If someone want me to show him something, i just ask him to show me his ten best pictures.

Then I show him his pics defects and what he need to remove. Most of the time, the Photoshop part is the most discouraging.. 

Another thing would be to show them all the great pics which get accepted but don't get sold (much) on micro, either because they're not really what stock buyers are looking for or because they just get swamped by the competition. I saw one only this week by a poster here which I thought was fantastic and really useful, yet it had only sold a handful of times - and I can hardly imagine the two reasons above applied.

Give them a 10K shopping list.

yeah, that cuts their interest short pretty quickly. and if it doesn't, the few family members and friends who have thrown a few photos up on iStock lost interest when their first five files didn't garner sales. people don't realize how much work it takes to establish yourself.

I've discussed stock with those who seemed to be interested in selling their work. They're usually shocked to hear that their sunsets over the ocean vacation snapshots would never sell. I give them the IS web site and ask them to study the categories and let me know which ones they wanted to focus on. I say that they could probably make some money if they could do better, more creative photography in those areas and do it for $1 payments. No, I've never had a second discussion with any of them.

Quote from: louoates on January 11, 2012, 00:03

I've discussed stock with those who seemed to be interested in selling their work. They're usually shocked to hear that their sunsets over the ocean vacation snapshots would never sell. I give them the IS web site and ask them to study the categories and let me know which ones they wanted to focus on. I say that they could probably make some money if they could do better, more creative photography in those areas and do it for $1 payments. No, I've never had a second discussion with any of them.

Perfect Lou!  I'm gonna try your method next time

On the other hand, they might check for themselves and think, "I could do that!", in Pollyanna mode.
http://www.istockphoto.com/search/text/sunset%20ocean/source/basic#1e3066eb
http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?searchterm=ocean+sunset&x=9&y=13&search_group=&lang=en&search_source=search_form

I thought this had some interesting points and wondered what people think a few years later, so thought I'd revive this old topic rather than start a new one.

I've had several people I know via Fine Art America, professional photographers and advance amateurs from photo groups I belong to, as well as family members ask me about stock photography. I've written up a two-page summary of the different sites, trying to be encouraging while managing their expectations, and have offered to review their first 10 for shutterstock and first 4 for Alamy. I also suggest that they check out fotolia/Adobe and dreamstime. And I give them a link to this forum so they can get a broader perspective and appreciate the downside.

I don't send them to the low earners but all of these people are good photographers and should be able to get accepted, though whether they will keep up the hard work to actually make any money at it is a different story. All of them are looking to do it on the side and not as a main source of income. I don't think I'd encourage anyone to try and do this full-time.

Some of these same people have gone out of their way to help me with pricing and advising me what to offer clients when I do portraits and parties - I started out shooting for local magazines so taking on portrait work was a change for me. And many people in various forums have shared great advice about stock photography, so I'm more than happy to help. There's so much competition out there with 70 million photos that I don't get hung up on whether they'll be shooting the same type of work as I am.

Anyway, curious what you all have to say. At Easter I'll be reviewing some photos with my sister-in-law who is finally poised to take the plunge, so when I saw this old thread it piqued my interest.

Hahahaha. I'd just show them my earnings for 2015 on iS compared to previous years. Not much more to say - people were generally shocked to hear of what I earned on iS even when it was E+ and Vetta etc; no one is interested in stupid 25c subs.
We must be mad.

Recommend the classes you took/school you attended or whatever else you did to learn how to be a photographer. For me as an illustrator, 4 years of college studying art history, color theory, design, illustration, photography, sculpture, life drawing, painting, cartooning, then night classes after graduation in humorous illustration and cartooning...and of course, being"artsy" from childhood and taking lots of art classes in high school to prepare for college acceptance. Then investing in a Mac, software, taking more classes to learn Illustrator, reading and taking the "test" at iStock to be accepted, studying keywording, staying on top of design and color trends....it's a long, boring list. I'm sure their eyes will glaze over, as my sister's did when she asked me to teach her how to "do advertising."

Or you could just show them this post.

Oh jeez. Just realized this thread is from 2012. And here I am responding to the op.