1. Technically good photographs

First, do not confuse this with having the most fancy camera you can buy, it’s NOT because you can simply get by with a cheap 6 Mega Pixel DSLR camera.

Taking good photos from a technical perspective is to 95% related to camera handling and photo editing and only 5% related to the camera you use.

Proof: Not many photographers come even close to Ansel Adams photographs despite he used a bulky old film camera compared to the technical marvels used today.

You need to make sure that you photos are correctly focused, use the right file format, is correctly exposed and doesn’t contain nasty color casts etc.

2. Commercially useful photos

The biggest mistake beginner stock photographers do is to first take images and then hope and pray someone will buy the images. BIG, BIG mistake.

It doesn’t matter how beautiful or artistic a photo is if it’s not commercially useful.

You must first find a good niche and then take and sell photos for that niche.

3. Legally correct photos

No one want’s trouble with the law and that is also true for stock agencies, publishers and photographers. You will have a hard time selling stock photos with big logos in them and images with no model release for commercials.

Be sure to know the law not only to stay out of trouble but also to sell much better.

4. Speed and accuracy of execution

Taking, preparing, submitting and getting image submissions approved is repetitive work and must be done in the right order. Messing up the order things are done will not only increase the risk for rejected submissions but will also cost valuable time and time is money as we all know.

To ensure you work effectively you need a checklist that ensure you make everything in the correct and most time effective way. Making sure you don’t forget to fix technical issues, avoid legal problems and only submit commercially useful photographs.

Download a free checklist from this link now.

If they are rejected you need to find out why. It’s not always easy because many agencies just say “rejected” and leave some vague reasons why. Analyze all information you have and redo step #7-12 again and do NOT give up. It sometimes takes a few attempts but eventually you get the hang of it.

If you’re images are approved then congratulations!

After your images are approved you still have some work to do. First you have to give the images a title and don’t forget to include the most important keyword in the title if possible.

You also should write a short description of the image and here you should also include keywords whenever you can.

If you didn’t embed the keywords in the image you now need to copy and paste your keyword from the text file to the web interface.

REMEMBER: Keywords are extremely important to make your images visible when the photo buyers search for keywords. Without relevant keywords your images exist in vacuum and will not be noticed.

OK, so you have now passed the 12 steps to a big profit microstock photography business is ready to try your wings but guess what…

There’s More To Come

I have added two more steps that will transform it from being a “big profit” microstock photography business to a “kick-ass mega profit” photography business.

The last two steps is what separates the leaders from the followers in this business so read, underline and memorize the last two steps.

But before you continue – you need to promise me to take action. It will make you no good if this information ends up slumbering on your hard drive or as a nagging thought in your brain making you feel as a procrastinator.

Next step is due tomorrow so stay tuned!

Previous posts in this series:

1. Microstock Photography Tutorial
2. Types of stock photography
3. STEP #1: Research hot selling markets
4. STEP #2: Leverage on your strength
5. STEP #3: Research for lame and lazy competition
6. STEP #4: Determine A Niche For Your Microstock Photography
7. STEP #5: Shortlist Microstock Photography agencies
8. STEP #6: Select one (1) microstock photography agency
9. STEP #7: Select stock images with good technical quality
10. STEP #8: Select images that are commercially useful
11. STEP #9: Remove images with potentially legal issues
12. STEP #10: How To Keyword Your Images
13. STEP #11: Submit your images to microstock agencies

16 pages of pure content.

No email address required, no jumping through hoops…

… just download the report from this link.

I need to know what you think about the report. Drop me a mail or make a comment below.

Over and out.

I hope you realize the magnitude of what you learned in the previous steps and I will summarize the key points to make sure you remember them.

Step 1-4: You identified a market with hungry desperate buyers and limited competition. You hopefully also selected a market you’re passionate about but that’s optional (but it certainly helps to keep the motivation up).

Step 5-6: You shortlisted a number of stock agencies and prioritized them based on some important criteria’s to maximize your success.

Step 7-9: You selected your best images based on technical quality and how useful they are commercially. You also saved your own ass by removing images with potentially legal issues.

Step 10: You tagged all your images with relevant keywords to make sure your images are found by the photo buyers when they search the database.

If you follow these steps you’re miles ahead of your competition and you can literally run circles around them. They will have no clue what hit them when you enter the market, all they will know is that you crushed them.

