Hello everyone, I'm Jason. I've been quietly learning from many in this forum for 3-4 months now, and as a newbie have had little to say, but now that I have made a bit of a go of it, and have about 2 months of actual participation, uploading, and a mere 11 files sold, I thought it was time to write a post in order to (a) share my early experiences as a stock photography newbie in 2014 (I missed the gold rush, but I only learned photography in '07, and the idea never occurred to me until last fall), (b) hope that some veterans and recognizable microtstock group members can chime in with some advice, and (c) ponder if it's worth it going forward, since this is clearly a tough racket.

I am only doing this part-time, so it's not like I can upload hundreds per month, but I do hope to actually have enough to make some rrasonably decent extra income by the end of the year, so I am hoping to have 1,000 images at the various agencies by the end of the year. I'll need to start getting to about 90-100 per month.

I am presuming I will never be an exclusive anywhere, so I am not spending as much time as possible making as many new shots as I can and delivering them to iStock then moving to the next batch. Rather, I am spending a lot of time (too much probably) on the computer, going through old photos and submitting each one of them I process to multiple sites (5 so far), and trying to learn how to be better with Photoshop and how to establish a more efficient worklfow. My portfolio is, for now, oriented toward travel and architecture and landscape, probably typical of people like me who started photography with no intent to make money. The made-for-stock oriented shots are a totally new thing for me, and learning how to shoot with studio lighting is also new. But of course I will add more of these types of images in, trying to do things more commercially. With that said, I'll write a little bit about what I have learned/observed, some of the issues I am facing, and ask for anyone to offer ideas. All comments/criticisms are welcome.

1. Workflow. This has been the hardest thing so far. I shoot with Nikon so all I ever did before was process RAW using Capture NX2, which I like, but is somewhat limited, and is very poor for embedding keywords. I am also learning Photoshop techniques (helpful for real distortion/perspective correction, as well as for the filters I can play with in case I want to make snazzy/stylized versions for Fine Art America (I probably do), and for Nik Dfine noise reduction.

It turns out that one of my major impediments to developing an efficient and faster workflow is the fact that most of my shots were shot with a Nikon D300, which was kind of noisy even at the lowest native ISO of 200, especially with rich blue skies, which I frequently shot with a polarizing filter, if viewd at 100%. I had no idea back then it would cause headaches for me today. And I am finding that the challenge of striking a balance between de-noising and retaining non-blur/focus, in order to avoid getting dinged by the likes of shutterstock and fotolia for one or the other, is a particularly tall order, given the somewhat noisy images I have. I realize I could shoot only new shots and only at ISO 100 from now on, but I have some good images of great places like Paris, Istanbul, Great Wall, and others that I consider commercially viable (proven by the fact that 6 of my 11 sales so far are this type of image), and I really want to put them up. That may be a mistake and I might be better off only uploading images shot knowing what I know about stock now, and I am shooting some, but I lean towards mostly wanting to get my old shots online because I have more to learn at the computer than anything. And I don't know how to make this faster other than by slogging away putting in the time and just hoping I improve. I keep thinking I should learn lightroom, but one reason I haven't gone ahead with that is that when you enter keywords in your specified order, it re-orders them alphabetically, which I gather is fine for some sites, but not for the others (I forget which ones) which have a search engine that recognizes the leading keywords most heavily. So I keyword in Photoshop, even images I edit initially and export to jpeg from CaptureNX2 (ouch).

