Wow, John Stossel actually covered the topic of graphic design very briefly on the abc tv show 20/20.  I must have missed this one – maybe you did too? He talks about the uber-hated comic sans font and even Paul Rand.

Sometimes this is what being a graphic designer really feels like…proofing changes with clients can be funny, but not when you’re the designer jumping through all the ridiculous hoops   This is a funny parody on how ridiculous it can sometimes get when dealing with moron clients and making a million and one revisions.  Charging an hourly rate for revisions past a certain point will definitely help to avoid this type of dragged out ridiculousness.  Sometimes clients make changes just to feel important, or just because “they can”; even after being super specific about what they wanted in the first place

Here Bob show how to create a unique layout with simple square shapes in Photoshop.  Clipping group is something I had never even heard of until I watched this tutorial.  I really like how non-destructive the editing is with these methods.  Everything Bob does, he does it in ways where he can easily modify it without having to go backwards in the history tab. Overall this is a really cool effect that you can easily tweak the template to your own style or personal preference.

Adobe Photoshop video tutorial by Robert Mizerek

Well folks, I thought I’d just like to share my own personal story about what happened to me in this business.

First off, I love design. I can sit in photoshop, illustrator, inDesign for hours and create and layout stuff for just about anything. When I was a little kid I loved to draw, then it turned into a love for photoshop. So, I went to college to get an education that would ensure a more secure financial future. I got my BA in Graphic Design in 04,and have a really cool internship designing direct mail postcards for my college internship (paid well too). Then a few months later I landed a job working for a publisher of custom magazines. There I designed everything from soup to nuts that a small business needs, besides the advertisements and magazine covers/layouts. I learned so much on thisjob! I learned how to deal with clients in proofing, how to work along with the sales department. I was pretty bogged down with work, all 40hrs of every week. No breaks, no days where you can just play around onthe internet. Those are nice sometimes, other times they’re misery. But nonstop work isn’t good either, especially when you’re working for someone else. It just burns you out!

Next I decided to move along to something better (well, I thought). I got a job with a large national chain store as their head graphic designer in charge of the marketing for all 75 mall stores. There I designed signage, window posters, huge wall banners, billboard size stuff. Also a lot of postcards, handouts and doo dads. That job was the most stressful. They are insane in retail. Everything has to be done before they even ask you to do it. Maybe it was just the company I was in. I thought the first company was stressful, this place made that one look like heaven.

So then the economy gets real bad. The company is now in Chapter 11 and they went from 75 stores to 21. Now I’m out of a job, and what do I do?Well, thankfully I had a side business of selling stock graphics and vectors that I did on nights and weekends. I’m now doing that full time for a living, since May of last year. I work from my home office and enjoy every minute of it, spending time with my my wife when she’s not working, and my two dogs. I have no health insurance yet, and no benefits, but hey – we’re getting by. It’s a scary thing for losing your job, but if you guys can learn one thing from my story it’s this: have a backup plan. Don’t rely just on the unemployment checks you’llget for 6 months or so if you lose your job. Have another skill or trade, or even a freelancing strategy. It’s scary when you have a family that you have to support, rent or mortgage to pay, and no hope in sight.

Anyways, that’s why I’m no longer a “traditional” designer. I still design stuff all the time, but with stock it’s a heck of a lot more generic. I have to keep things simple, too, otherwise if it’s too specific it just won’t sell.  Do I miss working with picky clients, working with a boss over my shoulder? Definitely not. I really don’t have any desire to ever work in a corporate setting again, either. It’s just too hectic, and too stressful compared to working on your own. I think I’d rather have less stress, even if it means making less money. Others might disagree.  I turn away people approaching me all the time, because every business has a need for some type of design work.  I just enjoy designing the generic way, through stock images.  It gives me a relative amount of creative freedom (obviously you need to shoot or design concepts that people are going to be able to actually want) and the only time I have to deal with another human being is when I am doing a photoshoot or some kind of payment or account issue arises on one of my agencies.  It’s really great!  You can’t beat a microstock career. 

