Author Topic: New to stock, made my first sale (Read 18403 times)

PigsInSpace · « **Reply #25 on:** May 13, 2020, 01:36 »

Quote from: mj007 on May 11, 2020, 22:12

Roger shoot what your think is interesting . If you find your subject interesting most likely others will too and buy it. The boot picture below I have sold over 3000 times.You just don't know what will sell. Good luck.. Stock is Fun...W.Scott McGill

Cowboy boot breaking a glass jar? I'm completely intrigued. What kind of uses do you find the photo in? On its face it seems like it would be very niche! Nice!

Roger Mitsom · « **Reply #26 on:** May 13, 2020, 17:50 »

Quote from: Sean Locke Photography on May 12, 2020, 15:28

Quote from: Roger Mitsom on May 11, 2020, 19:52
Quote from: 50% on April 29, 2020, 07:39
If you start today in Microstock and you wanna make 500,- a month I don't think it is possible with a few hundred images you need to be in the thousands. It's not all about sale-ability it's also about search rank in the agencies and with 300 million images at Shutterstock it's very hard to get a good search rank even with very good pictures.

I've been adding new content already. Shot a coronavirus curbside testing station the other day. A family in their yard and putting on masks. A family managing their chicken coup. Industrial shapes repeating. Also shooting stuff from briefs.

A little disappointing that I have around $10 in sales so far but I don't have much else going on right now. Occasionally I'm getting images that could work for my advertising portfolio. Like the husband and wife I shot in front of their home wearing designer face masks while he held a pitchfork, a play on the classic "American Gothic". May be too conceptual for stock but I think some of my advertising clients will get a kick out of it.

Thank you everyone for the helpful advice!

Are these all released? If not, they sound a little invasive. Plus a "designer mask" would need a release.

Released and accepted by 3 of the 4 agencies I'm with. Exception being AS that keeps rejecting images of the husband and wife with their children because they say the minor releases aren't in order. Although all the criteria they stipulate is there as far as I can tell. Meanwhile an image of the mom putting a mask on her daughter has sold a handful of times at other agencies that accepted the same release. Who knows.

Roger Mitsom · « **Reply #27 on:** May 13, 2020, 17:57 »

Quote from: mj007 on May 11, 2020, 22:12

Roger, first don't pay a lot of attention to most of the folks on MicrostockGroup. Seems many of the people here love to complain about the Stock business. Yes you will not get rich ,well most likely not but then never say never. Yes sells are lower than what they were 10 years ago. I still sell images every day of the year. I still get excited at 38 cents or 600 bucks per sell. Very few at 600 bucks , now and then one comes through Alamy. As long as sites send me money each month I will keep doing this until I die. Roger shoot what your think is interesting . If you find your subject interesting most likely others will too and buy it. The boot picture below I have sold over 3000 times.You just don't know what will sell. Good luck.. Stock is Fun...W.Scott McGill

Thanks. I can see why that shot has sold so much. It's applicable to many conceptual ideas. Curious if you've changed the way you keyword it over the years?

Roger Mitsom · « **Reply #28 on:** May 13, 2020, 18:01 »

Quote from: Roscoe on May 12, 2020, 01:24

Quote from: Roger Mitsom on May 11, 2020, 19:42

Can someone explain the process of having keywords in the meta of jpgs as Jo Ann described? I've seen other mention this but still not quite getting it. Are you doing a batch of keywords for the image, saving in meta, then copying and pasting for each image on the various stock sites? Do you just separate by a comma?

Several ways to do this. You can add your keywords directly in Lightroom for instance. Many people use StockSubmitter for keywording and uploading. Personally, I personally use XPiks for editing my titles, descriptions and keywords because it's barebone, simple and it works. Uploading to iStock/Getty via Deepmeta is a bit more time consuming, as they have predefined keywording system, but it can also help you with suggesting keywords for other sites. And keep in mind that for AS the order of your keywords matters (first 10 have more importance in their search algorithm)

Hope this helps.

I downloaded stocksubmitter. Struck me as super clunky. I got a bunch of errors when I tried to connect to various agency accounts. Software was not intuitive. Then I read it doesn't even work with certain sites. Trying to make this process more efficient and it struck me as the opposite. Others like it?

Roger Mitsom · « **Reply #29 on:** May 13, 2020, 18:28 »

Do you all shoot "briefs" that the agencies send recommending content they are looking for? If so do you find that shooting along their guidelines contributes to a higher percentage of sales?

gridengine · « **Reply #30 on:** May 18, 2020, 17:26 »

Quote from: Roger Mitsom on April 24, 2020, 19:59

I'm going to try shooting original content just for stock from here out and consider it another wing of my business ( I shoot advertising and corporate events ). I know financial prospects aren't high but the plan is when I have free days ( which are endless currently )

My two cents:

1) Search for simple concepts like sick, education, moving, business, office, work, energy, shopping, etc, and look for what sells at the micro stock sites -- sales volume is the biggest factor that affects the stock sites ranking algorithm. So pay attention to the first few pages of results.

2) If you have the time to dig a bit deeper, use Google reverse image search (with Chrome, right click on an image, and click "Search Google for image") to find out how the image is used. Once you have an understanding on how an image is used, then you can start from there and develop your style that possibly outdo the original photos.

3) Take photos of objects that you have an unfair advantage on. By that I mean the city you live in, event locations you have access to, etc. While other photographers may have already uploaded photos of your city, you have an unfair advantage on when you take the photo. In fact, you can capture photos with the right time, mood, season, etc.

4) Lastly, you may also want to upload editorial photos? Consider uploading photos of hot companies (Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, etc).

I think $500 a month can be achieved (especially when the economy gets back to normal). If you focus on creating highly sellable images instead of simply by volume, you can get there way faster with a lower number of photos than others have suggested.

Roger Mitsom · « **Reply #31 on:** May 18, 2020, 20:25 »

Quote from: gridengine on May 18, 2020, 17:26

Quote from: Roger Mitsom on April 24, 2020, 19:59
I'm going to try shooting original content just for stock from here out and consider it another wing of my business ( I shoot advertising and corporate events ). I know financial prospects aren't high but the plan is when I have free days ( which are endless currently )

My two cents:

1) Search for simple concepts like sick, education, moving, business, office, work, energy, shopping, etc, and look for what sells at the micro stock sites -- sales volume is the biggest factor that affects the stock sites ranking algorithm. So pay attention to the first few pages of results.

2) If you have the time to dig a bit deeper, use Google reverse image search (with Chrome, right click on an image, and click "Search Google for image") to find out how the image is used. Once you have an understanding on how an image is used, then you can start from there and develop your style that possibly outdo the original photos.

3) Take photos of objects that you have an unfair advantage on. By that I mean the city you live in, event locations you have access to, etc. While other photographers may have already uploaded photos of your city, you have an unfair advantage on when you take the photo. In fact, you can capture photos with the right time, mood, season, etc.

4) Lastly, you may also want to upload editorial photos? Consider uploading photos of hot companies (Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, etc).

I think $500 a month can be achieved (especially when the economy gets back to normal). If you focus on creating highly sellable images instead of simply by volume, you can get there way faster with a lower number of photos than others have suggested.

Great advice. Thank you! I'm getting at least a sale each day now which is encouraging. The other day on AS I had 6. At this point they are easily my favorite in terms of sales/ rate.