My strategy for stock photography
I have made it no secret that I currently sell a number of my pictures on several different microstock sites. This has become increasingly more profitable, and I expect some day in the future I may be able to make $1000 a month just from microstock. I am currently not near this number, but my sales have been slowly improving. Still, I have received a number of questions asking what types of images sell best and how I go about taking stock pictures.
When I first started in stock photography, I spent a lot of time taking pictures that I thought would sell well. These were not pictures that I ordinarily would have taken, but were instead taken solely for the purpose of profit. Here’s an example of one of these shots.
This is not a particularly interesting picture, but could be of use to someone who needed a picture of a pile of saffron, which numerous people have needed. This particular shot has sold decently, but certainly is nothing to brag about. What I would find out from doing shots like this though, changed my entire philosophy about stock.
I began to spend a lot of time taking very similar shots - or in general shots of very mundane subjects. I spent a lot of time learning isolation techniques when the microstock sites started to become more stringent. I eventually learned how to do correct isolation and started submitting pictures. The problem that occurred was I spent a lot of time on these types of shots - both in taking the original shots and preparing them in Photoshop. I began to spend less time taking shots that I felt improved my technique, and more time taking shots that improved my sales.
What naturally occurred was a number of these shots were rejected, and a number of the accepted shots sold poorly. So after all of the time spent taking these shots, I received very little in return. My skills did not improve, my wallet did not grow, and my shots were boring.
Several months ago I made a new resolution to only take shots that I liked, and to pick from those shots the ones to submit. Therefore I began to spend my time actually improving my photography - learning new techniques and studying the works of others. Since then, I believe I have improved as a photographer. Interestingly, the shots I do submit sell rather well. Sure, none of my insect shots are big sellers - but I enjoy taking them and if I can make a few dollars off a shot that I enjoyed taking, I see that as a bonus.
I recommend this technique for the vast majority of us who are just looking to make a little cash with stock photography. There are photographers that go out there and find subjects they know will sell well, but they do stock photography as a living, not as a hobby. For those of us just looking for some cash to enable us to purchase new equipment, focus on improving your work as a photographer, then use microstock as a kind of ‘critique’ to see what others think of your hard work. Using stock photography in this way enables me to use it as a tool rather than as a hindrance. When a picture is rejected, I look into how I could have improved the shot to get it accepted. This improves the quality of my work as a whole. In particular agencies such as IStockPhoto give very good feedback about individual shots.
Using this technique also hardens me towards rejection. If a shot is rejected, I am not heart broken as I took it for myself, not for profit.
Related posts:
- Introduction to Microstock Photography - My Philosophy on Microstock I hope this series has been useful for you. In the next two blogs I will go over some examples, but before then I would like to discuss my philosophy on microstock. If you’re read other series on microstock, you’re probably familiar with different methods of tracking you make per...
- Introduction to Microstock Photography - Microstock Strategies In this post I’ll mention a hodgepodge of strategies that I have found useful for microstock photography. Keywords are extremely important. I typically spend more time getting the keywords right than I do post processing the image. Always make sure you get these right - because they’ll strongly affect whether...
- Why microstocks threaten traditional stock There has been much debate about sites such as Shutterstock and IStockPhoto and whether they threaten the traditional stock photography business. The issue is of extreme concern to many photographers, who fear that traditional licenses fees of fifty to several thousand dollars per image are threatened by fees as cheap...
- Changing how I approach the business of photography As many of you know, though I currently do not make much money with photography what I do make is split between real estate photography and stock photography. For quite some time I have been deliberating what the next step I want to take is - and I have finally...
- Introduction to Microstock Photography Part I This is the first part of a multipart series on microstock photography. For a bit over two years, I have slowly become more involved in this strategy for selling pictures. There are quite a few guides out there on the Internet about this subject, but I suspect that my philosophy...
Tags: microstock, photography, Stock Photography, strategy