MicrostockGroup

Okay, sry, but here's may take on this: you just have to go on any site that can list pictures ordered by popularity, downloads, etc... Search for keywords of things that are available for you to shoot ('dog woman house' in this case f.e.), check out the best sellers, thats what you need to emulate. Asking around in forums is pretty much useless compared to that for several reasons, and a picture is worth a thousand words anyway...

You don't need to search everything unless you are retarded. You look around and 'get the picture' of what is necessary in terms lighting, composition etc. It's not rocket science, is it? I also don't understand why should anyone diss doing some visual research on a subject matter, it's lot more helpful than listening to everybody's philosophy about it, that just gets most ppl confused imho. It's useless.

Oh, boy... I've trying to build a good image of Brazil here and now you have two threads with a lot of flamed responses going on... 

Trying to figure out stock is not going to work. I can't even describe the absolute ridiculous things I've needed to buy as images for concepts I've come up with. In other words, anything goes.

However, I have some nice images related to banking and finance that used to sell pretty well and are not dated. Certainly in the present economic conditions they are very relevant but they no longer sell. They don't sell because they're 5 years old. I believe that the search engine algorithm favours newer, fresher images which is why pics of flowers and fish still get accepted. Buyers are always looking for fresh images of the same subject.

I also have 5 images on dreamstime that are the only images on the site of that subject. If you do a search for that, my 5 are the only ones that come up. Out of 12 million photos. You might think wow I've got the market cornered. Maybe so, but if something hasn't been covered yet there's a reason. It's just not a subject people look for. In a year I've had 2 sales on those 5 images. If you look to cover subjects that haven't been covered to death you will end up with a small portfolio that nets you enough money to buy coffee 2 or 3 times a year.

Shoot what you want, try to so it in a fresh and interesting way and then cross your fingers.