2. The sites. So far, I am submitting to istock, Fotolia, Dreamstime, 123RF and Pond5. I am planning to add BigStock, Canstock and Deposit. Why not Shutterstock? Mostly because I suck. Sometimes I feel like they are unreasonable (I know I'm not the only one) but it's their site, and I have to tow the line. I've been rejected 5 times with them so far, by trying to de-noise old images. It was a bad idea because then the problem becomes "focus." On several submissions, I've had them say as many as 3 images "would have" passed, then turn around and reject those that they said were good enough, the next time, by the next reviewer. Yes, I have had a total of more than 7 images that have been deemed good enough at one time or another by SS, but never all at the same time, and I don't dare include them all in the same submission next time because 5 of those have also been subsequently rejected, after having been considered passable during an earlier submission if the others were also good. And two of them, they said the only problem was the category, which next time were submitted with the correct category but then they decided composition was inadequate. I maintain the composition was creative, unique and interesting, yet not standard and not stock-oriented and thus, in the line of fire. I understand though. The owner of SS didn't get to be a billionaire by having low standards. The onus is on me to get into SS on their terms. Their standard are, if at times unfair in comparison with other crappy images they already have in their collection, clearly extremely high and I am determined to eventually get in. But I learned that noise reducing usually doesn't earn a pass with them because the blurring inherent in noise reduction becomes the issue.

Fotolia is the 2nd most dofficult for me to get images accepted at. My acceptance rate is less than 30%! I'm sure the de-noising/focus slapbacks SS has given me have negativelyu affected my acceptance rate here too. But either way, it's rough going over there. But despite only having 22 with them so far, I have sold 3 files there, and the first was when I was stuck at 16.

Dreamstime can be tough, and while not as tough as Fotolia, they have rejected some that Fotolia, the toughest (non-SS) site, have not only accepted, but sold. 2 of my 3 files sold on Fotolia were rejectd by Dreamstime. This makes me scratch my head but whatever.

123RF accepts almost everything, but what sucks about them is they have actually accepted some of my lowest quality submissions, which I'll be surprised if they ever sell, while rejecting some of my best shots, again, including some that have sold at Fotolia. 2 to be precise. Weird.

Pond5 seems to accept everything, and indeed, almost convey the impression they are just oh-so-grateful to have images at all, since they send a thank you note. I sell very few at $10 & up, keeping most images there low priced because even half of that will be more than I have made on any sale so far, but still no sales there despite 78 images.

iStock seems to be very strict in their application process (a friend of my was rejected with good shots) but accepts almost everything once you're in, with the single area of strict judging is as it applies to logos and faces. They even ask for model releases where I have blurred faces beyond recognition, so they are hyper-rigid about it but I take it with a grain of salt. Aside from 3 sales each at DT and FT, my 5 other sales have only come from iStock, and all were basically backgrounds of some sort, except for one plate of diced cucumbers. My first file sold was at iStock through the partner program.

3. The pics. I haven't yet submitted a handful of my best images, almost because I am considering them to be worth more thhan 27 cents and looking at better options for selling them (maybe Alamy, maybe Symbiostock, maybe FAA), especially since I am not really making any real money at this point, and just learning. This is only several dozen or so. Otherwise, I'm almost being random about what I am choosing to upload now. I've done some textured backgrounds, and 4 have sold at istock. I need to get better at those and I can. I see tons of textures now around town and I am shooting them as I find them and have the time (again this is a part-time thing). Plus, I am trying to learn white background shooting, so I am about to start a new process soon: cook my meals, shoot my meals on white background, eat my meals. And oh yeah, assemble some food too, for staged props. I've been looking around on iStock to get a feel for what sells. I have no real ability to shoot people for now, as I live far from family and won't hire models since I don't know what I'm doing.

So that's my early experiences.

I'm already starting to think about how long this will/should go on, and if I should. I'm not stopping now because I don't have enough images online to go by. The thing about this is, none of the 11 images I've sold so far, have sold for more than 75 cents. I realize my portfolio is too miniscule to form a firm judgement, but while I was pleased to have sales, I have to wonder how much effort will have to be put in to make decent money. I've put in a lot so far and yet don't have many images up. It's a slow process, and a hard slog, for sure. I wish I had some suggestions for being quicker.