Anyone else have a story similar to mine? I’m reaching out to see if I’m the only weird one…

http://blogs.photopreneur.com/photographers-and-designers

A great read on the photopreneur blog about photographers, designers, and the spill over.  I have always found that photography spills into design.  I can’t think of one of my graphic design friends that hasn’t tinked around with photography in some way, shape, or form.  It also touches on how those that think they’re going to get everything right in the camera without any post processing knowledge are going to have a rough road in this business.

So, you wonder if you can make any money selling your images online.  I wondered the same thing, back when I was a full time graphic designer.  I was purchasing hundreds of stock photos for use in my designs. Then I thought, “Hey – why can’t I sell my own photos?”. Professional stock photo collections can cost anywhere from $200-$500 per disc, with single shots costing anywhere from $80-$200 themselves. It’s thrilling to find places online where you can purchase high-res, professional quality images at a fraction of that price. Recently there has been a boom in the micropayment stock photography business. The concept for photographers is this: instead of selling one image at $200-$300 once, why not sell it for $1-20 multiple times under a royalty free license? In the long-run, the profit margin can even be much larger than simply selling it at a larger, fixed price.  Are you looking to supplement your income with your hobby of shooting photography, video footage or illustration?  Then by all means, read on.

How much can you really make?

As much as you want…it depends on many factors.  How much time do you have?  How much commercial value do your images have?  Are you shooting unique niche images or mainsteam type images that are easily duplicated by the next microstock contributor?  Can you really make any money off of selling images for fifty cents each? Well, if you make just ten dollars a day (ie: by selling 20 images on one site or multiple sites at .50 per photo sale) you will be raking in an extra $300 a month. That should cover a few of those bills, maybe even all of your car payment! This is not an impossible feat, either.  The best part about it is, once you do the initial work of editing your images, keywording them, and uploading – you’re done.  At that point you can sit on your butt and let your images work for you.  There are all times that we get too busy...I have gone several months without being able uploading anything new.  What happened?  The sales kept on rolling in.  All of the past work I had done continues to pay off.  I know many that are even able to do this full time and the income they make from it pays all of their bills (they don’t all live in third world countries, either.)  There are even a lot of people that are making 4, 5, even 6 figures from stock photography monthly.  That’s right, I said monthly.  The sky is the limit.  Recently I have joined the ranks of “full timers” because I am personally tired for working stressful graphic design positions in the corporate world.  I’d much rather do my own thing, and be able to work from my home office in my boxer shorts.  Having more time to invest into stock is helping my sales tremendously. Don’t be fooled – things will cool down if you stop submitting new content (images, stock footage, vectors) regularly.  Don’t think that it’s easy to make a lot of money selling stock images, because it’s really not.  There are a lot more that make very little money than those that make a lot. 

“But wait…” you think to yourself; “I have a decent digital camera. Why can’t I sell some of my nice shots? “  Sure enough, people probably will buy them – they bought mine, back when I reasoned this same way. Whether it was a picture of my feet at the beach, a shot of a tricked-out sports car or even a background I created in Adobe Photoshop; people bought them. I didn’t start as a highly experienced professional photographer and you don’t have to either, in order to make money doing this. It helps to have some novice or amateur experience with a camera, and if you know your Photoshop you are going to be even more advantaged.  Upload to the microstock agencies when you get slow, and then you’ll be making extra money while you’re busy.  Graphic designers – both seasoned pros and students in training: you have an advantage.  Being a designer helps you know what types of images and artwork us wacky design gurus are looking for, and find most useful.  If you have both graphic design and photography experience, that gives you an even bigger advantage. I have been working in this industry for over four years, and I’d like to share with you my experience.

How does it work?

