Step by step guide for stock photography

[steheap]

I've had a free downloadable book on my web site for some time, and about 200 people have downloaded it and hopefully found it useful. Over the past months, I've been working on greatly expanding that, adding sections on using keywording, model releases, Lightburner, Deepmeta as well as summaries of the various tips and tricks that seem to work on each of the stock sites. It currently runs to over 40 Letter (A4) size pages, and I guess it represents all the learning I have gained over the past four years - some from this great site and more from just making mistakes and learning from them.

I've decided to take a chance this time and sell the book at a very reasonable $9.99, and so have worked a shopping cart into my Wordpress blog so that the transactions can all occur transparently. You will be able to see from some of my longer blogs what sort of writing style I have, and also how much I manage to make from stock photography - my hope is that a day's earnings from a newcomer to this industry is not too much to ask for the book!

Here is the link to the introductory post about the book: http://www.backyardsilver.com/stock_photography_ebook/
Steve

[steheap]

There has been a ton of interest in this book (in terms of the number of hits), but no purchases, which means one of two things. Either it is rubbish  , or I have priced it too high. Making the kind assumption that it is the second, I have reduced the price to only $4.99. A steal...

http://www.backyardsilver.com/stock_photography_ebook/

Steve

[Sean Locke Photography]

Wow, 22 hours.  You need to have a little patience.  Of course, if you lower the price, you won't make back what you'll lose by training people to take your sales, but...

[cascoly]

there several other possibilities, and pricing is not a likely cause

--people had something else in mind when they clicked, eg, they were looking for something about how to take stock images, rathere than how to do the business side

--they thought they'd get something free [no reflection on quality]

-- hits are from bloggers, etc who may not be buyers

in any case, 1 day is too soon to make decisions.  another possibility is to offer it for $10 thru clickbank and give a 50% commission

steve

[steheap]

Thanks for both your comments. Sean is right - I have a habit of teaching people to take over my job. Maybe I am better at writing than photography! I did have earlier posts about using Google Ads to draw people to our referral links, which was successful in the sense that a lot of people clicked my referral links, but I think I have made about $2 from their images!

On the pricing, I did go backward and forwards in my mind about the price. My original idea was $4.99 but friends persuaded me that $9.99 for all that fantastic information was the minimum I should charge.

As an unknown author, I need to start somewhere to build an audience, and maybe $4.99 is that starting point!

On the hits, a lot of them come from this great site, which is perhaps not a typical audience for a step by step guide. After all, you all know how to do this better than me, because I learned a lot from your posts!

Steve

[steheap]

I'm sure you are all waiting to see how the sales have gone since I announced the book on 1 June 

Well.... sixteen customers so far! It ended up being my third best stock income after Shutterstock and iStock this month.

The reviews I have seen so far have been very nice - here is a verbatim set of reviews: http://www.backyardsilver.com/stock_photography_ebook/get-started-in-stock-user-reviews/.

Thanks for any purchases from the Microstockgroup visitors!

Steve