Hi to all!
I need some advises from the community to increase the sales of my portfolio. Actually I have about 1000 pics on all the Top and Middle Tier sites, and some Low Earners sites and sales are very similar to the average that I can see on the later frame of Microstockgroup. I have started to upload in 2010 to all sites and I upload regularly each month about 50 ne pics.

Could you give me some advice to increase my sales?

Here below the link to my portfolio in SS to let you judge my portfolio

http://www.shutterstock.com/g/alessandro0770/sets

Many thanks to all!!

Your port is full of images that have limited use as stock.   Have a look at the sort of images that sell well and change your subject matter.

Whereupon you'll be competing against all the established high-fliers, some of whom are indicating overall falls in income, particularly at iStock (obviously), but even some indies.
Devil and deep blue sea.

Your photos are lovely, but I could only see a small number via the SS link, not 100 as you mentioned.

Quote from: fotografer on January 10, 2013, 06:01

Your port is full of images that have limited use as stock.   Have a look at the sort of images that sell well and change your subject matter.

Whereupon you'll be competing against all the established high-fliers, some of whom are indicating overall falls in income, particularly at iStock (obviously), but even some indies.
Devil and deep blue sea.

Your photos are lovely, but I could only see a small number via the SS link, not 100 as you mentioned.

Yes you are right also.  It's very difficult to get started in stock nowadays because you are either producing images with limited use or comepeting against the established contributors.   The only way to really get sales nowadays is to do a new take on subjects that sell well.

In a world long forgotten (prior to digital photography) when we used to shoot on film, the rule of thumb as a stock photographer was $1 per image per year that you had on file with a stock agency so if you had 1000 images with a reputable agency you could reasonably expect a return of $1000 per year from your portfolio.

Since the advent of digital photography the learning curve for stock photographers has become seriously quick, if you shot on film you had to wait to get it back to see if it was decent enough to be accepted, with digital however and instant replay you know within seconds if you have it or not and can re-shoot till you got it in the bag.

The other point to remember is that with microstock agencies selling our work so cheap in some cases they are keen to have as many images as possible on file, (I remember the race for the first agency to reach 1 million images on file) that they accept almost anything.

Another factor to consider from my advertising days is that in advertising your response is 1% - so out of every 100 people that see your image 1 person will buy it. - This can be used to gauge your success quite well in stock photography

Example 1: your image has had 100 views and has been downloaded 3 times = this is a good selling image as it is above the 1% response rule

Example 2: Your image has had 300 views and no downloads = you should delete it from your portfolio as is is obviously not upto standard.

A small experiment I carried out a while ago was when I uploaded a below average picture of a girl in a bikini to a site and used key words such as 'hot sexy female'  the image had 744 views in the first month alone but not 1 single download so it shows how some people are just browsing for a cheap thrill, the moral of this exercise  is to be as ruthless with your keywords as you are with your image editing - 10 accurate keywords are 1 million times better than 100 vague keywords as accurate keywords show how many times your image is viewed based on relevant subject matter as far as the person browsing for the image is concerned.

I guess in short I'm saying its a numbers game, the more images you have the more you will sell - be ruthless and do away with non selling images after say a 3 month period and always use the features on the sites that allow you to see the images that are frequently downloaded so you can see whats trending and get some shoot ideas.

Hope some of this makes sense to you.

Cheers, D

Quote from: Darren Green on March 28, 2013, 15:56

<snip> be ruthless and do away with non selling images after say a 3 month period <snip>

I liked your post but I have to ask why delete non selling images?

I don't have to pay to host them?  What does it cost me to have them in the agencies files?

As an agency I could see the logic in this, but as a contributor I don't understand your logic. As a newbie I would like to understand.

Glenn

My logic is sort of 2 part, so let me try to explain as follows.

By keeping your collection sharp, and only having your best images up you can better gauge your ROI (return on image) - thats the personal benefit to you.

Also when your collection is made up of nothing but the very best you have to offer when a potential buyer looks at an image of yours that isn't quite what he's after he would be more tempted to possibly check your portfolio to see if YOU have something suitable, even if you don't but he sees nothing but top end images from you you could end up with an email requesting a commission be undertaken (important to have contact details available in your profile with all sites) whilst this hasn't happened to me personally I know it has happened to two other photographers I have worked with.

Then from the agency point of view, all their statistics are automated so if you have 200 images that are getting no views or purchases these are lowering your rating on that agencies site and making it very difficult to move up.

Remember stock images that sell are quality, it's not about the quantity.

Hope that clarifies my point a little more but as it's mid night I'm going cross eyed so I may have rambled on a bit.

SS doesnt even report views.

.