First, you obviously need to sign up for an account at one of the sites listed below. After that, you should make sure the images you are planning on uploading are of good enough quality to get accepted by the approvers on the site. After a while, you will get the hang of knowing what they will approve, and what they won’t. Your pics should need to be shot from at least a 4 megapixel camera (although some sites allow as low as 3) and should be corrected for proper color. If you are scanning in old film negatives, make sure you do so at a high enough resolution.  If there is noise in the image, you are going to have to remove it.  The best way to do this, is to shoot at a low ISO setting.  Most stock photographers rarely go above ISO 200.  A nice little photoshop add-on that works great for removing noise is NeatImage. There is another call Noise Ninja.  They both work great in cleaning up the graininess you might have in certain areas. Once you make sure everything is in tip-top shape with your image, you next need to upload it to the microstock website. Once it’s up there, you need to add keywords, so that designers can find your image through a normal search. You also have to give it a name, brief description, and a title. If the image has a recognizable person in it, you will also need to attach a scan of a signed model release.  Each agency has different image categories. After choosing the best categories for your image, your image is ready to be pushed into the site’s “approval cue”. Once accepted or denied, you receive a confirmation email. That’s it. Now you sit back, relax, and wait for the sales to come in.

What if you had your same small collection of images spread across many different stock photo websites? I thought this to myself, and decided to try it for ha-ha’s. Sure enough, my sales multiplied. Start off with one site at first. Once you get the hang of it, you can upload your titled / keyworded images to the other sites easily, then simply categorize and submit.

TIP: The trick is to keyword your images with an IPTC / EXIF editor either in Adobe Photoshop, or just download the free program called IrfanView www.irfanview.com Doing this saves you a lot of time, since you won’t have to keep typing in lists of words with every website you submit to.  It’s also way easier than copying and pasting things repeatedly. Also remember that when keywording, try using as many relevant words as you can. That will get you the most views/sales on your image. 

How do you get paid?

They can either send you a paypal transfer, or even a check. I prefer paypal, because it’s quick and easy.  Many sites also offer Moneybookers, which is similar to paypal.  Upon receiving electronic payments, simply transfer the funds from there over to your bank/checking account, and you are ready to spend that hard earned cash on groceries, the rent, even high-priced gasoline for your car.  Once you hit the site’s minimum payout limit (usually from $30-$100), then you can get a payment sent.

Which stock photo sites will earn the most money?
Trying to see which site sells more images than the next is tricky.  There are a lot of elements involved, and it seems like sales figures fluctuate from month to month amongst the micro sites.  Factors like portfolio size, photo types, site search engines, and even categorization all play a part.  All I can do is give you my best sites – the ones that I personally think are worth my time to upload to. Below are the links to my top-selling sites – sign up, and try them out. Then you can make your own conclusions.

What types of images sell the best?
This is definitely a fully loaded question.  Anyone starting out in stock asks this – it’s only normal.  I can personally tell you that what sells sometimes even still (after 4 years doing this) blows my mind.  Many times what you think is incredibly awesome and will sell like hotcakes sells the least.  Other times you are right on your judgement.  You really have to ask yourself the “who what where why when and how” about each photos.  Who could possibly find a use for this image?  Where could it be used?  Why would someone want to use it?  How could it be used?  You’d be surprised.  Look on the micros and check out the top selling images, if you absolutely have no clue what subjects to sell.  Generally…sports, medical, business/finance, people, and graphics shots are some of the top selling image subjects.  They always have been, and they probably always will be.

Shutterstock: My number one top seller. Shutterstock offers subscriptions to its users, so people on there are looking to grab their maximum limit of 25 images a day. If you have nice looking images, you’ll most definitely get tons of downloads. They have a very convenient ftp upload process as well, which saves a lot of time.  Shutterstock pays $.30-.38 per image, but that adds up so much faster than any of the other micropayment sites. Once you pass $75 in sales before the end of each month, you can qualify for a check or paypal payout. If you don’t surpass that, it rolls over to the next month.  I personally earn the most on this site.  Be careful, though – since they are a bit pickier when it comes to accepting images, be sure that your original 10 photos that you submit with your photographer’s applicaton are top-notch.  You might want to sign up for SS after you’ve uploaded at least 20-30 good pics to dreamstime, featurepics, and bigstockphoto (read about those sites below). If Shutterstock rejects your “BEST 10″ photo application, you’ll have to wait another month before you can re-apply.  Be careful, because that would be rough.  My suggestion is not to sign up them as your first micro site.  Sign up on the others, and then take the best 10 of your portfolios to upload for your Shutterstock application once you get the hang of this stock stuff.

