Maximize your success by spotting trends

As you know, I take two basic types of stock image – places and things. This article is going to dig deeper into how I decide what “things” to take! The whole genre of taking stock images and videos of people is very profitable (if you are good at it), but that isn’t really my scene and the risks (of lawsuits from unhappy models) is much greater.

Breaking down my approach to the next level, images of places are pretty straightforward – you need to visit a place that is (or will be) in the public eye for some reason and capture it at least as well as some of the other images that are online. I’ll talk more about that in a future post. But for this post I wanted to talk about how to spot a trend and how to capitalize on it with stock photos and videos.

So what is a trend? Live news obviously pops up continuously but that rarely uses stock photos – it either uses live images from the source of the news itself, a fire, building collapse etc. or the media uses headshots of the people involved – usually politicians. If you can capture some good stock shots of politicians, that can be pretty lucrative, but that is very opportunistic. I want to talk more about the things that are picked up more by comment and opinion writers or by general interest websites and magazines.

So we are looking for a topic that is going to be the subject of ongoing discussion, hopefully for a period of months or more, but not one where the use of a headshot is the most likely option for a writer. The whole impeachment saga in the USA is a case where it is endlessly discussed, but rarely are stock photos used to illustrate the articles. That raises another interesting point to consider – the main single market for stock photos and videos is probably the USA and even though you may not live there, it is worth following the topics that are of interest in the USA as those often drive the take-up of stock images. A case in point would be my opioid shots. I believe that the over-use of opioid type pain killers is an issue in other countries, but it has dominated the news in the USA for several years now with lawsuits, greedy pharmaceutical companies and executives etc. etc.

I spotted the increase in discussions about the misuse of opioids in early 2017 and luckily had some old prescription bottles from dentist visits. I wanted to remove the personal ID marks (as you can see from the blank spaces on the bottles), but it was important to show the name of the drug. I had to push back with Shutterstock about this as they initially refused them until I was able to persuade them that this is a generic drug name and so I got them accepted as commercial. For a time, I put the fact it was generic in the description to help acceptance at the other agencies. Overall, I have earned $4700 from still photos and $2040 from videos. What I also have learned from this is that although the subject is still in the news, the demand for the images has declined over time. That is the big downside to RF license – the buyer can continue to use them without any new license being required. I have noticed that images that show just tablets and a bottle are quite popular – this one has earned $255 so even if you don’t have exactly what is needed, more “generic” versions can sometimes work.

While we are probably well past the peak of this subject, the more general issue of healthcare and its cost is likely to be a long term trend. The cost of drugs is an increasingly important topic and so creating a series of images that try to illustrate that in different ways – including using people to try to show the human costs of high healthcare costs – would be worth thinking about. Again, this might be a US problem (as other countries usually have much more government support for healthcare costs), but bear in mind that US buyers are important sources of demand and create images that may not make much sense in your local market, but will still sell.

If I was trying to create some “financial” drug images now, I usually start by trying to frame the subject in a few words – “high drug costs”, or “high prescription drug costs”. Its important to get the idea clearly defined so that the next stage works! I usually go to the Shutterstock App and the Getty App on my iPad and use that search term. Incidentally, Shutterstock suggests typical search terms as you start typing so bear those in mind for keywords. If it is being suggested by the agency, there is a good chance that many buyers will simply click on the suggested words and you want your image to match that choice. So put the full phrase into your keywords if it is appropriate.

I go through several pages of images on both Shutterstock and Getty and look at how the idea has been illustrated. Sometimes you are really lucky and find no images – which is the perfect time to take them and get in first! But most of the time, look for different treatments of the subject and think about which ones you could do at least as well. Don’t outright copy them, but use your own materials or props and create your own version of the image. Getty has both a commercial and an editorial section on the App, so check out both. It is always interesting to see the ideas that other contributors have come up with!

I don’t exactly know what triggered my interest in Juul – I think I read how it was a perfect example of design and marketing and also how the different flavored capsules were intriguing to young people. I searched on Shutterstock and Getty and found no images of the product so I went out of my way to buy a “starter set”. I don’t smoke, but if you don’t invest in the right props you get nowhere! I uploaded the first images in late 2018 and this one (from March 2019) has earned $270 of the $1900 earned in total.

It would make a good post to go through the sort of images I took of these devices and I’ll put that on my to-do list. What is also interesting about this is that I bought another device (in the UK I think), but that has not sold well at all. For several reasons, Juul has become the “poster child” of the issue (in the US again), but the litigious nature of the US society has made sure it is always in the news. You can adjust your uploads as the story develops – I noticed articles mentioning that it was becoming clear that the company had targeted young people and that many schools were grappling with children hiding these small devices in their pencil cases so I created more images and got them online:

For several months, my images were the only ones on Shutterstock until someone else copied the approach (with some similar shots). They had some nicely arranged shots on white and so I created the one I started this discussion with based on one of their images. That turned out to be my best seller!

But what are the themes and subjects for the future? Some of them only come to me when I read an article that piques my interest (and I’ll write about these as they come up). For now, I think the biggest issue in the US is going to be the upcoming election and voter fraud in particular. If you can get some interesting takes on that, you could be onto a winner. I think Brexit in Europe is “sort of” decided, but there are massive issues still to come in documenting the actual separation agreement and so I’ve created some concepts for both an unhappy and a happy end to that saga:

I think Global Warming (or climate change) will be another big topic with fires and floods – fires are tough to illustrate, although artificial flooding of major cities on the coast is proving to be of growing interest:

Things like this are easy re-uses of images you probably already have. I use the Flood plugin for Photoshop for these (and for that Brexit shot above.

Hopefully this has given you some things to think about. If you have questions (or even ideas for a new concept), let me know below!