nothing of it. Well Jenna saw something in it and is now reaping the rewards. Love it!

Another shot from Jenna which sold for $59.42. I really like how the editing for this image matches the tone of the image itself, and I guess I wasn’t the only one!

Congratulations again to Paulien for selling her image of the flag again (it made it’s first appearance in last months income report). I especially like the banana shot, so simple but there is a lot of space for buyers to add text or crop the image.

Paulien has a whole series of shots with this banana as it is gradually unpeeled and eaten. It’s a great idea to take a variety of shots like this and is an easy way to give buyers more options (and you more sales).

Join our Facebook group to get your questions answered and submit your own images next month.

Lessons Learned This Month

Last month was a very light month for my EyeEm Market sales – just $10 – but, that was still great. I don’t expect anything so I’m always happy and never disappointed. This month though has been another great one and as I get around to uploading more images it should only get better.

As always my images of the soft coloured flowers has brought me in some sales. This image is almost always included whenever I have sales from the EyeEm Market, it’s quite amazing. But just because it sells a lot doesn’t mean that it earns a lot. The images of Jade looking out to Mount Fuji sells less but earns more, and really that’s what it’s all about when it comes to sales.

This month I did another little Google dive to see where my images have ended up. It’s always a bit of fun to see where images have ended up and how they have been used.

Unsurprisingly the image of my girlfriend Jade tends to find a way on to blogs posts about hair styles. A rough Google translation of the post reveals that they are talking about her braids.

The great thing about this image is that I’ve seen it used in two entirely different scenarios: the first, as we have said above, is sharing information about hair styles and the second is travel focussed.

If you can create an interesting image that can be utilised in more than one scenario then you potentially double it’s usefulness and your sales. Here’s the same image that I discovered is now being used as a book cover:

So my takeaway for this month is to try and capture multiple themes in your images. Sometimes you might not even know you are doing it, but if you can actively seek to add a variety of themes then you give yourself a greater chance of appealing to the market. However, don’t take this as a cue to try and shoehorn different themes together. Keep it simple, keep it sensible and have some fun with you.

Until next month, good luck and keep shooting!