As for money and return, I have read with keen interest the idea of Return Per Image, and what it should be. For non-exclusives, shutterstock seems mandatory to have a reasonable RPI, but while I see some people say $1 per year per image is reasonable, especially for Alamy, I wouldn't continue if that's all I earned, given how long it takes me to process, keyword, describe (embedded in Photoshop), upload, and categorize every image on the various sites. It would be nice to get to $5 annually per image, but that won't happen til I step up my game as a photpographer *and* as an image processor, and also not until I get into SS. So I'd say $2-3 RPI annually for now is a target to shoot for, and then see how close I come to getting there. And from what I read, I think I should judge this on the basis of how many files I have *on average* per site. Is this the correct way to determine it? I have 78 on Pond5 (when they approve my 11 pending), 61 on istock (11 pending), 55 on 123rf (11 pending), 34 on dreamstime (11 pending), 22 on fotolia, 15 on Alamy. That's 265 total, but only 44 images per site average. Should I then think that (assuming I will be on shutterstock soon), if I consider it reasonable to earn $4 annually per image, the current portfolio should earn $176 annually and $14 this month? Even without shutterstock, I could only expect to earn half that, which is $7. I'm not even sure I will earn $7 this month, which is the $2 annual RPI mark. So while I am not yet considering throwing in the towel (it's far too early, and I have been enjoying learning) it's clearly not worth it financially to continue at this rate for much longer, or shoot stuff I don't enjoy. My total so far is somewhere around $4.50-$5 in the 5 weeks since files started to sell. What I am more likely to do is increase my portfolio tenfold before really deciding. Or, make that eleven-fold, getting it to 500 images average across the sites. If I can yield $4 annually/image, that's $167 per month. I'd continue at that rate. Any less than $3, I'd probably bag it, or quit as a regular thing I work at, shooting stuff I don't enjoy, and only uploading when I have stuff I really enjoyed shooting.

I know there is no way for anyone to tell me how much I earn, but I am thinking out loud here. I just hope I can improve my efficiency and workflow so I can get to 400-500 images rather quickly, and improve overall both at the computer and with my camera. Thanks for listening, and sorry for the long post to anyone who may have read this far and been disappointed. I'm looking forward to continuing to learn from everyone here.

Ill second what mantis wrote and add:

Develop a workflow where you write keywords into the iptc
learn to produce pop and pep in photoshop
develop an eye for stockphotos, shot for the customers, not for you.
photograph keywords.
forget your old images, they sound like they dont do very well, and begin to shoot new ones, where you avoid quality problems, so you dont waste your time by repairing things.

Thanks very much to all three of you for replying.

@Mantis: I think volume will just be a matter of getting there over time, through improvements in workflow. Salability is something I have to work on, since I am new and need to learn more of what buyers want. Technical quality I can do with new images but older, already noisy images are problematic to work with. I�ve long since grown a thick skin and am happy to ask for image critique. But I see the critique forum is not very active. What do I need to know about monitor calibration? I�m completely clueless in that.

@JPSDK, thanks, I do enter/embed keywords in the IPTC. What do you mean �photograph keywords?� But yeah, I�ve spent a lot of time repairing things. I maybe should bag that. I�ve got several hundred new ones I can work on, half of which may be viable for stock.

@farbled, one reason I didn�t get into Lightroom yet (though I will reconsider) is the fact that when you enter keywords, it doesn�t retain the order you put them in, while Photoshop keeps them in the same order. This, despite both being Adobe products. Doesn�t make sense! 2nd reason is I presume I can do all the same edits in Photoshop that Lightroom allows, and then some. But yes, if Lightroom speeds up the workflow significantly, I�l have to consider how important it is to keep keywords in the order I want them.

Most of the noise I�m dealing with at ISO 200 from my D300 pics are of polarized blue skies. It�s not an issue where there are details. But heck, I have a D7000 now, which is supposed to be even better regarding noise, but I shot some similar polarized blue sky pics at ISO 100, and I still see some noise in them. Frustrating, though it�s not terrible. I�d be glad to send you my 100% images to show you.

Good final advice. I�ll keep shooting stuff I enjoy first, but want to learn and add studio white backgrounds as well anyway since it should help the income and is worth learning.