iStockPhoto: This has a great earner for me, fairly consistently, with a minute fraction of the amount of images I have approved on the other sites.  These guys have been the leaders at the micropayment game for years now.  What I have found personally, is that the images that do get accepted-some sell like hotcakes – others not so hot.  I have an extremely small portfolio, and yet that is enough to beat many other sites’ earnings some months.  They are pretty tough on photos – at least mine.  It took me a few tries to get my application accepted, personally.  Bring your “A” game when you sign up.  The majority of my images are custom-photoshopped textures and backgrounds.  They seem to like real photos better.  I’m going to try to upload more of my stuff, as soon as I can find the time.  Don’t let the smaller image payout amounts fool you; they really do add up fast like with Shutterstock.  As much as I really think the upload process for iStock is more cumbersome, and a lot more work than uploading to the other micros – I still recommended doing it.  It’s definitely worth the extra effort.  Getty Images () now owns iStockphoto, and we all know that Getty is one of the biggest names in stock photography. 

BigStockPhoto: I’ve sold tons of images on this site. It’s a great site if you’re a first timer, since they are very lenient.  My personal approval rating (precentage of images accepted out of your total uploads) is the best on BigStock. This site is in my top 5 for sales. They have ftp upload as well.  You make $.50 or $1.00 per image on this site.  There are many other Extended licensing options that will make you even more than that.

Dreamstime: This site site ranks among my top 5 for sales. I get plenty of regular sales from DT. They now have ftp upload support – and ftp upload makes life a heck of a lot easier / much faster.  $.50 and up per image on this site, depending on the size of the photo purchased.

StockXpert: This site has been the latest breakout hit.  The good thing about StockXpert is that you can make sales ranging from .50-5.00 depending on the size of the photo that the user purchase.  I’d put this site in my top 5 for sure.  Whenever someone searches the free site StockXchange (www.sxc.hu) many times StockXpert search results show up near the bottom of the screen.  What a great way to market them.  Sign up for this one for sure.  They don’t even require you to categorize the photos, unless you want to.  They feature FTP bulk upload.

Fotolia: These guys have ftp upload as well.  Excellent income on this site.  Fotolia is in my top 5 best sellers.  Sales have been ever-increasing as fotolia continues with their own marketing.  On fotolia a low-res photo sale pays you $.33 up to larger sizes, which will get you over $1.00.   Once you achieve higher downloads, your status goes up -and your pay does also. The next level up gives you $.37 per credit sale. Recently rejection levels have been high, but sales have been growing also. I definitely would still recommend this site, as it is one of the “BIG 6″ for sales.

123 Royalty Free: Here the minimum payout is $50.  The sales come in fairly slow like BigStock, but very regular.  123RF is definitely worth uploading your portfolio to.  All you have to do, is upload your images that have the IPTC data/keywords embedded, and then wait for your review.  That’s it.  No categorizing, no more work.  You will generally make .22-.44 cents for each photo sold.  123RF is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Inmagine Corp LLC.

CanStockPhoto: This place has done pretty well for me also. They have a nice java applet that allows you to upload an entire folder full of images, or you can use their ftp feature.  The payouts on this site vary on whether a subscription member, or guest purchases the photo – and also on the size they buy.  It ranges from $.20 to over $1.00  Minimum payout is $50. Sales seem much better lately, way more enhanced license sale than there used to be.  This is due to a recent partnership / affiliation with the image search website Fotosearch.

