The Art of Money Getting With A Camera
I can’t stress enough how important it is that you first determine what kind of images that sell and afterwards take and sell those kind of images. Imagine you spent a lot of time taking pictures just to find out that no one want them when you try to sell them through the stock agencies.
I’ve created a video tutorial how to you can do this. Enjoy!
Please let me know what you think about the video by posting a comment below. Thanks!
How you ever thought about submitting your images to a microstock agency and perhaps even been doubtful if your images would be accepted this is going to be a very exciting article for you to read.
Listen carefully.
The pillars to successful image submissions rest on what I call “Explosive C4 for successful image submissions”.
And they are:
Ok, so let’s scrutinize the components one-by-one because this is critical if you submit images to stock agencies.
C1 – Check for technical issues
The first C in “explosive C4 for successful image submissions” is to Check for technical issues.
Blurry images, badly exposed images and images with color casts are all the “kiss of death” if you submit them to a stock agency. You simply won’t get your submission approved and consequently not sell any pictures either.
Just to be clear. I don’t suggest you need a 24 mega pixel camera with long and extremely expensive lenses to succeed in microstock photography. The technical problems I refer to is technical issues related to poor camera handling and poor image editing.
Here’s a list of common mistakes beginners do that often lead to rejected image submissions:
This is obviously not a complete list but it gives you a good understanding of technical issues you must check for before you make your image submission.
C2 – Compile commercially useful images
The second C in “explosive C4 for successful image submissions” is to Compile commercially useful images.
The stock agencies don’t care about how beautiful or artistic your images are. Bluntly speaking, all they care about is if they can make money selling your images. Nothing else matters. Sorry if I destroyed some idealistic dreams but it’s a fact so you better get over it if you had some doubts. But really, this is good for you because if they sell your photos you get money on the bank.
A great litmus test is to ask yourself, would a magazine be interested to publish this image? If you can find similar images in magazines you know you’re on the right track.
Another somewhat sneaky trick is to spy on the stock agencies using readily available information at their web pages. Hint: you can use #downloads and #images in the search result to determine supply and demand.
C3 – Conform to the law
The third C in “explosive C4 for successful image submissions” is to Conform to the law.
You obviously want to stay out of trouble with the law so knowing what you can and can’t do is critical so you can stay out of trouble with the law but also to preserve your own interests.
Pay special attention if you intend to sell your images for commercial use like for instance advertising or product images on a commercial product. Commercial images require you for instance to have signed model releases for all recognizable individuals in the image. Images for editorial use are much less sensitive and don’t require a model release in most cases.
The problem with Royalty Free licensing is that you never know what the buyer intend to use the image for. It could be both editorial and commercial use so you should always get a signed model release when you sell images with Royalty Free license.
C4 – Create a checklist
The fourth C in “explosive C4 for successful image submissions” is to create a checklist.
There are many steps between taking the image and finally getting it approved by the stock agency and you also have many images to submit to be able to scale your business.
If you do some of the steps in the wrong order you at a minimum waste time or in worst case get your submission rejected because you “forgot” something important. Not only does it waste your time but kills your motivation and good mood too.
Everyone that sell photos need a checklist that covers all important activities and helps you do them in the most time saving order.
I personally have a laminated copy of my own checklist within an arms length from my computer.
Nothing and I mean NOTHING can separate me from my checklist and now you can grab it too including more than 30 training videos.
Just go to http://photosubmissionsecrets.com and grab your own copy.
There are only three reasons your photo submissions might be rejected by the stock agencies
1. Commercial reasons
Your images might be rejected because there is no commercial use for your images. Why would a stock agency try to sell images no one want’s to buy.
2. Technical reasons
The second reason for rejected photo submissions of technical nature. Images are often rejected because they are poorly focused, badly exposed, have artifacts or other technical reasons.
3. Legal reasons
The third and final reason for rejected image submissions is legal issues. Typical examples of legal issues are no property or model release and trademarks or logos in royalty free images.
So next time you submit your images you should screen out images that have technical, commercial and legal issues.
Good luck with your image submissions.
The four key ingredients of successfully getting your photo submission approved by the stock agencies QC controllers are:
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.
You’re now ready to submit your first images! This is a big step and a very important milestone for you.
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.
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