"You're right it's a long post.  Microstock is a tough way to make money and for you to be successful you must have:"


better add Shutter in that list as well. The provide 40% to 50% of my total income.

Get your 10 images ready and  post them here - we can guide to being accepted by them. Shutter is a must...

I'll pass on some advice I was given when I started:
1) Get accepted at SS, that's the majority of earnings unless you go exclusive at Istock
2) Don't bother submitting old pictures off your hard drive.  Unless you want to do it as a learning experience it is a waste of time.  The quality, subjects and composition will not be suitable for stock.
3) Get a copy of Lightroom and spend time learning it and developing a fast efficient workflow.  This is a numbers game and no longer can you afford more than a few minutes on any particular image.  The return is not there.
4) Become a master at key wording.  Your image may get accepted but it will not sell without good key words.
5) Unless you go macro-stock with travel and such, stock photos are boring and require a certain 'look' that can be used in different ways by the buyers.  Different sites have different 'looks' they like, you need to learn what works well at which site.
6) If you are serious submit your images to the critique forum over at SS, they will rip them apart and make you cry.  Get over it, and shoot something they grudgingly admit might possibly be good enough.  When you can do that submit 10 to SS and you will get accepted.
7) To make money at this you need to be able to get accepted several hundred top quality, well composed, interesting, and salable images every month.  Month after month.  $1 per image per year is a number often mentioned and I suspect it is fairly accurate.  But only as an average.  Better images higher return, poorer images lower return.  But better means more salable not just better image quality.  Best image in the world of an apple on white just is not going to matter because it has been done so often that it is hard for yours to get found.

No offense meant but if you have been rejected 5 times at SS you really need to step up your game.  Lots of other sites will accept your images but getting accepted is not the same as selling.  This is tough business which requires talent and very hard work.  Days of taking old images off your computer and making money are long, long gone.

Best advice I can give, if you really want this?  Put images on SS critique forum and learn from getting ripped apart.

Nothing wrong with Capture imho

if you've got PS then you've got Bridge and ACR,  is the same engine as LR, just looks yucky, but will certainly speed up your workflow.

It's probably a good experience to upload to all those other sites, but soon enough you'll delete them. I'm probably a year or so ahead of you and this year I cut back to just my top 5. 

I think shooting new stuff for SS is ideal, as they are very strict. iS has become so lax and accepts a lot, and SS has clamped down. As mentioned the different sites have their own "personality" so sometimes you'll shrug off a rejection because that's just the way they are. you could re-edit for them, but I just keep moving forward, so long as the file is on a few sites, i'm ok. sometimes your rejected files become top sellers elsewhere.

Thanks for sharing your process, Jason.  I am new as well and haven't gotten to your point yet so it's been very helpful to see your roadblocks and to hear the advice that others have provided.

Great thread - valuable info for newbies like me. I just got started this January and I am currently uploading images to SS, iS, DT, FT, 123, DP and YM. I have a very small port, about 100 images. My goal is to upload 10 images a week. Microstock has so far been a great experience. Going through the appliaction process at SS was an eye-opener. I got great advice from the SS forum and was able to pass on the second submission. I really enjoy doing this, but it would not be feasible without my current job. The income is very modest, but on the rise. :-) But the best part is that I am improving my photography. Income-wise, I hope that the money earned in time can finance a photography trip somewhere once a year. :-)

I used to use Capture NX2 as well - but now you can use the Nik filters (Viveza, Dfine, Color Effex, Silver Effex, etc), right in Lightroom and you have all the control points and it is so much faster than NX2. They are all available as a set from Google (for free if you've bought any of them in the past). The switch sped up my workload incredibly.

I'd agree that you should shoot new stuff but if you have old images you feel good about, working on them is a good way to learn the various software programs, so IMHO it's not a waste of time.

Best of luck with your efforts!

