Friends, some time ago I already wrote about my intention to create a service that will help to free some time for the stockers. Then I shared ideas and thoughts about it, now I want to talk a little bit about what we have already done.
Some words about the creation. Those who are acquainted with me, know that I have been doing stock photography for a long time, this is my main source of income that makes me freer than any other job. However, this is still work that also includes not only creative processes but routine and boring actions.
By this I mean the preparation of stock content to download it to the stock.I think the photographer should do retouch because these are style and fashion components of the business. Keyword selection, creation of the correct names and descriptions, downloading on stock should be done by somebody else.There are a number of reasons:The first reason is that the indication and uploading of content takes plenty of time that you should spend on yourself. Whether self-education or pleasure, travel or development of other business.
The second reason is that not all authors are fluent in "proper" English. My friends, it is not important that you can understand and communicate in English. It is more important to have a great experience in this business and know the specifics of thinking for whom English is more native than for us. You need a couple of years to live abroad to manage with it, preferably in the U.S.
The third important reason is the professionalism. When I started my stock career, I admitted that I didnt pay the proper attention to the selection of keywords. I wrote whatever by using Google translator or copied other authors keywords. There were some sales but it didnt have permanent growth.
So I gained a portfolio of about 1000 pictures that brought me 100-150 dollars=) Its not a lot, is it? After a while I was lucky enough to talk to one of the founders of the major microstock who explained to me what was happening. In a nutshell: proper and professional indication of content is more important than the quality of content. This is it, friends.
Rethinking my strategy, I started to spend less time on photo retouching and devote more time to the selection of keywords. Still the title and description was written with help of Google Translator(I don't know English grammar at all). Later Ive learnt more and that immediately affected the sales.Now we need to automatize this process to increase the number of uploaded works. In numbers: for retouching of one photo I spent about 3-5 minutes, on attribution about15-20 minutes.I started to search for service which I could entrust this work. It was important for me to find the guys who really control the quality, dont use spam words and take not too much money. There is no use to remind about the dollar rate in the Russian Federation. In General I havent found anyone who satisfies my modest requirements.
The solution was simple. I decided to create a small service for myself and my colleagues that will give a second chance to our portfolio and set the time for ourselves.Now Kboarding works in beta version but already pretty cool copes with the task. I hasten to say that all keywords, names and description written manually by real people. Moreover, everybody has job training and passes the exam before start working. Some clients have already given a positive feedback about the service, and it means that we are working to good purpose.
In the near future we want to add something like the stock submitter in functionality of our service. Thus, the authors will only need to upload the content to our service, add releases if necessary, and click the "Send to queue" button.Then the files will be attributed and sent to stocks moderation thatthe author works with.
So, friends, if you've decided to devote your life to stocks, add the service in bookmarks or favorites. Sooner or later, when you become a professional in the field of stock photography, you will need it. Смайлик wink
Service:
http://kboarding.com/?utm_source=microstockgroup&utm_medium=forum_message&utm_campaign=landingFB -
https://www.facebook.com/keywording/Sincerely,
Danil Nevsky.
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