Photo Microstocks: What and How?


by Shamil Nizamov - Date: 2007-01-03 - Word Count: 599 Share This!

Digital cameras have revolutionized the photo industry, and as a result more and more people are becoming amateur or semi-pro photographers. They are doing a great job but while at worst photo shots are covered "by dust" on computer's hard disks, at best they are uploaded to Web-photo galleries for friends. At the same time, some of these pictures could serve as a residual income and cover at least photo hobby expenses. Most beginning photographers are afraid to submit photos to stock agencies; furthermore, most of those agencies are asking for extremely high quality pictures that can be made only by professional cameras. But have you heard about microstocks that are not so hectic about RAW images? If many people keep telling you that your photos like post cards, photos you uploaded to a photo gallery are getting a high rank, people are asking about the original file to use it somehow, or if even some magazines are willing to publish it, then you definitely have to start thinking about the next step in your photographer career. And microstock can be a good starting point!

Why are they so cool?

Stock agencies have three major features:

* The same picture - we are talking about a good picture or a high demand picture - could be bought thousand of times and therefore keeps paying you. Each payment may be too small to consider separately but multiplied in numerous sales they could amount to a significant income.

* Photos might be sold worldwide. It means you could be living in Asia for example but your photo was bought by a Web-designer in Canada. Are you proud?

* Microstocks are on-line and therefore working 24/7 - no weekends and no holidays. The effort applied only once to take a photo and to specify good keywords (there are a lot of software and Web-sites, like ArtHelpDesk.com that can help with that) will be constantly working for you.

Keywords, what are they?

All photos in stocks and microstocks are categorized and could be found by keywords. For example, the good way to describe a girl reading a book in a park may be - "blonde, girl, beautiful, long, legs, book, study, park, outdoor, reading, learning, student, library, pretty". Some microstocks insist you specify at least a dozen keywords. Usually, the number of keywords is about 20 to 50. Some microstocks can help you by the list of related keywords where you can select the most relevant. Ask questions about singular and plural forms of the same keywords, as search mechanisms may differ from stock to stock.

The best way is to specify keywords in a picture itself (for example, in PhotoShop you can do it through menu File -> File Info -> Document Title, Description, Keyword). This will save you a lot of time in the case of multiple uploads.

If you are hesitating which keyword better describes your picture, try to search for similar photos and find out what others are using as keywords. You might be surprised! Again, keywords and sometimes the sequence of keywords are very important and will allow you to find your photo among thousands of others.

Is it worth it?

The most interesting question - what is the income? Well, based on my own and others' experiences, it is possible to say that an average amateur photographer with about 100-200 photos online and about 10-20 photos added every month is able to achieve sales level between 50-300 bucks per month. More skilled photographers with a simple home studio, with about 200-300 photos online and 50-100 new photos every month can earn up to $1000. Not bad for the residual income at all! So keep going!


Related Tags: stocks, photography, digital, camera, agencies, gallery, photo, post cards, microstocks, shoots

Shamil Nizamov is a freelance writer based in Vancouver, BC. The area of interests includes photography, Web-development and e-commerce. You can find more information about photo accessories and photography in general on http://www.arthelpdesk.com - a site dedicated to freelance photography.

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