Now it’s time to submit your images. Most agencies nowadays support digital upload via the Internet but some “anti technology” agencies might still require you to submit CD’s or DVD’s. They are relatively few though so I’ll assume they accept that you upload your images over the Internet.

Make a final check to make sure you upload the right images and use the upload interface the agency provide. It’s usually self explanatory how to do it so I won’t bother you with too many details here.

After you bumbled through the previous steps a number of times you’ll realize you need one extremely important tool to save time and reduce frustrations to a minimum.

Previous posts in this series:

1. Microstock Photography Tutorial
2. Types of stock photography
3. STEP #1: Research hot selling markets
4. STEP #2: Leverage on your strength
5. STEP #3: Research for lame and lazy competition
6. STEP #4: Determine A Niche For Your Microstock Photography
7. STEP #5: Shortlist Microstock Photography agencies
8. STEP #6: Select one (1) microstock photography agency
9. STEP #7: Select stock images with good technical quality
10. STEP #8: Select images that are commercially useful
11. STEP #9: Remove images with potentially legal issues
12. STEP #10: How To Keyword Your Images

Listen carefully.

Some microstock agencies have millions of images in their databases and the method the photo buyers use to find the right image is to search for certain keywords they think is relevant for the image they need.

It works much in the same way as when you search for something on Google. You type in a few keywords and Google presents the result the search engine think is relevant.

But Google and all other search engines have a big problem with images.

You can easily see what the image is all about just by taking a quick glance at it but for a search engine it’s not as easy. They are simply clueless if you don’t help them to understand what the image is all about.

No one will find your images if you ignore to include relevant keywords.

Tagging your images with relevant keywords is an absolute must if you want the photo buyers to find your images.

Not just one keyword but many keywords (as long as they are relevant).

In most microstock sites you also can write a short description and a headline to your images. Also use this opportunity to try to get some important keywords.

Here’s a few important types of keywords you should try to include:

• Where the image was taken (city, national park, country)
• What is in the image (Empire state building, Niagara falls)
• Emotions expressed in the image (happiness, loneliness)
• Concepts involved (cooperation, complexity, security)
• Orientation (vertical, horizontal, panoramic)
• Race (Asian, Black, Caucasian)
• Age (11-12 years, senior)

Note: Include as many keywords you can as long as they are relevant but do not include irrelevant keywords just to come up on the search engine result page.

You have two options to upload the keyword to the agencies website.

1. Type in the keywords after you uploaded the image and got it approved
2. Embed the keywords inside the image so they automatically are uploaded when
   you upload the image.

Embedding the keywords in the image is obviously preferred because you only have to do it once and get the keywords automatically uploaded to the site. You can save lot’s time if you submit images to many stock agencies.

The problem with embedding keywords in images is that you need special software to do it and not all stock agencies support it. You also need to decide which keywords to use before you upload your images (but you can always add keywords later).

If you decide to manually type in the keywords you can simply create a simple text file with keywords for each image and simply copy and paste the keywords to the website. This is also fast and easy so don’t panic if you can’t afford software to embed keywords or don’t know how to do it. This is how I started out and often still do.

Previous posts in this series:

1. Microstock Photography Tutorial
2. Types of stock photography
3. STEP #1: Research hot selling markets
4. STEP #2: Leverage on your strength
5. STEP #3: Research for lame and lazy competition
6. STEP #4: Determine A Niche For Your Microstock Photography
7. STEP #5: Shortlist Microstock Photography agencies
8. STEP #6: Select one (1) microstock photography agency
9. STEP #7: Select stock images with good technical quality
10. STEP #8: Select images that are commercially useful
11. STEP #9: Remove images with potentially legal issues

You need to have a basic understanding of the law before you make your first submission. It’s luckily not that complicated and the most important parts can be condensed in a few bullets:

• Always make sure you have a signed model release if you sell the image for commercial use (advertising etc.) and the image contains recognizable individuals.
• Always make sure you have a signed property release if you sell the image for commercial use and the image contains recognizable private property.
• Always make sure you have a signed model release or property release if you sell images with Royalty free license and the image contains recognizable individuals or private property
• You can sell images with recognizable individuals or private property without model or property release but only if you sell the image with Rights Managed license for editorial use
• If there are several recognizable individuals all of them needs to sign the property release
• If the recognizable individual is under aged the parent must sign the property release.

I recommend you always try to get a model release whenever you can. Imagine Coca Cola offered you $20,000 for exclusive use in one of their campaign and you didn’t have a model release. That would suck, right?