4.  I have also been accepted to Alamy and started uploading there.  I am leaning towards putting all these older travel images on Alamy instead of micro and see what happens. I also kind of like the fact that most of the coding for Alamy is done after the images have been accepted and not before, another time saver if a proportion of images on micro-sites will be rejected.  I know others hate the Alamy upload process, but I find it far less frustrating and time-consuming than (say) iStock, even using DeepMeta.  The occasional sale on Alamy might anyway outweigh what I might expect to earn for the same sort of images on micro sites over (say) a 12 month period. I would love to hear the views of others on that. 

Manage your expectations. Many buyers have deep discounts for bulk buying and you can have very low sales there which can be as low as <$3 to you (though to be fair, in my case that's from the UK newspaper scheme, which you can opt out of.) There is no way of 'shielding' your rare subject images from these discounts, just like you can't on e.g. Getty. 

Also check the rivals to your images. Again, in my experience, there are either hundreds/thousands of rival images with better search placement, or if there are very few, buyers aren't interested. Just like on iStock. Of course, you may have found a different unsupplied location which buyers have been wishing for all the time. Or maybe today's unloved place will be tomorrow's hotspot - we can dream!

One thing to note, if you upload unreleased images to Alamy they will be classified as RM.  If they are RM, you cannot have them on other sites as RF.   But you can have them as RF on both sites if you wish, though you may be cannibalising your own sales if customers do a price comparison.  For example, I have some images where I strongly disagree a property release is required, e.g. iStock take a particularly hard-line (and sometimes just silly) view of when a property release is needed.  So they are RF (editorial) there, but I have them as RF on Alamy as well because I have taken the view that a release is not required. 

Be very careful here. Alamy is actually far stricter than iStock about what they consider needs a release. However, you don't get rejections based on needing releases, because you don't indicate until after approval whether or not you have releases.
Alamy considers even fuzzy pixels of people, literally, tiny, tiny out of focus blobs in the background, as needing releases. (You can take them out, whereby you should label the image as having been digitally altered.) Any little part of a person needs a release.
Just about any sort of property is considered by Alamy to 'need releases' - far more than iStock would require.

I actually put 'needs release' on almost everything other than a 'lion out on the savanna' scenario on Alamy. Even if I'm 99% sure that the pic would be accepted on iS.

Alamy takes the view that it is the buyer's responsibility to check whether their use would need a release, so they might see that a small blob of pixels is never going to result in a lawsuit, so use an image commercially, even if marked needs MR, none available. Similarly, the buyer should know how to use images with property.
Example I remember not long after I started there, someone had an image rejected on iS because on a zip on a person's clothes, when zoomed right into, you could, with the eye of faith, 'just' make out YKK. It was a whole-body image IIRC so the YKK was tiny. In UK law, that would be 'incidental' and would not be actionable. But who knows what might happen in the Land of the Litigacious, or other places.

iStock took the view that anyone could buy their images in the knowledge that they can be used legally for any purpose.
Alamy puts more responsibility onto the buyer
http://www.alamy.com/customer/help/releases.asp
- provided that the seller has correctly indicated that they do not have a release, but one might be needed.

Another example: someone posted (here IIRC) about bunting with the Queen's photo on it, used during the Jubilee, and wondered if that would need a release for the Queen considering each bunting was relatively small in the image. But you'd have to consider whether someone might crop right into the Queen, then use the image commercially, no matter how unlikely that might seem to be.

Anyway, as the responsibility is 100% yours on Alamy, better safe than sorry, as you were told in your thread there. But ultimately, it's your risk to take, if you say 'no releases needed'.

Quote from: KerinF on May 16, 2014, 02:07

4.  I have also been accepted to Alamy and started uploading there.  I am leaning towards putting all these older travel images on Alamy instead of micro and see what happens. I also kind of like the fact that most of the coding for Alamy is done after the images have been accepted and not before, another time saver if a proportion of images on micro-sites will be rejected.  I know others hate the Alamy upload process, but I find it far less frustrating and time-consuming than (say) iStock, even using DeepMeta.  The occasional sale on Alamy might anyway outweigh what I might expect to earn for the same sort of images on micro sites over (say) a 12 month period. I would love to hear the views of others on that. 

