Alexandre Rotenberg

It's becoming a game of two halves with: 1. SS taking the lead at $156 (helped by a $66 SOD) 2. Followed by iStock with $119 (April) 3. AS slowed down to $76 4. Alamy stopped producing almost completely and stuck at $66 Same order as it's been for the past 4 years... 😕

Shot in Varenna, just across from Bellagio. Truly spectacular place.

Interesting 3-way close race this month... As of today (May 14): 1. Adobe Stock is leading with $64 2. Alamy is close behind with $61 3: Following closely by SS with $58 First time ever that SS is in 3rd place. iStock to report on April results next week.

With all the fuss going on now about Cryptos, I’ve put together this guest-post over at Xpiks titled: “Creating trending cryptocurrency trading concepts that sell”

I see you were in Lake Como, beautiful place. Unfortunately it's a saturated market and you need to capture content extraordinarily (you did OK actually). Give you credit that it's not easy if you're just there for the afternoon. So it's best that you shoot locally, wherever you live, and try to become a reference for your town/city. My best-seller from Lake Como...

This article offers interesting insight for budding book cover artists. https://english.elpais.com/arts/2021-04-26/what-makes-a-movie-poster-great-spanish-designer-behind-oscar-hits-shares-his-secrets.html

Best to concentrate your efforts on creating new content instead of figuring out what algos will do imo

Thanks for the comments and links. I've been thinking about it some more since publishing that piece and we must all remember that although Arcangel have been around since 2004, their collection is less than 1 million (831,926 to be exact on April 25, 2021). In other words, the number of images accepted on SS in just a month is greater than the whole Arcangel port many times over! SS used to publish these figures but no longer. Therefore, the last thing Arcangel desire is a bloated collection with poor/mediocre potential book covers. If they were to let almost everything be accepted

I'm well thanks, much improved (can't say the same about my microstock income year-on-year though!). Would be great to sneak in some editorial shots if you can of your wife getting vaccinated! I'm sure those would sell but put them for sale where you're actually rewarded for the risk (assuming it's a restricted place).

That works as long as you avoid uploading similars to micros. I've uploaded them this batch from yesterday, which was nice to finally get some fresh air after an annoying two-week bout with Covid (all healthy now)! Oh, also happy to report that I had a recent sale on Arcangel of some wine glasses and defocused bottles of liquor at a bar. I guess I'll find out at the beginning of next month how much I'll earn (surely more than 10cents )

Speaking of flowers, here's a nice vlog of @Andrew Balcombe photographing flower fields in the Netherlands Brought me back good memories.

Flowers can sell (such as the two below that have done OK but as u can see they are within an interest context) but why would anybody in their right mind spend their time shooting them when there are a million other things that sell much better and easier. To me it's just laziness and pure comfort zone thinking. Instagram likes won't translate in stock sales for the same images.

If you want to go after the low hanging fruit, There are major news stories going on now in (Bahia State) Brazil related to the virus. Upload them as editorial and the dimes roll in. At least 1000x more commercially interested and useful than flowers and boring landscapes (which are terribly keyworded anyway so buyers will not find them).

Make a design that you'll work for 10cents

Yeah, lots mainly editorials but it seems like when there was a software upgrade it deleted one of the boxes about editorial caption/description. In any case, I'm putting most of my non-editorial, non-book covers over at Wirestock and editorials at Alamy RM for 50% potential royalties. Spreading it around to multiple agencies isn't as profitable as it used to be.