Premium – Election Fever

I’ve not been very productive at producing my own new images recently, but I continue to think about what might be successful and also track my own results to see what is selling. Interestingly, Microstockr Pro has had a big upgrade over the past few days that makes it easier to see how much individual images have earned by just clicking the image in the main sales page. Before, you used to see how much that image sold on the agency that it had just sold on – now you see that information, but also the overall sales on all the other agencies as well. A very useful feature and I’m sure there are more under the covers that I still need to discover.

I’ve also been working on a (paid) side gig for a friend of mine who sells LED bulbs on Amazon and wanted something more professional that a straight on picture of a light bulb. That proved to be quite a challenge – just how do you make an interesting shot of a lightbulb? But I’m coming up with images such as these to help him raise his sales profile:

Of course, I might end up with some stock images as well!

But back to the main topic. As I’ve mentioned before, I think the US election will result in many sales of illustrative (and editorial) images before we get to the end of the year. The election is on November 3rd, but I expect to see many court cases in the weeks after the results are due as the parties fight over allegations of fraud. So not only can you produce images now to be used in the comings and goings of polls and arguments about voting by mail, you can also produce ones of legal cases around voting as well. I’ve been creating some for voting during a pandemic (obviously appropriate to many countries) by using a mask and my election stickers:

This simple approach of a close up of the badge on a mask (which has been worn) seems to work best in sales. I have done some with myself as the model:

This was taken against a green screen again to make the extraction of the head easy. I’m finding that the best sort of images for illustrating articles about a topic seem to be the simple close ups that don’t do much more than tell the story in question. Images with models (like the above) don’t seem to be as successful for me (perhaps it is the models I choose!) As a further example, this one of a “made up” envelope to illustrate voting by mail has sold about $80 so far (for this and a closer shot of the address and sticker):

Again – something that any of you could create at home. I tried some more complex images to illustrate voter fraud by shredding a vote in a paper shredder:

So far, zero sales. It is amazing how difficult Shutterstock are getting with their similars policy. A larger version of this that shows all the shredded paper at the bottom of the shredder was rejected as a similar and I only uploaded the two images! I think they clearly are moving to a view that they have all the images they need and paying for reviews and storage for lots of similar images doesn’t make sense any longer.

While I was at it, I made a simple view of the envelope and arm against white (check that great extraction of the hairs on my arm!) As yet, no sales for either of these, but we have many months to go yet!

I need to come up with some more themes around the election – I am sure there are still plenty of opportunities as this very unique experience unfolds this year. When I create something new, I will, of course, write about it.

I’ve also mentioned evictions in the past – the US has done nothing to stop the growing wave of evictions from rental properties and I’m seeing increasing sales of simple illustrative shots such as this:

Again, nothing very complicated – the letter tells the story, the mask gives it some context with the virus and I’ve made $30 on this theme since mid July. Nothing earth shattering, but getting a truly massive seller is a rare occurence. Most income comes from steady lower level sales that hopefully go on month after month. So don’t ignore those lower selling themes and images. In fact, a look at my sales over the past 2 days shows the range of different subjects that are selling. The more you can get in the position where you have an image for many different use cases, the more reliable your earnings will be:

Unfortunately you also see the results of Shutterstock’s change in contributor payments with all the 10c and 11c payouts. I do see higher priced sales as well but as I’ve written before, not enough to balance these many small payments. My bookcases keep selling through all this – almost $100 now from a simple bit of Photoshop magic.

Outside of these topics, I think it would be worth doing some images on TikTok and the saga (in the US again) about the Chinese owners being forced to sell to a US company or close down. I don’t think there are very many images that try to illustrate that clearly and there will be much discussion over the coming months. Both Oracle and Microsoft are currently interested and so some simple editorial shots linking the various companies with the TikTok app could be winners.

Well, that’s all for now – back to photographing lightbulbs….