1
General Stock Discussion / Am I spotting opportunities where there are none?
« on: October 19, 2015, 17:07 »
Hey all
Trying to do some research, to find shooting opportunities, mainly focussing on Shutterstock search results. It has raised more questions.
Firstly though, I'm wondering if many of you take this approach? - targeting keywords and phrases, looking at the market, the supply/demand, predicting trends, spotting opportunities?
The first thing I've been looking for are search terms with few results. But how many pages of results would you class as "low hanging fruit"? 1, certainly.. How about 20? or even 100? Can you compete for something with a lot of competition and if so, how? I'm guessing good photography would be a good start.
Another thing I've found is, many items are in huge supply, but only when isolated on a white background, and not in context. For example, "cheerleader baton" on SS brings up about 10 images of batons, all on white (as well as a couple of random cheerleader shots).. You don't however get any close-ups of a baton in the context of a table, bedroom, locker room or whatever. Similarly, "bowling ball" brings up 145 pages of results on SS, while "bowling man" brings up only 22. I understand that still lifes are easier to shoot than people (for the most part) but on certain items, the ratio of still lifes to contextual shots is astronomical.
What other techniques could be used to find opportunities for keywords or subjects?
Thanks for any thoughts on this..
Trying to do some research, to find shooting opportunities, mainly focussing on Shutterstock search results. It has raised more questions.
Firstly though, I'm wondering if many of you take this approach? - targeting keywords and phrases, looking at the market, the supply/demand, predicting trends, spotting opportunities?
The first thing I've been looking for are search terms with few results. But how many pages of results would you class as "low hanging fruit"? 1, certainly.. How about 20? or even 100? Can you compete for something with a lot of competition and if so, how? I'm guessing good photography would be a good start.
Another thing I've found is, many items are in huge supply, but only when isolated on a white background, and not in context. For example, "cheerleader baton" on SS brings up about 10 images of batons, all on white (as well as a couple of random cheerleader shots).. You don't however get any close-ups of a baton in the context of a table, bedroom, locker room or whatever. Similarly, "bowling ball" brings up 145 pages of results on SS, while "bowling man" brings up only 22. I understand that still lifes are easier to shoot than people (for the most part) but on certain items, the ratio of still lifes to contextual shots is astronomical.
What other techniques could be used to find opportunities for keywords or subjects?
Thanks for any thoughts on this..