We must fight against them and inform people who could be tempted to subscribe to compensate the loss elsewhere. They DO NOT respect the authors but the money they make quickly by killing the market.

I see 500px still has no watermark. So...

It has (can have if your choice).

I had the same questions... to get answers, I tried myself. The best way to get the best answers, believe me.

Ooops, sorry, you are right, I Have read too fast.

Btw RPD isn't the whole story either
Except for very small agencies with few sales that I still support because RPD can reach more than $5.

Algorithms and competition decide nowadays...

Well, this is pretty discouraging for someone who is relatively new to stock photography, but it seems that I take a somewhat different view than many of the members posting here.

I have dozens upon dozens of photographs, many of which are quite good. Heretofore they have just been sitting on my hard drive for the enjoyment of my family, friends and me. I have used my travel photos to give presentations to various groups, etc. and have had good responses.

I decided to try my hand at stock photography as a "hobby" and I think that is the key word here. I don't anticipate making a lot of money, but making some money is a good thing. I don't think it is a waste of time. When I am listening to music, some television, etc. I keyword and upload my photos when I have time.

I must say that Steve's book was an EXCELLENT place to start and I might add that I also purchased the new version. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in getting started in stock photography.

ALSO...as an added bonus, check out Steve's website, https://www.backyardsilver.com/, which is a great source of knowledge and inspiration beyond the reasonably priced ebook.

I don't think it is easy to make a living with stock photography, but I find it very enjoyable to see which of my photographs sell and to bring in bit of revenue.

For whatever it is worth, I would encourage anyone to "give it a try!"

first post EVER!!!  eheh an AD from the op?

https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/help/contributor-fotolia.html

One minute to find this

Quote from: Uncle Pete on December 18, 2019, 15:06

Quote from: DallasP on December 18, 2019, 09:50

Quote from: Uncle Pete on December 17, 2019, 11:09

How does what you wrote apply to making money with Microstock?

Are you saying social media can increase my downloads and income? I should write a blog or something? Microstock is not a big ticket item. I can't pay 25c a click for people to come look at my portfolio.

But just wondering, how would you answer the OP about Marketing Microstock? You seem to have background, knowledge and information about Internet marketing?

what are the real working secrets of marketing your content? Instead of wasting our time on usual generic crap advices, what are we really supposed to do in order to succeed?

I wasn't directly applying what I said to microstock. If you're trying to directly compete with SS you're in a losing game ... and for what? A couple bucks a day?  Cost per click on say "stock image online" is $25 ... I'd near a guess that they're losing money on those adverts and they have more content than any one person could ever produce. Pick your battles.

Blog and video content is a great place to start. All of these 0 competition phrases are great places to start ... Again though, how are you going to CONVERT any readers into people buying YOUR content. Almost has to be something that you self host ... Microstock is a downhill battle ... with cactuses and ... rocks ...

Thanks that makes better sense now that I understand you better. 

Not sure I understand a 0 competition phrase or how I'd use that. I do try to find subjects that aren't well covered on SS for example. Not that they are also in high demand or will get high numbers of downloads, but a sliced kumquat 1537, or Kumquat 6,570, will get more selective views than sliced tomato at 711,603! So I'd agree, pick your battles makes good sense. I'm not going to ever say again when I find one. I did on SS forum and the title went from one page, mostly mine to spammed up with hundreds of images. Of course mine still stand out as they are distinctive, not a set of hundreds of similar, with nothing but a change of the flag. 

I'm still interested in how anyone might market or attract buyers to our work. I mean posting on FB, Twitter, Pinterest, any of those?

Can you elaborate on 0 competition phrases? I mean something or some words that someone might actually search for?

Quote from: mj007 on December 18, 2019, 13:59

I will give you my secret as a Christmas present. I do post photos with stories, on Twitter and LinkedIn weekly with a link to my different stock sites. I don't think I get any sells by doing this but I do think I get more sales by this. When I do the posting on these sites it seems my sales are higher that week. When I stop posting the next week my sales drop. What I guess is happening is the algorithm of the site is in favor for me the more new people look at my stock sites.Just my guess. If wrong that is OK....Merry Christmas   

Linkedin, there's the first useful comment I've seen, for my name. You can do photos with stories there? So what you are saying is, if I do a story on FB with my photos, or do you mean links to my photos on an agency site, even if I don't get a direct download, the traffic will increase and I'll get more downloads? Interesting and creative.

Here's one, and I'm not even going to take a side, because it's just so strange, but maybe it worked? People used to spam up the forums on SS and BS with images, and one guy did this daily, and claimed he got more sales because of the images that showed on forums. I don't know how this idea is testable? He's not the only one who used the same system for getting more attention and believed that there were more sales because of this.

I will say, when I managed websites, not my own, I'd put an unlinked page in with a link to http://CrapStock.com (for example) i don't know if search engines found how many pages were linked to a site and if that raised rank. Funny thing is, sites I don't work for anymore, still have those, unless someone happens to look at every web page on the system, to see what's there. I suspect somewhere I have links on hidden pages, to other websites that don't exist anymore.

Of course businesses change, they change hosting, information sites, drop and all those pages are gone into nothingness. I don't know if links from friends works anymore either. Back when, we'd have trades, you link to my site, I link to yours, Bob links to mine I link to his, Tom links to mine, I link to his... The idea was, more sites linking to something, make it more popular?

Anyway, the OP brings up an interesting question and reading answers is also interesting. I view it as, Is there actually anything we can do, that will bring more people to our portfolio on a stock site? I mean short of "free picture of the week" on a personal website, and a link to More By This Photographer on Shutterstock. LOL 

The SEOC column I have sorted in that photo I posted is basically 0 competition. You still want to be using it in titles (permalinks and whatnot) that's what I mean. Keyword tools like this are handy when you're looking for long tail things to publish content on but, if you had the content for it you could effectively take something like "image photo stock" there with the 1,729 searches ... buy imagephotostock.com (from me, obviously ... https://bestwebsiteandhosting.com/cart.php?a=add&domain=register&query=imagephotostock.com)

Host your images and plan your content strategy around that ... Low competition and assuming your content is good, you'd hopefully be looking at a 3% conversion ... with $0 advertising dollars.

I lOvE tO QuoTE!!! 

How much would you pay for these secrets?   
Maybe there are people wanting more competition... but I think that most don't.

Maybe you could keep your opinion since you ignore the situation at yaymicro... 

Thx Morphart for these informations. My last sale was end of 2017 there.

https://www.picfair.com/plus

USD $6.99 / month
or $69.90 / year

Pay to sell.. almost nothing???
You are not a seller, you are a customer, paying for NO product...

https://shutterstockmail.com/...
is this secure to click?

Quote from: DiscreetDuck on November 02, 2019, 10:25

Do sometimes people connect low earnings to low quality submissions??
Personally, I always took in little consideration the points of people on the forum here, for my benefice... I think it's the best advice. Make your own experience.

Most people submit to a range of sites so whether their quality is high or low they can compare the relative earning power of sites. Individual experience does vary but it makes sense to check other peoples experiences before adding a site to upload to..there's dozens so its hard to try them all.

Not so evident since a top seller image can have more than a thousand downloads on one site, and absolutely no download on another from the same kind. Your portfolio can't even be compared to itself. Relativity here again... Too many parameters that we can't be aware of. But be sure, I have the same concern, finding the best way to sell

Perfect!!!

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