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.

1.    Increase market reach

The market reach is how many potential clients you drive to your website through online and offline advertising and other means.

You can for instance buy banner ads, advertise via Google Adwords, distribute flyers, post on message boards to drive traffic to your website.

2.    Increase conversion rate

The conversion rate is simply how many of your visitors buy your photos or services from you in comparison to how many visitors your website had in total. For instance if 3 out of 100 visitors buy from your website you have a 3% conversion rate. This might not sound very high but believe me, a 3% conversion rate is maybe not outstanding but it’s definitely quite good.

You can increase your conversion rate in many ways by for instance improving navigation of your site, pre-selling your clients and providing a good irresistible offer.

3.    Increase the lifetime value of your clients

The third and final way to grow your business is to increase the lifetime value of your clients. The lifetime value is how much each client buy from you in total over the years you run your business.

Increasing lifetime value can mainly be done in two ways

• Increasing the price
• Selling more times to your client

A client that once purchased something from you is much more likely to purchase again so old clients should always be given special treatments. If you regularly send them special offers they can’t resist they’ll keep buying from you over-and-over again.

Don’t you agree that if you a) increase your market reach, b) increase the conversion rate and c) increase the lifetime value of your client you’ll be able to grow your business as much as you want?

In fact, everything you do should be centered around these three fundamentals for business growth:

1. Increase market reach
2. Increase the conversion rate
3. Increase the lifetime value

Nothing else is important in terms of growing your business.

You can also express the business growth with this formula:

Market reach x Conversion rate x Lifetime value = Money on the bank

Let’s assume you increase

• Market reach with 10%
• Conversion rate with 10%
• Lifetime value with 10%

Your business has not increased with 30%, it’s increased with 33.1% (1.1 x 1.1 x 1.1 = 1.331).

If you methodically and consistently work to improve these three areas you’ll see an incredible growth of your business.

I used a free web host initially and had to regret it later. One day it was gone… stopped working… they just decided discontinue with the free service. Imagine you have built up a good site, have a lot of traffic to the site and one day it’s gone. You have to start all over again.

Here are the top 7 reasons why you should NEVER rely free web hosting for your photography website:

1. It simply looks VERY unprofessional
2. The storage space and bandwidth is very limited
3. Most free web hosting include advertising on your site
4. You have very limited support if your site is down
5. They might just disappear one day and your site is lost
6. You won’t get your own domain name
7. You can find quality web hosts for VERY cheap prices nowadays

There are so many good quality web hosts available that there is simply no reason to be cheapskate charlie and use a free service. You can get a quality web host for $4.95 per month. Come-on, you can afford that!

Here’s a simple 7 step checklist for selecting a webhost:

1. Guaranteed uptime should be >99.9%
2. You should not need to sign a long term contract
3. Your account should include CPANEL and Fantastico for easy installation of blogs and image galleries etc.
4. The web hosting service should include 24/7 support
5. Ample of disk space and bandwidth (unlimited is best)
6. Possibility to seamlessly upgrade your account later with more domains, SQL databases, dedicated server etc. when your business grows
7. Provide Linux web hosting (don’t use Windows)

I often get the question “which web host do you use?” and the answer is Hostgator for most of my sites. I’ve tried many other web hosts but Hostgator is the one that nearly always works flawlessly for me and they provide good value for money.

Hostgator.com fulfills all 7 criterias in the checklist and they also have one more added benefit. They are very popular and this means that most scripts for blogs, shopping carts, image galleries, CMS etc. have been tested and works great with Hostgator.

Hostgator web hosting might insufficient if you start driving a huge amount of traffic but don’t worry about that for now. You need an insane amount of traffic to your website before it becomes a problem so let’s call it a positive problem if it happens . And you can always upgrade to another web host.

• The search engines and especially Google likes old domain names. All new domain names end up in the sandbox for a few months and it takes years to garner trust from the search engines
• It takes time to get incoming links to a new website
• It takes time to create content for the website
• It takes time to get a higher PR (Page Rank) value
• etc.

In short, it’s darn difficult and takes time to get a new website ranking high in the search engines. But there is an easy shortcut you can take.

Here’s how you can take a “free ride” on other websites and get free traffic

You can “piggy back” on the hard work other website owners have done to get traffic to their website and the best part it’s free traffic for you.

Note: the concept of piggy backing might not be new to you but i’ve added a unique twist that makes it much more effective.

Step 1: Find a photosharing website that fulfill the following criteria’s

• You can put an outgoing link in to your website from the photo sharing site. It’s great if you do NOT get a “nofollow” link but it’s OK if you do.
• The title you give the image is included between the TITLE tags
• The title you give the image is included in the ALT tag
• You can set keywords for the image
• Old site with lots of traffic and images, a high PR and rank high in the search engines.

