I just got called a “parasite of the stock industry” and I was told to “wake up”. Well, isn’t that special? I’ll just go back to making my living now…

It’s still hard for me to believe how many bitter feelings are still being held about microstock by those who have been in the stock business for decades. I’m not sure the Rights Managed photobanks will ever forgive it. Microstock strikes a very painful nerve with most rights managed photographers. I can understand where they’re coming from, but it’s been a good 6 years that microstock has been in the limelight. I don’t think rights managed will ever go away totally, but its definitely on the decline. But don’t blame microstock – blame technology and it’s advancement. You can get an 8mp DSLR used for $200 right now in the US. That’s less than the cost of an ipod or iphone, and we all know how many of those are in people’s pockets.

A lot of credit has to be given to those traditional stock shooters that have either embraced microstock, or at least given it some respect and consideration.  Guys like Jack Hollingsworth and John Lund.  Not everyone is a hater, thankfully.  Check out their amazing blogs.

Heck, if I could license all of my work at prices ranging from $100-10,000 per license, I most definitely would.  Unfortunately, I had my start in microstock, and I’ve been playing the “bulk sales” game ever since.  If you’re a rights managed stock photographer and are still maintaining your sales, that’s incredible – keep up the good work.  All the best to you.  I’m not knocking that side of the business at all.

All I’m saying… is that the creative fields change yearly, if not monthly.  If you can’t roll with the punches, and the changes of the market (the same as in any other field) then you’re going to be left behind.  Just because some of us choose to sell micro, doesn’t mean we’re giving stuff away for free.  The prices of microstock are, in many case on the increase.  The price wars will continue to go on between the newer and upcoming agencies.  But you can trust me on this: you will never see my giving my work away for free.  It’s one thing to give stuff away.  We all do it, you almost have to nowadays just to get hits to your website.  Free advice, free tutorials, etc.  It helps one another out, and one hand washes the other as in all things.

Different strokes for different folks, is all I’m saying.  I’m done ranting, time for me to get back to work.  Happy shooting!

When it comes to searching for the right stock photos, I know from personal experience as a past image buyer that it can be a huge hassle.  You can many times get lost or even sidetracked very easily when browsing through the ocean of stock photos and graphics.  The sooner you find what you need, the sooner you will get your work done, nailing those time sensitive deadlines.  Searching for stock photos can be pretty annoying if you’re not going about it the right way.  Here are some tips and advice I can offer that might just make your next “hunt” a little more successful, or at least maybe a little less time consuming.

Be Specific
Let’s face it, there is a sea of images out there for royalty free licensing.  You can sometimes search for “cat” and get “dog”.  Unfortunately, image keywords are prone to mistakes, spamming, and more.  You don’t want to have to dig through a sea of crap before finding the types of images you’re looking for.  How can you avoid this?  By being specific.  If you’re looking for a photo of a cat, go as far as describing what breed, color, and even what pose.  You just might be pleasantly surprised in your results.  Don’t be so specific that your search string is more than 5 words long, as you might miss a lot of pretty good results.  But, at the same time you don’t want to use simple one word searches and have to sift through hundreds of pages of images.  An exception to this, of course, would be if you were searching something very rare or a rarely covered subject.

Narrow Results With Additional Secret Words
These words aren’t anything super top-secret, but many image buyers might not be aware of them.  They are widely used by stock photographers.  Try them in your upcoming searches and be blown away by how this trims down your results to a more reasonable size.

isolated: A cut-out image or person object with a solid color background.  These types of images make it easy to pop into solid colored backgrounds or layouts, even easily add or remove negative space.  Be sure to include whichever color you would want it isolated over; ie: black, white, red, etc. Other variation: cutout, cut out

clipping path: sick of making selections to isolate images?  Search for this phrase and find images that have a preset clipping path already embedded in the jpeg.

copy space: Use this when you want images with negative space, or a little bit of room to breath.  Every good deigner knows what negative space is, but not many remember to search with the term copy space. Other variations: copyspace or copy-space

seamless: If you’re looking for a texture that tiles seamlessly as a pattern in any direction, include this one.  Also don’t forget about: seamlessly, tiling, tiles

studio: If you’re looking specifically for photos captured in a studio environment, try this word.

vector: If you want just vectors, use the word.  The word illustration also works, but unless you want a lot of jpeg graphic results included, use vector.

Employ the Special Modifiers
There usually are different modifiers you can check off on each website.  These usually are site specific, but are incredibly helpful.  For instance, let’s say you don’t want to see anything but vector illustrations.  Usually you will have the option to choose only vectors, and this will allow you to avoid having to use the word vector in your keyword search string.  Maybe they opposite is true, and all you want to see are photos – not illustrations.  Then you would do the opposite and tick off the “photos only” box.  Some agencies go even further.  If you searched for the word girl on istockphoto.com, for instance, you could then check off whether you meant: Women (Female), Teenage Girls (Female), Little Girls (Female), or Baby Girls (Female). Many of my personal friends say they don’t even bother with doing that, and they simple keep on scrolling through pages upon pages of stuff before they find what they need.  Why would you want to make it harder on yourself?  Make sure you employ these additional features created to help you out.

