Weekly examples of microstock images February 20th
Keeping up with the New Year’s Resolution by posting yet another set of images taken in the past week. I’ve focused on macro and still life type images this week:
The first one is a simple image of nail trimmers or cutters and the finger nails themselves on the edge of a sink. I had kept the nail clippings for a while until I had time to take the image!
Finger nails
Shot 2 is one of a series of macro shots of a small syringe filled with blood (actually red wine), and this one is matched with a close up of a finger with a real drop of blood on the tip. Those needles are sharp!
Painful blood injection
Image number 3 is one where I am a bit late for this years Valentine’s Day, but maybe in a good position for next February. This is heavily manipulated in Photoshop to change the keypad around and put some layer styles on the keys to highlight them:
Valentine Day Love keypad
Then I moved on to a couple of macro images of some linen handkerchiefs I found in a drawer – one of the three colorful folded napkins and then a second one in the top pocket of a blue blazer for a nice color contrast:
Three colorful handkerchiefs
Red handkerchief in blazer pocket
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Hi,
is there any software which can keep record of all the submitted photos and illustration,file sold,pending,rejected and online.
Please help
I personally don’t bother to track this sort of thing – some people use systems to find out which shoots are most profitable, but it has always seemed to be too much like hard work for me. I’m aware of a couple of sites. The first is Microstock Analytics which costs between $30 and $120 a year depending on the size of your portfolio. Then there is Stock Performer – not sure how much this is or will be, but you can request a free trial.
Steve
Hello Steve…
I saw your post on the Kracker Barrel. I think our readers would like some answers to questions they might have about your post.
I have a couple of microstock friends that were very surprised
about your sales. They suggested I contact you.
One person said that he made a Google search for cats + Shutterstock and it came up with the number 3,770,000. That’s a lot of cat photos. But even 1/10 of that amount (377,000) is a lot of cat photos. He commented your photos on Shutterstock don’t seem to be much more unique than most of the cat pictures Shutterstock has accepted. So his question was, “What’s your secret.?”
Another friend asked, about and ad on your site for Fotalia selling photos for $1.00. And another company selling photos for 14 cents. “Is this a typo?” He asked.
Another asked, “Was the Kracker-Barrel post an attempt to get traffic to your blog which would, of course, increase revenue for the advertisers on your blog?
This brings up some simple arithmetic. My question is — If $600 was made in one year, from one stock agency (assuming from your charts on your blog, that it is Shutterstock) and you received a net fee of $5 per photo, does that mean you sold 120 cat pictures for those twelve months? That’s 10 cat pictures a month average. With the millions of cat pictures out there on the net, selling ten a month is quite a feat, what with all the microstock competition as well as standard cat pictures for sale on the Net. My obvious question is, the same, “What’s your secret?”
Kindly send me an explanation and I’ll post your answer on the next Kracker Barrel. I’m sure there’ll be questions.
Thanks. Rohn
Wow – a long list of questions here. Thanks for asking them and being so direct in your approach. On this site I have always tried to be open and straightforward in my explanations of how I am making progress in stock photography, both the good and the bad. Let me start with why I made the post on Kracker Barrel – that was easy. I saw the post of someone asking how to sell cat pictures on your weekly review of stock activities and thought that my experiences in selling pictures of cats would be helpful. There are no revenue earning ads on my site – the ones on the right are the links to the stock agencies that I submit to and they include my referral link – if someone signs up to be a contributor (or buyer) using one of those links I get a very small referral fee. I have written an eBook on how to follow in my footsteps with stock photography and so I am always interested in publicizing that a bit, although hopefully not too aggressively. These links to the stock sites use their banners – so images for $1 or images at 14c must be available to buyers on those agencies through one of their purchase packages (probably a large subscription agreement.)
As you know, the business case for microstock is to sell cheap but sell a lot. Some of my better cat pictures on Shutterstock were uploaded last February, and one of them (Shutterstock ID: 70533907) has been downloaded 292 times on that site for total earnings of $275. Most of these are 36c payments to me, some at $2.70 on a per download fee, although it has been bought a number of times with an extended license for $28. My 35 cat images (some of which have been online for probably 2 years now I think about it) have been downloaded 646 times for total earnings of $629. Your arithmetic is out by a factor of 5 – I got an average of $1, not 5, and so I do sell about 50 a month. On 27 Feb, I sold three including one at $2.70, on 28th, four at $0.36 etc., today only two.
How do I do it – well, the eBook gives a lot more detail than my posts, but it is a combination of good photographs, good keywording and probably good luck. Shutterstock has a searching option to display images by popularity, and so I think mine will come up earlier in the sort as a result. The same cat picture has sold 31 times on iStock in five months for earnings of $58. My philosophy is to get as many different subjects as I can online on as many sites as I can comfortably manage.
Hope this helps. I’m quite happy to contribute directly on the Kracker Barrel site if the discussion continues.
Steve
Steve
Hello Steve — Thanks for the link.
I’ll mention your sales success in the Kracker Barrel. Nice going. But I want to make sure, — when you mention sales, this is your commission results..? (not the actual gross sales)…?
Readers will be curious. Who is buying $1 cat pictures and what do they do with them? And why do they come to your cat page at Shutterstock rather than the hundreds of other on-line galleries.?(Back to the original question. What’s your secret?” 🙂
Do you have other top sellers, or do your specialize in cats? With the numbers you’ve shown, you must be one of the top microstock sellers on the Internet. Nice going.
Thanks
Rohn
PS Thought of another question. Does Shutterstock mind if you include an ad for Fotalia on your site?
Hi Rohn
Yes, things have moved on a long way since our earlier encounters on your site.
To be crystal clear – all the earnings I mention on my site are net to me – this is the cash I receive each month from the various sites, and I have no ongoing expenses associated with that so it is also gross profit as well for that month.
As to the use – I searched for one of my cat images using Google image search – I found 197 results (which do include my own site if I have used it in a blog and the stock agencies), and a typical use would be this one: Pet Products
I don’t know why they use my images of cats – they are nicely exposed and isolated, the expressions on the cats are interesting or humorous – they must just fit with the buyers needs. I have different top sellers per agency. These cats sell OK on most sites, but on others I have some foreclosure related images as the top seller, others are nature scenes. I don’t specialize in any particular subject – I have 35 images of cats online out of 3000 total images. Obviously some images never sell, but there is always a chance that someday they will meet a need!
I have tried submitting directly to buyers for editorial use, and do get some nice comments on the images but, so far, no sales.
Re the ads – as I mentioned, these are just my referral links. The sites do not pay to have them displayed, and do not pay per click or impression. If someone signs up using my link, I get a small percentage of their sales (or purchases) – at no cost to them.
Steve