Stock Photography 2.3 | Right Track / Wrong Track

How are you doing with your stock photography efforts? If you are off to a slow start... don't know where to start. Can't find the time to start or any number of those challenges, rest assured, I've been there. But here I am, again. You made me do this. Once started, I have an obligation here. I'm going to hold up my end of the deal no matter what!

To that end, guess what? I've about doubled my Alamy portfolio since I started this effort. I now have over 150 optimized images. I try to upload 10 photos 3x a week. When I upload 10 it takes up to 48 hours for them to get approved. So, the idea is to optimize the photos recently uploaded every night for an hour. I can get 5-7 done in an hour now that I'm rocking the free online keyword generator to pump out 50 keywords per image efficiently.

I'm also reading and studying as much as I can in hopes of making a strategic plan to shoot specifically for stock. I'm getting there. Alamy provides a comprehensive look at the keywords people are typing in to search for photos every month. That and looking at stock photo buying trend reports can begin to crystalize what it is you should be shooting!

From all of this a solid MOO (method of operation) can be derived. When the goal is $$$ these pieces of the puzzle must be put together. This is a long term play. We are talking about years and decades, not days or weeks.

Photos/Videos ::: The chances of selling an image increase exponentially with the number of photos in the catalog. That means this is totally a numbers game and you better set your expectations rightly so. If it is going to take having 2500 photos in the catalog to make $500 a month then you know it is going to take X months or years to get to that number. If I can do 100 a month that is 1200 a year. I better be willing to put in the time with no pay, right?
Quality/Quantity ::: What do the experts say is selling? What do the keyword reports say? It's going to be easier to hit revenue goals if we are shooting the right images. Compositions that people are looking to buy! It doesn't matter what you choose to upload. You are going to be in good company. So give it your best shot. Properly lit, well exposed, SHARP photos are going to sell over the competition every time.
Keywording ::: This has got to be seen as every bit as important as taking the image in the first place. If you pick a unique set of keywords that are very relevant to your image you will be more likely to sell. I've just recently learned that Alamy allows a keyword to be a "term" of 2 or 3 words that would be commonly joined in an image search. The more of these you can come up with, the more keywords you will gain... 50 two-word keywords is double 50 individual words, right? The title you give and the caption you create for each image is also very important so think them through as they add to the optimization of the photo in search.

I started to create an Adobe Stock account and then began reading how horrible the payout is there. It makes sense though. It is connected to the giant Adobe cloud of software. So millions of creative people have access to it. The challenge is, these people have subscriptions that grant them 50 or more images a month based on the plan they are in. Instead of a $25 sale at Alamy this subscription based sale at Adobe Stock might only be 25¢. I doubt the reach of the Adobe Stock site is much outside of these subscription based buyers. So, I am going to now look into applying to Istock/Getty Images. I also have to get serious about my video clips. Ahhhhgggggggggg!!!!!

It's just as easy to be on the right track as it is to be on the wrong track. That's why it's important to continuously be analyzing your direction, time allotments, distractions and everything that goes into you either doing this particular long term task or not!

I'll be back with more ideas, tips and a little pep talk soon. I want to write two long form pieces a month. Right now they are happening about every 3 weeks. Discipline... Later!

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