Restrict Certain Words
Certain stock agencies (the better search engines) will also allow you to restrict certain words from coming up in the image results.  That has helped me tremendously in the past.  For example, you might want a photo of two brothers playing outdoors.  For this search you could start with the keywords boys and brothers.  If that yields too many results, you could also try adding the word two.  You probably might find a bunch of images that have boys or brothers in them, but also have other children or girls in them.  You will probably also get a bunch of family portraits.  This is when you would restrict words like mother, father, girl, etc to narrow down what you need.

Search For Specific Artists
On most stock photography websites you will also see the artist’s name beside every image with a hyperlink.  Yeah, that’s right – you can click it and see all of that artists specific images.  If you like what you see, or are maybe looking for more images from a similar shoot, many times you can search within that person’s portfolio.  Maybe you like one specific shoot theme that artist has done, but only found a few results from the main site’s search engine.  A lot of times you can find similar shots with different angles or with other different variations by searching through that photographer or artist’s personal portfolio.  You can also search from scratch for a certain artist.  For example, if you search username “arenacreative” you might just find my stuff (shameless self promotion, sorry…)

Change the Search Type
By default, most websites employ results by the newest or most downloaded.  Don’t forget, however, that you are able to easily change that search method.  You can usually sort the results by most views, download, popularity (usually that is a mix of views and download), newest, oldest, or random (if you feel like living dangerously).

Spend Less by Shopping Around
Shop around – don’t just stick to one agency just because it’s the same one you’ve been using for 5 years.  It takes only a minute to register an account on a different agency.  Some websites require a minimum credit package purchase, while others are a better deal by getting a monthly subscription (especially if you need a bulk number of images).  If you’re spending company dollars, you boss will probably appreciate how much you’ve saved for the company by purchase (many times the same) images somewhere else for up to 25-50% less.  Prices and selection vary from agency to agency.  Guess what – most microstock contributors sell their work under the same user name.  If you find an image at Pricier Site A try looking that photographer up at Cheaper Site B and you might just be pleasantly surprised to find it there at a much lower cost.  You might even be able to score an XXL high resolution version for the same price as the medium size price at Pricier Site A.

If at First You Don’t Succeed…
…keep on trying different keyword combinations.  You will find what you’re looking for!  Be persistent and enjoy your “hunt”   There’s nothing like the feeling of finding an incredible image that fulfills the exact idea you had in your head.

I hear this a lot from those looking into microstock to earn a full time living.  Questions like this come up frequently on microstock forums.  How many images will I need?  What can I make hourly?  Is building up a sizable microstock portfolio even worth the effort?

Now this article is not an article just to try and discourage people from giving it a shot, or attempting to discourage breeding my own new competition.  There are bazillion other blogs online where you can learn “How to make a living selling stock photography” and obviously there are already hundreds of thousands of contributors worldwide.  No one stock photographer or illustrator is alike, considering that everyone has their own style, their own work ethic, their own methods – to each his own.  Who am I to give my opinion?  I’m nobody special, just your average creatively minded computer geek.  I have been making a full time living for 2 solid years now.   My 2 years full time was built upon 2.5 prior years selling stock part time (approx 5-10 hrs a week) while working full time at a graphic design dayjob; the field I actually have my BA in.  So I’ve been in this stock business a solid 4.5 years… that’s not a very long time, but then again this biz is still very young.  4.5 years isn’t much less time than some of the top selling microstockers, either (ie: Yuri Arcurs and Andres Rodriguez to name a few of the top dogs).  In this short period of time, I’ve first handedly learned and experienced more in this business than I can even put into words in a Tuesday morning blog post.  With just a little over 5000 stock images, I still just consider myself a small fish in a big pond.

Here is my take on getting started in the business – straight up, no chaser.

If you’re just starting out right now… in 2010, I honestly think you’re going to need a prayer to initiate your momentum and to start earning enough images to make a living. I started back in late 05, early 06 – I was paying my mortgage by mid 07 and then went all out full time with the loss of my full time dayjob in mid 2008. If I waited until now, and transitioned from part time in stock to full time, I don’t think that I would make it. Things were much different back then, too.  It was much less difficult to get images approved (if you can’t get past that hurdle, you aren’t going to be able to sell them obviously) and it was much easier to get lots of downloads on simple subjects. It seems like every few years in stock it’s more of an uphill battle. In 06 you could submit a pile of crap, and still sell it like hotcakes. Technically imperfect photos, even. Now you’d better have your skills sharp and be able to hang with the rest of your competition just to get sales.

If you consider yourself an amateur and just want to make $100 a month just uploading a couple of new images each week, sure that’s definitely possible. If you’re looking to make $1000+ a month on a newer portfolio, you’re going to need to have a long road ahead of you, unless your work fills some sort of crazy un-touched niche with high commercial demand. Can you live off $1000 a month? Maybe if you live in India or Asia.  I wish I could.  In the US that won’t even pay the average mortgage or rent for the month.