Featurepics: I do sell images regularly here, and I get more per image the way I price them.  It’s worth submitting to, but in 2009 sales have definitely been on the decline, for myself at least.

Crestock: I really didn’t have much faith in Crestock at first.  I left a small batch of 50 or so images up on there, and surprisingly over a year or so they started increasing in sales every now and then.  So, I figured that I would upload the rest of my stuff.  Their upload process is simple and easy, and the sales have been picking up steadily as time goes on.  Definitely worth uploading to if you’re patient.  I’ve only hit a few payouts so far with them, but I hope to hit many more now that the minimum payout limit has been lowered to just $50.  Sales have been definitely picking up over here in recent months.  They reject A LOT of really good images, but that is just their philosophy.  Don’t get offended if they reject the majority of your images.  They probably reject the most out of any other micro.

PantherMedia: This is a German stock photo site that recently has been translated in English as well.   I just began to upload my photos to these guys several months ago, and already have had a handful of sales.  The earning here are a lot higher, as they are more of a midstock agency.  You get paid in Euros, which convert nicely into USD, seeing that the Euro is worth a lot more than the dollar.  Definitely jump through the extra hoops to try and sell your stuff here, if you can.  I’d say it’s definitely worth it. 

MostPhotos: This is a new site where there are NO REVIEWS!!  I am loving this – it’s a really fun community where you can comment on other images, rate them, chat with fellow photographers, and much more.  Try this one out.  You get paid in Euros, which convert nicely into USD, seeing that the Euro is worth a lot more than the dollar – and probably will be for a while.

Veer Marketplace: This stock photo agency sounds promising, as it’s owned by Corbis.  I’ve known the Veer name forever.  Every graphic design knows them – It’s recently been announced that Snapvillage is now going to be turning into Veer Marketplace, just in case you were wondering what happened to Snap.

Alamy: Not exactly a microstock site, but you can sell RF and RM as well as editorial images here.  You have the option to set your images as RF, RM, or RP.  I am opting to stick to the RF model, so that I can still sell my same images elsewhere on other agencies.  You have to upsize your images to 48M (not 48mb, for further info google upsizing for Alamy) which is just an extra step before uploading them.  You won’t get sales right away with this site, but once they come – they come in large amounts.  I sold my first image for exactly 1000 times more  money than I would normally make on a microstock site.  Not bad, eh?  

YAYmicro: This is a newer site that has been around since 2008.  They have a very easy FTP upload system.  I am enjoying the ease of the site a lot, and reviews are very fair.  Sale are slower than other microstock agencies, but they are definitely on the rise in recent months. Definitely give them a shot.

Fotomind: I’ve been with this place for a while now, and sales are very very slow.  A+ for ease of use so far.  Kind of hoped to see some more sales here, but it’s still a new site.  Might want to save this one for a rainy day, because honestly there’s not much action here.

ScanStockPhoto: I’ve recently signed  up with Scandanavian Stock Photo because I have heard of some sales when you have a larger sized portfolio.  If you’re just starting out, you might want to put this one on hold until you have a portfolio sized in the thousands.  Sales are there if you have a huge portfolio in the thousands, but they’re but very slow.

Cutcaster: This is a newer startup agency with a very unique concept.  The buyer can actually haggle with a seller over pricing. John Griffin, the founder of the site is very pro-active in the launch and marketing of the site, and I wish him the best.  He is a hard working guy, and has been busting his hump to market Cutcaster and drive up sales. So far I’ve sold a handful of images, and made my first payout.  The minimum here is just $20, unlike other newer sites which are set to $50-100.  Here you can price the images any way you want, just like on Featurepics.

TIP: FTP uploading makes life so much easier, since most images are over 1 megabyte, and if you’re on a broadband connection you can upload all of your keyworded images at once. Once they’re uploaded, you complete them by categorizing them and submitting. You can use a free program on your pc called FTP Surfer or if you’re on a mac with OSX you can download Fetch.