It may sound complicated but it’s quite easy to find out if the photo sharing site fulfills these criteria’s. And once you found one it’s as easy as 123 to piggy back on the free traffic from the website. More about that later…

Step 2: Upload your best images images to the photo sharing site and give them keywords

After you uploaded the images you need to give each of them a very specific keyword they should be optimized for. For instance, if you have an image of the Niagara falls at sunset you can use the keywords “niagara falls sunset”. Make sure the keyword is relevant to the image and that it’s a keyword you think people would use when they search for an image like this. There are many free tools on the web that helps you find out how many times a certain keywords is searched for.

Important: Make sure you include the keyword in the caption and/or title field for each image.

Step 3: Put a link to your website in the description field

Now you just have to put a link to YOUR website by mentioning something like this “You can find many more beautiful images like this at YOUR WEBSITE”

So people come to the high traffic website, find your images and get interested, Then they click on the link and come to your website.

You just got free traffic to your website!

This concept to piggy back is not new but there’s a unique twist in that you keyword each image and put the keyword in the caption/title filelds and that the keyword also is added in the ALT and TITLE tags. This makes it easy for Google and other search engines to find your images.

Why?

Most photography websites contains mainly images and are often flash based. Google likes text but doesn’t like flash based websites at all. Actually, Google probably have nothing against flash as such, but it just can’t understand what it is.

Text on the other hand is easy for Google to understand so Google is very efficient in gobbling and understanding text based web sites.

So is it hopeless to get a photography website ranking high on Google?

No, it’s not. In fact Google is pretty good at understanding images and have started to like them even more lately. In fact, nearly 30% of my website traffic now comes from Google’s image search and it’s growing fast. You just need to help Google to understand what the images are all about.

Here’s how you can help Google to interpret your images:

1. Include a descriptive file name including the keywords for all images (for instance angkor-wat-temple.jpg)
2. Include a descriptive ALT tag including the keywords (for instance angkor wat temple)
3. Give non relevant graphics (bullet points etc.) a number instead of a name (1.gif or 55.jpg etc).
4. Include caption text for each image (of course including the keywords (or synonyms)

You should of course also do the “standard” SEO for your webpage:

• All webpages on your site should be optimized for different keywords.
• Include the keyword(s) between the TITLE tags (for instance <title>Angkor Wat Temple</title>)
• Include the keyword(s) between the H1 tags (for instance <h1>Angkor Wat Temple</h1>)
• Include the keyword(s) in the filename (for instance angkor-wat-temple.html)
• Include the keyword(s) and synonyms if you have some text on the web page.

These small tricks are fast and easy to do and gives you good value for the small amount of time it takes to do it. There are more advanced tactics but they’re more time consuming and often not worth the time it takes.

Note: don’t keyword spam because Google is not stupid. Only include relevant keywords.

Of course, getting incoming links to your website is also needed to rank high on google but i’ll cover that later in a separate blog post.

Cheers!

Why?

Well, there are many reasons but here are the most common one.

They are sending the Adwords traffic to the main homepage

Most adviertisers send the Adwords traffic directly to their main homepage, a splash page or other generic webpages they have on their website.They are hoping that the visitor will browse around and be so impressed with what they see that they immediately pick-up their credit card or call the phone number to place an order.

Believe me, it doesn’t work like that for any type of traffic and especially advertised traffic… You got maximum 1 minute and probably much less to grab the visitors attention, or else they’re gone, forever. And you just lost money.

The succeed with Google Adwords you need to send the traffic to a very specific page with a very specific purpose. That purpose is either to make them buy something immediately or even better, to grab their email address. Then you can continue to promote your services or photographs at your own will.

Let me repeat, you need to send them to a webpage with only one. You either

1. Make them buy something, or better
2. Get their email address

Let’s take a closer look at the two options.

1. Make them buy something:

If you want to make them buy something you need to be very specific what you want them to buy. If you just present them with a  portfolio of hundreds of images they’ll most likely get confused or procrastinate and say to themselves “I’ll think about it and come back tomorrow”.

Let me be clear, tomorrow never comes if you’re selling something on the web. A few hours later they either totally forgot about your website or they forgot how to find it.

You need to make them take the decision here and now, not tomorrow.

2. Get their email address

An even better option is to get their email address.

Why?

Because it’s easier to get their email address than it is to make them buy something, And once you have their email address you can continue promoting your images and services through email over-and-over again. If you don’t get their email address they’re gone forever.

To get their email address you need to “bribe” them a little. For instance you can offer them a free print (small size) in return for their email address. Or you can offer a free photo session with one free 4×6″ print and if they want more they need to pay you.

