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Written by Microstock Admin
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A followup to the last entry: It's interesting to look back on the microstock experiment I started a few years ago. I have been quite lazy this past year about uploading anything--and expected my sales to dry up because of it. While the sales have definitely not been through the roof, they do continue on slowly and surely. A certain percentage of the sales are coming from about 5 or 10 of the most popular images but a large percentage of sales continue to come from the bulk of the images in my portfolios that are not particularly popular and get downloaded only rarely. In addition to the random photo downloads, every now and then one of the few footage clips I've added will get downloaded, a photographer joins up with my referral code, or a buyer will sign up for a subscription from my link. I've been averaging between $80 and $100 a month all year* $125 a month since the experiment began in Feb. 2005. Now my question is how many images do I need to upload to have a nice enough (and steady enough) side income to reduce my hours on my day job and use that time for writing, or art? More about microstock's long tail. |
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Written by Microstock Admin
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Most people who are considering whether or not to upload to microstock sites are curious how much money can be made by doing so. (There are other reasons, too, but this is a biggie). The short answer is that it depends on how much time and energy you put into it, and it depends on the quality of your images. The top earners can make hundreds of dollars per day, but most people will not achieve that. For an overview of my experience, click here. I update the page about once a month so you can get a sense of what I have earned -- without devoting a ton of time to it, to be honest. |
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Written by Microstock Admin
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If you're an artist, create vectors--they sell well and if they are sufficiently detailed, some microstock sites will tag them as more expensive downloads--meaning more money to you. Selling vector images at Shutterstock means working within the (essentially) all-you-can-eat package--which can also mean many, many downloads. IStock rates each vector based on degree of difficulty and puts them into different price categories based on that. You can use Illustrator, Freehand, or free software such as Inkscape to create your imagery. |
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Written by Microstock Admin
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A number of microstock sites offer free downloads as a way to give you a taste of the types of images and image quality they offer. It's not a bad idea for designers on a budget to peruse these offerings now and then. Most notably, Dreamstime has a rotating selection of seven images available for free download at any time. Log in to the main page and look for the "More Free Photos" link to see all seven. [Click here for the mainpage ]
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Written by Microstock Admin
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Make sure to look into referral programs on the various sites. Many of them will offer rewards for users that you refer to the site either as photographers or stock image purchasers. You can send your referral link to interested people by email or include the link on your personal website. Shutterstock is particularly good for rewarding successful referrals.
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Written by Microstock Admin
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If you want a constant (and constantly growing) revenue stream from microstock--upload new images regularly. Many of the sites sort images in a number of views from newest to oldest by default, so that designers who are regulars can find the fresh images quickly. This means that the more new images you keep in front of them, the more likely sales will be. As well, the more images that you have in your library, the more statistically likely they are to show up in keyword searches. The nice thing is that even the images you uploaded first remain in play, and as your library grows substantially, so do your earnings. Each time one of your new images comes up in front of a designer's eyes,there is also the possibility that she will either purchase it or click to view your portfolio. I haven't done very well with this and plan to try uploading a few images at a time more regularly, instead of a big cluster at one time. |
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Written by Microstock Admin
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Microstock, like most things, disproves the old saying, "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door." (Ralph Waldo Emerson?). If you want to make a sale, you need to get the image in front of people's eyeballs, and to do that, you need to find as many relevant keywords as possible. The more searches that hit your keywords, the more that your image comes up in front of designers. (Note that it is important not to "spamdex" your image in an attempt to get your image viewed using keywords that don't match the picture. This is grounds for expulsion on many microstock sites, and is not very courteous to the designers). Below are some tips on keywording--feel free to add more in the comments. |
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