I’m not a member of all of the micropayment sites, but a good place to find more help and to find more sites is www.talkmicro.com It’s a nice place to have an “unbiased” discussion about all the micro stes.  Another great forum like this is www.microstockgroup.com

This microstock game can become very addicting, once your sales start coming in. It might be a little slow for you at first, but that will soon change if you put forth a lot of time and effort. Obviously you will get more sales with both higher quality and a higher quantity of images. I’ve spent a solid four years in this stock game to get to where I am now, and most of that was part time.   If you’re a graphic designer and want to stick only to “designing” check out those links above anyway. They all offer really great stock photos at ridiculously cheap prices. What I like about this  stock stuff is that I also get to keep and use all of the great stock photos that I create! You can never have too many images in your collection. Most importantly, have fun!  Stock isn’t for everyone.  Some people really hate keywording – they can’t be bothered because it can be tedious work.  You always have to put forth some kind of effort in order to make money.  Like I said, this is a job that takes work. Let me tell you – this is NO get rich quick scheme. . You’ll  really enjoy selling stock once the sales start rolling in.  There’s nothing more thrilling than your first image sale. If you want to make money doing this, you’re going to have to work your tail off.   You can work at it part time, and eventually be earning a really nice side income.  Everyone creates different types of art, and some of it is very marketable.  Some has high commercial value, while a lot does not.  It might look great, and you might want to make a print of it for your grandmother, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to make enough money to make a living.  How do you know how well you’ll do?  You have to try it for yourself.  Then make your own conclusions.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the blog at the upper right of this page.  I’m a man of many words! If you are interested in one-on-one consulting regarding your microstock efforts, contact me for further info. 

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A rant by Todd

As designers, we all know how difficult working with the public can sometimes be.  Many of us learned this first-hand as teenagers in our first job at the local grocery store, fast food joint, or gas station. But, hey guess what?  This is just a fact of life, and that same ‘can’t please everyone’ sort of situation carries on from our first jobs into our careers–especially as creative professionals.  Sure, there are times when the first proof you send over to your client gets a, “wow, that’s so cool!  I love it!” type of reaction.  But unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen.

More often than ever, you get to work with small business owners that don’t know what they want.  It could be something as simple as a small, quarter page ad to run in a newspaper or magazine, or a larger identity project like a brochure or letterhead.  You email over the first PDF proof only to find that they give you a one sentence response.  “Okay…let’s try again.”

You send over a few more variations, trying to figure out what part of it was ‘okay’ and what part was ‘try again’,..but your client just isn’t able to articulate their specific desires. It seems like they don’t know what they want until they see something that they don’t want!

When I was new at this whole game, I figure d that the more versions I showed the client, the easier it would be to find out exactly what they were looking for.  Man, was I wrong.  I personally found out that the more variations you send along, the more confused they get and the more they want from you.  It’s like a “do-everything” administrative assistant in a company that does more and more and more, only to find that the expectations of their superiors have now been elevated.  Sometimes the more you do, the more people expect of you.  The customer figures that if you supplied them with 3-5 versions the first time around, it won’t be a problem to get even more nit-picky (and request another 3-5 revisions) in the next round.

“What the heck does this person looking far?” you wonder. You’ve gone through the images that your company has in its collections, or from the RF images you’ve personally collected.  These are the times when microstock sites are a godsend.  If you said to your boss, “Hey – I need to buy a physical therapy image for $80 for this client (who only paid $500 for their quarter page ad, including the design)”, your boss would go ape on you.  He’d similarly flip if you asked him to buy a collection of medical images that costs hundreds of dollars.

Thankfully, microstock sites allow us designers an easy way to grab low-res comp images in order to proof out ads with our customers.  Once they’re happy, then we log on and spend a couple of bucks for the high-res image. The customer usually has no idea where you purchased the image, or how much you paid for it.  And most of the time they aren’t large enough as a company to even care about anyone else using the same image.  You haven’t broken the bank, the customer is happy, and you’ve got an image you can use again in the future on another project.  Life is good!