Remember, to get your free print they need to give you their email address.

Some more advice for your Adwords campaign.

1. Make sure you maintain a high CTR (preferrably higher than 3%). A higher CTR means you pay less per click assuming everything else is equal.
2. Track, track and track. Some keywords have very bad ROI and some keywords are pure goldmines. The key here is: you don’t know which keywords perform unless you track each keyword.
3. Keep the Adwords groups focused around a small number of very similar keywords. It’s easier to create more relevant ads with higher CTR and a badly performing keyword will not pull down the whole campaign in terms of CTR.

Good luck!

First some background, a referral can be 50 times more valuable than a “normal” lead. Let me ask you, who would you trust more:

1. A photographer coming up to you and telling you he takes great photos for great prices
2. One of your friends recommending a photographer and telling you he takes great photos for great prices

You are naturally inclined to trust a good friend much more than someone totally unknown.

So it should be one of your highest priorities in your photography marketing plans to get referrals whenever you can and here’s a proven game plan you can follow.

Game plan

Offer a free photo session to five families with small children and take ~100 to 200 images. Give them ten free 8×10” sized prints under the condition that they personally introduce you to a minimum of ten other families. Also “upsell” them with additional prints and larger sized prints after you gave them the ten free prints.

This should give you 5-10 paid photo sessions with the referred families where you sell 8×10” sized prints. Also offer them a few 11×14” sized prints for free if they personally refer you to their friends.

Remember to take a lot of images because it’s really hard for small children families to reject a cute photo of little Alice, especially if it’s already printed. It’s like throwing little Alice in the trash can.

Your photography business can go viral with this kind of marketing approach and the word is spreading by word of mouth which is extremely valuable. Never be afraid to offer something for free in the beginning as long as you have a plan how to monetize it at a later stage.

An additional photography marketing idea would be to offer a photo shoot every birthday for the first few years or why not monthly or quarterly the first one or two years. That would generate recurring income which is always nice to have.

Easy, banks are rabid photo buyers these days especially due to the financial turmoil we’re in right now. according to Mortgage Bankers Association are 1.35 million homes in the U.S are under foreclosure and 1 in 10 homes are either either delinquent or in foreclosure in December 2008.

One in ten homes are delinquent or under foreclosure.

Banks needs photos of houses they now (unwillingly) owns and they need a lot of photos fast. They don’t care about artistic talents or how beautiful the images are, all they care about is to get photos that represents the property “as-is” as long as it’s well exposed and focused. If you can take a decent image of your car you have what it takes. I won’t accept any excuses from you that you aren’t a good enough photographer – it’s that simple.

Many years ago the banks had their own photographers but this is now mostly outsourced.  This opportunity has existed for many years so it’s not a fly on the wall kind of thing and it’s the perfect opportunity to enter this business NOW. In fact a whole industry called “field services” is established to cater for this need.

The easiest way to start is to join several field service companies in a freelance capacity. I’ve compiled special report on how to make money with your camera in the field service business you can download for FREE so grab it while it’s still available.

It’s like making money on autopilot, all you have to do is to take and submit images to the micro stock agency who do all the grunt work while you collect the money (and taking photos is your hobby right?.

The biggest sticking point people have with micro stock photography is that the images sell for only a few dollars and even less. Traditional stock agencies usually sell similar images for hundreds of dollars.

I sold this stock image for $330 at a traditional stock agency but only once. How many times could i have sold it if the price was $1?

So why would someone sell images through micro stock agencies for a few bucks if they could sell it for hundreds of dollars at a traditional stock agency?

There are more factors that price in the equation so let me explain…

You can calculate how much you earn through this formula:
Number of images sold x Average price = Total sales

So it’s not only the price you get per image but also the number of images sold that matters. And as you might guess, it’s way easier to sell a photo for 1 dollar than for 600 dollar. So in the end you might make much more money selling images for 1 dollar each than you would selling your images for 600 dollars.

OK, this sounds great but what kind of photos can I sell?

There’s a big difference between a good photo and a good marketable photo so that image of aunt Molly’s birthday might mean a lot to you but probably mean nothing for the rest of the world (sorry Molly). The same goes for sunsets and pets which also are very hard to sell.

The best way to find out what sells is to analyze the most popular images section you can find at most micro stock websites. You can also analyze images in magazines and websites. But in general… Photos that sell falls in two categories:

1. Photos of people doing something
2. Photos expressing a concept or a mood

Be extra careful if your image contains a recognizable face or building as you will need a signed model release. Also be careful if your image contains a subject protected by a copyright or trademark.

Here’s a couple of micro stock agencies to get your started:

• iStockPhoto
• Fotoalia
• ShutterStock

So what are you waiting for?