May 20, 2012

STEP #5: Shortlist Microstock Photography agencies

Now you need to find a microstock agency to sell your images so now it’s time for some fun and shortlist all microstock agencies you’re interested to work with.

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):

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
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STEP #3: Research for lame and lazy competition

You might have found a market in step #1 with lot’s of buyers but what if the competition is grueling?

Your next task is to identify a market with limited competition and the best tactic I know to identify lame and lazy competition is simply to spy on your competition.

It’s easy, it’s ingenious and it’s a remarkably easy way to do it as you’ll see below.

Keep on reading next post (coming tomorrow)

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
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STEP #2: Leverage on your strength

Step #2 in this series…

Here are a few important questions you must ask yourself before you start a career in microstock photography:

  • What are you passionate about?
  • What special knowledge do I have?
  • What special knowledge can I easily access?

Working with something you like is a pleasure and working with something you hate is a nightmare. In other words, don’t try to enter the market “animal photography” if you are allergic to them.

Markets you have special knowledge in and special access to can be very lucrative, especially if they are difficult to access by others.

Previous posts in this series:

  1. Microstock Photography Tutorial
  2. Types of stock photography
  3. STEP #1: Research hot selling markets
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STEP #1: Research Hot Selling Markets

The biggest mistake most microstock photographers do is to first take lot’s of images and then hope and pray someone will buy them.

BIG mistake.

It’s like carpet bombing the stock agencies with images and hope some of them will hit the target. I call this the B52 tactic for obvious reasons.

Imagine instead a F15 Hornet take aim on the target, then release the laser guided missile and a few seconds later the competition is annihilated.

That’s what I want you to do, first identify a well defined target with laser precision, take images for that target and sell the crap out of your competitors.

A secret weapon I use to find such a market with hungry buyers is to simply spy on the photo editors. It’s a sneaky but brilliant and perfectly legal.

But more about that in a future post (coming in the next couple of days).

Previous posts in this series:

  1. Microstock Photography Tutorial
  2. Types of stock photography
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Microstock Photography Tutorial

If you, like most other hobby photographers would like to have other people sell and resell your images on autopilot while you collect the money, this is the most exciting blog post you’ll ever read.

Listen carefully:

About 50,000 to 100,000 images are sold every day and the photos are used for magazines, books, websites, reports, brochures and many other purposes.

Stock photography is often used by graphic designers to create advertisements, websites, brochures for promotions but there are many other uses as well.  Sometimes stock photography is used in magazine or newspaper articles, or by tourist centers.

These are just a few examples of ways stock photos might be used.

Publishers used to hire photographers or use in-house photographers to take all the photos they needed but most publishers can’t afford to hire photographers any longer so nowadays they mostly buy photos from stock agencies.

Thousands of stock agencies are now eager to market, sell and resell photos, taken by photographers exactly like you (I have a list of nearly 2,000 in my private directory).

Here’s how it works:

  • You take photos
  • You upload your photos to one or more picture libraries
  • The picture library market your photos.
  • A photo editor finds your photo and buys it.
  • You get a commission of the sales price.
  • Then the agency continues to market and resell the same photo for you as long as you wish.

Do you see the power of this?

You take photos, which happens to be your hobby right?

Then the stock agency do all the grunt-work to market and sell the photos for you and finally you collect the money.

I don’t know about you, but collecting money is also something I gladly do, any time, any day. Especially if the money is generated from my hobby.

Stock photography really is as close as passive income you can get. It’s a one time effort from your side, and then someone else do all the marketing and sales for you. Many photos can sell 30 years later so it’s a great extra source of income after you retired.

It’s free of charge to join a stock agency and they won’t charge you a penny unless they sell one of your photos so it’s financially risk free from your side.

Stock photography can easily be combined with other work if you’re not ready to go full time yet (I always recommend you try it out part time before you quit you day job).

To be continued tomorrow.

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