Manage your expectations. Many buyers have deep discounts for bulk buying and you can have very low sales there which can be as low as <$3 to you (though to be fair, in my case that's from the UK newspaper scheme, which you can opt out of.) There is no way of 'shielding' your rare subject images from these discounts, just like you can't on e.g. Getty. 

Also check the rivals to your images. Again, in my experience, there are either hundreds/thousands of rival images with better search placement, or if there are very few, buyers aren't interested. Just like on iStock. Of course, you may have found a different unsupplied location which buyers have been wishing for all the time. Or maybe today's unloved place will be tomorrow's hotspot - we can dream!

Quote

One thing to note, if you upload unreleased images to Alamy they will be classified as RM.  If they are RM, you cannot have them on other sites as RF.   But you can have them as RF on both sites if you wish, though you may be cannibalising your own sales if customers do a price comparison.  For example, I have some images where I strongly disagree a property release is required, e.g. iStock take a particularly hard-line (and sometimes just silly) view of when a property release is needed.  So they are RF (editorial) there, but I have them as RF on Alamy as well because I have taken the view that a release is not required. 

Be very careful here. Alamy is actually far stricter than iStock about what they consider needs a release. However, you don't get rejections based on needing releases, because you don't indicate until after approval whether or not you have releases.
Alamy considers even fuzzy pixels of people, literally, tiny, tiny out of focus blobs in the background, as needing releases. (You can take them out, whereby you should label the image as having been digitally altered.) Any little part of a person needs a release.
Just about any sort of property is considered by Alamy to 'need releases' - far more than iStock would require.

I actually put 'needs release' on almost everything other than a 'lion out on the savanna' scenario on Alamy. Even if I'm 99% sure that the pic would be accepted on iS.

Alamy takes the view that it is the buyer's responsibility to check whether their use would need a release, so they might see that a small blob of pixels is never going to result in a lawsuit, so use an image commercially, even if marked needs MR, none available. Similarly, the buyer should know how to use images with property.
Example I remember not long after I started there, someone had an image rejected on iS because on a zip on a person's clothes, when zoomed right into, you could, with the eye of faith, 'just' make out YKK. It was a whole-body image IIRC so the YKK was tiny. In UK law, that would be 'incidental' and would not be actionable. But who knows what might happen in the Land of the Litigacious, or other places.

iStock took the view that anyone could buy their images in the knowledge that they can be used legally for any purpose.
Alamy puts more responsibility onto the buyer
http://www.alamy.com/customer/help/releases.asp
- provided that the seller has correctly indicated that they do not have a release, but one might be needed.

Another example: someone posted (here IIRC) about bunting with the Queen's photo on it, used during the Jubilee, and wondered if that would need a release for the Queen considering each bunting was relatively small in the image. But you'd have to consider whether someone might crop right into the Queen, then use the image commercially, no matter how unlikely that might seem to be.

Anyway, as the responsibility is 100% yours on Alamy, better safe than sorry, as you were told in your thread there. But ultimately, it's your risk to take, if you say 'no releases needed'.

thank you once again for your generosity in sharing your experience and advice.  Always very appreciated. 

Hi jason,
 I am also a newbie. Your sales figures are better than mine.  I started stock 2 months back with DT  IS. Got rejected at SS. On april 28  I reapplied to SS with images from  my DT portfolio. 7 were selected .  Whew. On may 7 my first sale at SS. So far  5 sales at SS. NO sales at DT. Shots of birds and insects mostly. 36 images at SS.  34 at DT, 16 pending. 8 at IS. I stopped uploading to IS. I suspect they dont look at images before passing them. Their search shows up mostly crappy images. I have noise issues with my old d300 shots. Try to use topaz denoise and detail. Sometimes get accepted. I must shoot at high iso. These are animals in our light. tough luck. Most of my rare animal shots are with a d50 don't get me started on those that camera was BAD at usi 800. Good luck to you. I too have to spend a lot of time on each photo.