Both you, the stock agency and the end user could be sued if you break the law so always be careful with commercial issues.

I’ve created a free video to to help you stay on the right side of the law. Watch the free video by clicking on this link.

Disclaimer: I’m nor a lawyer neither a professional on legal stuff and I recommend you always ask for advice by a trained professional.

Previous posts in this series:

1. Microstock Photography Tutorial
2. Types of stock photography
3. STEP #1: Research hot selling markets
4. STEP #2: Leverage on your strength
5. STEP #3: Research for lame and lazy competition
6. STEP #4: Determine A Niche For Your Microstock Photography
7. STEP #5: Shortlist Microstock Photography agencies
8. STEP #6: Select one (1) microstock photography agency
9. STEP #7: Select stock images with good technical quality
10. STEP #8: Select images that are commercially useful

Here’s a simple checklist with common commercial issues that could get your image submission rejected:

• Inappropriate images (pornography, glamour etc.)
• Images with no demand
• Images they already have too many of
• Bad composition
• Tight cropping and framing
• Images outside the agencies target market

Always read the submission guidelines carefully and weed out images with questionable commercial value.

Note: here you should put the highest priority on images that falls within the market you identified in step #1-4.

Previous posts in this series:

1. Microstock Photography Tutorial
2. Types of stock photography
3. STEP #1: Research hot selling markets
4. STEP #2: Leverage on your strength
5. STEP #3: Research for lame and lazy competition
6. STEP #4: Determine A Niche For Your Microstock Photography
7. STEP #5: Shortlist Microstock Photography agencies
8. STEP #6: Select one (1) microstock photography agency
9. STEP #7: Select stock images with good technical quality

Here’s a simple checklist with common technical issues that could get your image submission rejected:

• Image noise
• Blurry or unsharp images
• Chromatic aberration
• Interpolation artifacts
• Color cast
• Dust
• Leaning horizon or leaning buildings
• Contrast issues
• Badly exposed
• Wrong file formats
• Wrong resolution
• Excessive sharpening

Always select ONLY your VERY BEST images for the first image submission because the QC controllers will be extra thorough in your first submission.

Even worse, if you fail to get only one image accepted they might reject your whole batch, especially if it’s you’re first submission.

Read the submission guidelines and make sure you don’t violate any technical requirement.

Next in line is to make sure you don’t end up as a jailbird but more about that in the next post.

Previous posts in this series:

1. Microstock Photography Tutorial
2. Types of stock photography
3. STEP #1: Research hot selling markets
4. STEP #2: Leverage on your strength
5. STEP #3: Research for lame and lazy competition
6. STEP #4: Determine A Niche For Your Microstock Photography
7. STEP #5: Shortlist Microstock Photography agencies
8. STEP #6: Select one (1) microstock photography agency

You need to keep things simple so start with only one agency in the beginning to avoid being overwhelmed by different requirements and submission guidelines.

You can and absolutely should scale to many more agencies after a while but more about that later.

Based on the notes you took in step #5 you now need to make your second strategic decision.

• High commission is obviously good
• High #visitors per months is good
• Requirements on exclusive rights is NOT good unless they pay a huge commission
• It’s good if the agencies style and markets they target is a good match with your style

You must now decide which stock agency to “attack” and soon we come to the fun part

Previous posts in this series:

1. Microstock Photography Tutorial
2. Types of stock photography
3. STEP #1: Research hot selling markets
4. STEP #2: Leverage on your strength
5. STEP #3: Research for lame and lazy competition
6. STEP #4: Determine A Niche For Your Microstock Photography
7. STEP #5: Shortlist Microstock Photography agencies

Take some notes about each agency you shortlist:

• Commission they pay per sale
• Requirements of camera equipment and images
• #Visitors per month
• Style and niches they specialize in
• Do they require exclusive rights
• Who retains the copyright
• Licensing (Royalty free / Rights Managed)

Here are two great resources to find the traffic (# visitors to the site):

• http://www.alexa.com
• http://www.quantcast.com

Please remember that the information you find at these sites aren’t exact but they give a good indication. You should not compare the numbers between alexa and quantcast so use only one of the sites to compare the traffic between the microstock sites.

Previous posts in this series:

1. Microstock Photography Tutorial
2. Types of stock photography
3. STEP #1: Research hot selling markets
4. STEP #2: Leverage on your strength
5. STEP #3: Research for lame and lazy competition
6. STEP #4: Determine a niche for your microstock photography