Apparently $.10 is the new $1.00

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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.

Never mind folks. I see on their site now they only allow Getty releases. Kinda ridiculous.

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?

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?

I've only been at this for about 6 weeks or so. But so far SS is the fastest hands down. Usually next day for me. Getty/ Istock takes forever.

Picked a heck of a time to start! It's probably not surprising given the economic disruption, but I see overall sales volume way down at the moment, so don't interpret slow sales as a reflection on your work specifically as it's not "normal" right now.

I would offer a couple of thoughts (and I'll put the one I think you should most pay attention to up top in case you want to have only one suggestion per contributor )

-Pay attention to keywording. If you've been a photographer for a while, I'll assume you haven't had to think about that, but if your images don't show up in searches, you won't sell, regardless of how great they are. Take your image's subject and do some searches on Adobe Stock and Shutterstock. When you see something similar to yours, look at the keywords the other images used and make sure you've covered all the bases. If you have photos of places, make sure neighborhood, city, state and region are there; for people, ethnicities, ages & gender and so on.

-If you're not good at cloning, stay away from anything with logos or brand names. No art on the walls or statues. No numbers on ship sails or license plates. If you do editorial, that doesn't apply obviously, but editorial typically doesn't sell in the volumes that commercial work does

-I assume you're used to editing your images before submitting them (given you shoot advertising) but look over your images at 100%; even though reviewing has become pretty terrible at some sites, rejections for noise or sensor spots or other technical flaws can be unexpected for photographers new to stock.

-Don't overlook boring but useful subjects. Stock is about useful images, not just a pretty face in front of a camera.

-You can chase trends, but those images age much more quickly - fashion, technology, food fads. Images can and do continue to sell for years if they are free of any obviously dated stuff

-I'm assuming you're already doing this, but make sure your keywords (and titles & descriptions) are in the JPEGs you upload. If not, they should be - not only to save you time now, but also to make life easier when a new agency comes along a year or two down the road and your portfolio's ready to go.

Oh, and congratulations on your first sale!

Thank you Jo Ann. Most of this I either assumed or am getting accustomed to. One thing I really need to work on is workflow with keywording. It's taking me a LOT of time. Right now I'm with 4 agencies and basically redoing keywording for each image for each agency. It's one of the areas I realize I need to be saving a lot more time with.

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?

Also, from what I've seen on here most people use Lightroom for their workflow. I use CaptureOne but I'm sure I can figure it out on there. Just not used to incorporating meta outside of the camera settings.

AS for .99

Two weeks in. Seems the time for review is taking a while now. I've been a professional photographer since 2000 so a lot of this is going through old hard drives. I've got about 200 images up on 5 sites. 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 ) I'm going to go out and shoot specifically for stock based on some of the concepts or timely images that are in demand. If in a year or so it can be like $500/ month I'd be happy. Is that unrealistic?

Stock photo pros, if you could tell a newbie one lesson what would it be? And please don't say don't bother lol

hi what is the cheapest place to buy single image without suscription ? Thank you

Hi gang. New to this site and stock photography having been a professional photographer since 2000. But researching agencies to go with I looked at depositphotos and moved on when I saw they had images that were literally free. I couldn't believe it so just to see I downloaded one. A food pic. Sure enough. I may have created a login but I certainly hadn't bought a package.

Suffice it to say I moved on.

I saw someone on here say that they submitted a beach scene and it got rejected for grain. They suspected it was the sand.

SS uses algos and they are too literal. I think in absence of being able to select images based on dynamic composition and interest due to just not enough eyes available, they algo them based on technical notions. It's really too bad because seems you wind up with a lot of technically sound garbage vs crafted imagery.