Saying you want to sell stock is one thing – doing it and actually continually maintaining momentum in it is another. Putting up with the submission process, keywording, uploading (all the tedious parts) is another thing that stops 99% of people in their tracks. They realize all of the work in it, and are either too lazy or just get discouraged from lack of sales.  When it comes to stock – you either “get it”, or you just don’t. Some grasp at straws taking pics of churches, shooting fruit over white or zoo animals all day, while others create useful, commercial imagery. This is going to be the largest hurdle for most contributors, used to producing nice prints for their living room walls.

So here is what you need to make it:

- Self motivation (Are you a motivated self-starter? Can you stay on task without getting distracted while working alone from home? If not you might as well not even bother with microstock)
– Creativity… enough to choke a cow
– Business sense!  At least as much if not more than creativity
– Quality gear to accomplish whatever it is you’re shooting the most, I’d say an initial investment of $2000-4000 at minimum to cover most of your bases – computers/cameras/lenses/studio gear (don’t even waste your time with consumer point and shoots, unless you like getting over 50% of your images rejected for technical quality)
– Technical skills both in camera and off (Photoshop knowledge can make or break you in this business. If you’re lacking, you’d better hit the books or don’t bother uploading at all)
– Tons of regular uploads.  Take whatever you think is a lot to produce each week, and add 50 to that number.
– Good keywording skills (something that takes a lot of time to develop, for most)
– Ability to set and reach hourly / daily / monthly / yearly goals
– Lots of quality and variety
– Quantity quantity quantity in addition to high quality (a portfolio of 3000 images is the “new” 1000 – but 3000 crap images has the sales potential as a portfolio of 300 excellent ones)
– Patience, persistence, and a backup income before you get the stock ball rolling

Us full time microstockers are in the minority – I’d estimate there are probably under 500 in the world. Who knows?  I wish I knew the actual figures, but that would be a tricky statistic to pin down.  I’m not talking RM/ traditional stock sellers, but those that are strictly making their income with microstock, exclusively, whether they are working for one agency and an exclusive artist or they are using multiple agencies to sell their work.  We are a rare breed, and a lot of us are probably crazy for even attempting this feat   One thing you can’t expect from this business is to get rich off of it.  Gone are the days of making money from the snapshots laying around on your hard drive (heck, I myself even claimed that back in 2006 – because that was truly the case back then – but not anymore).   If you’re the type of individual that wants to earn a higher than average income, then you’re definitely barking up the wrong tree here.  It’s taken the seasoned pros years just to develop a portfolio strong enough, large enough, and good enough to consistently earn them a steady monthly income.  Don’t expect for this to be a quickly profitable start-up business without any sacrifice or years of “paying your dues”.

If you’re going to attempt this, you need to treat it like a start-up business.  40-60 hrs a week, working diligently and taking a stab at it.  After a few months you should then evaluate your time & cost vs earnings ration.  Time is money, so if you are seeing a decent return for all of your hard work right off the bat, then there is your answer whether or not you might be able to make it as a full time microstock contributor.  Otherwise, you might conclude that stock is a rainy day side hobby to dabble in whenever you’re bored or needing some extra cash for new gear or to take your wife out to dinner.  If you haven’t noticed, I don’t blog super regularly.  My blogging is highly intermittent.  I’m sorry, that’s just pretty much due to the fact that I’m too busy working, as a one-man operation.  I limit myself to a 40 hour work week, because money isn’t everything to me.  I work to live; I don’t live to work.  When you work for yourself you have to limit yourself; unless of course you want to be a burnt out workaholic that doesn’t have a happy family, spiritual, or any type of other life. I digress.

Do you already consider yourself a pro photographer, because you’re making a living in the wedding or portrait business?  Sorry to burst your bubble, but micro is an entirely different animal.  Please try not to go into it thinking you’re going to be all set and that it’s going to be a piece of cake for you, just because you’ve been a seasoned pro photog for years and years.  I’ve heard many stories of this happening.  You’re still going to have just as much learning curve as the amateurs will, just as any of us did back when we started.  The harsh reality of the nazi-ish microstock quality standards are enough to turn even the best of photographers away from this business.

Timing is everything, so I can understand why there are so many blog posts online explaining how the ship as sailed to be able to have a full time microstock living.  I respectfully disagree with that for those microstock contributors who already have their foot in the door with a large collection of images, established and already selling.  Given the continual move of buyers away from RM and more to budget RF images, as well as the continual movement towards digital media of all types in our daily lives.  If you are currently sell microstock part or full time, and are making a decent living, consider yourself a rare breed.  I wish everyone success in whatever creative field you’re involved in, and hope that my honest evaluation of the business in this article has helped those considering microstock as a career choice.  I’m tired of all of the nay-sayers and doom and gloom discussed about this business.  Remember too that there are a thousand ways to make a living in any creative field; it just depends what you want to set your mind to, and focus on in your own business.  If the microstock market tanks and us full time contributors can’t continue getting by, being forced to explore other avenues of income, then it is what it is.  Only time will tell.  In the meantime, happy selling!