Hi & welcome back! NiltoMil is officially off and running again – I’m keywording, submitting, pushing images and then working on shooting some new today.? I’m going to be pushing some older images even though I know they won’t sell as well as I’d like simply because I want the momentum to begin NOW not in a month when I get new stuff edited.

I’m ready for 2010!? January will be a very poor month since I’m starting so late but February should show some recovery.

In the last 6 months when I was mainly gone:

• Shot weddings – and we have 4 other photographers who shot during that time as well.
• Sold my house/bought a new house – a fixer-upper.? We’ve been working on it almost everyday since Nov 20th for 12+ hours per day.
• Delved into the food styling/preparing/photo world.? I’ve read almost every post on Still Life With, Matt Bites, and many other foodie blogs.? I’ve devoured four entire food photography books including Rinder/Smith’s new book and Lou Manna’s classic.
• Redesigned our business brand
• Traveled to Maine, twice.? Traveled to NYC.

Now that I’m back my goal is to create an income that will pay my mortgage first, other bills later.? Our mortgage is $680.? This is an achievable goal that I do have to reach for. I’ll do a more extensive goals post in the next week or so but that’s the start of it.

Current BME: $575.46, July 2008

Let me quote myself.

I am not going to stick around and pretend to be something I?m not.? Too many people set goals and fail to reach them, yet still continue the journey unfazed.? I often share my experiences and ideas in hopes of helping you.? If I can?t help myself first, I can?t help you.

If I fail to reach both goals (10k images, $25k for the year) by 12/31/09, NiltoMil.com will close for good whether I continue to shoot microstock or not.

At this point in the year it is obvious that I will not reach 10k approved images OR $25,000 this year.

I am modifying what I wrote above.? I am not going to destroy or delete Nil. I am going to stop posting earnings, stop posting ideas until they are working better.? I AM going to keep Nil up for the archives and the posts that often get referenced.? I AM going to continue to put up posts of interest to me – whether that’s of interest to anyone else or not.? My journey will continue.

I need to help myself first.? I need to figure out the steps I should be taking to reach my goal? and when I do, I’ll be back full force with the full effort I can give Nil.? Until then, expect sporadic updates on what I’m doing, how stock is going and what I am trying to do to improve.

I’d like to address something – the time I spend on microstock.? I think some people who read this blog are slightly confused about me slaving away and getting nowhere.

In July, I added 15 new images to my sites.? That means I worked on it for under 1 hour in July.? I made $500 in July.

In June, I added 150 new images.? About 4 hours of work.? I also made $450.? I’ve now in 2 months made $950 on 5 hours of work.

In May, I added 160 new images.? About 4 more hours of work.? Made $400.

Grand total: $1400 while doing 9 hours of work.

What I need to do in order to increase my earnings is actually work on microstock.? I do need to continue improving – I’m just really starting my second year of being a stock photographer.? I need to upload with momentum – that’s proven very successful.? But I’m not sitting here day after day churning out work that isn’t selling.? I’m just simply not putting in the time.

Why?

Our studio has 4 photographers, we’re currently hiring 2 more and we’re going to do between 40 and 50 weddings this year combined.? We’ll likely do another 150 portraits and next year will come close to 70 weddings/250 portraits.? Our wedding and portrait business has brought in over $100k each year for the last 2 and will do so this year and next as well.? I am also in the midst of building a studio management software for photographers that will track clients, billing, orders, calendaring, expenses/taxes, and task management.? It’s a huge project but one I love doing.

All that to say, don’t cry for me, Argentina.? I’m here, I’m going to continue working on micro when I can.? Right now I’m being torn in 3 directions and this one is the least of my issues.

Most bloggers in microstock are very polite, respectful and friendly to everyone.?? I try to be the same but there are some times and some issues that push my buttons and I think it’s appropriate to respond to issues that come up.? I would like to say that I will talk to, help and work with any agency that wants to listen.? On the other hand, I don’t feel bad for the agencies that get upset by criticism and don’t change.

(Short version: I’m going to bust some chops.? Don’t like it, fix it.)

• Categories – I would love to know the stats on images bought through categories vs. keywords.? Are these seriously necessary?
• Shutterstock refusing to update the photographer side of the site (views, easy image management, etc).
• Banning & removing contributors for having differing opinions on how things should work.
• Fotolia flat out changing the rules mid-stream without telling anyone ALL THE TIME.
• Flat sales in a down economy – this is when we should be picking up new business partners for life.
• 123RF‘s negative review wording “bad this” “poor that” “Snapshot” – ack!
• Editorial captioning rules that are ridiculous – and this includes almost every site that allows editorial images.
• Some sites show off work on their main page that has blown highlights, poor lighting, and looks awful.? It wouldn’t be accepted if you submitted it today – don’t show it off!
• Submission processes that take too long: IStock, Fotolia and several smaller sites – I’m talking to you.? This is a time-oriented business.? Make it FAST for us.
• Small sites that promise to do things different and get no sales.? Ever.? That’s not different.? That’s the same if you’re a small site.? Here’s a hint: photographers + images + sales = more of all of the above.? Thousands of images with no buyers, thousands of buyers with few images – neither works.? Stop trying to do it overnight and BUILD your site.
• Inconsistency.? I subbed 50 to a site and 45 were rejected.? I resubmitted in anger the same exact 45 with *no* changes and 43 were accepted.? Please. Fix. This.
• Make things easy – how many times do I have to repeat this on the list for stock sites to get it?? Not just submissions – make getting our money easy, make resubbing for missing model releases easy, make updating an image data easy. (thank you Bigstock for nailing this!)
• If I submitted an image 3 years ago and I have better PS skills now, allow me to replace the image with a better upload without losing all my stats, views, etc.
• Sites without FTP annoy me.
• Great looking/usable sites without views/sales/revenue – what IS that?? You have the site right.? Just sell.? If you can’t sell, close the business.? This business is ALL sales.
• Get rid of images 4+ years old with no sales.

Okay I’m done for now.? Please feel free to comment, wish me luck in my next career…(laughing), etc.? Someone has to say it.

The top image comes from Philadelphia – we shot with these three models and one other on our trip.? They are all fantastic models and we hope to shoot with them all again!? We’re actually shooting Ronice’s wedding in April? so we know we’ll see her soon at least.

The next image is Laura – one of the best “character” models we had on the trip for sure!? She did a number of different looks including this nautical theme.? I like the red, white & blue theme as well as the crazy weather around her.? It was a very windy, dark day but we made some great images, I think.

Joseph was our lone Virginia Beach model.? We scheduled 14 models and he was the only one who showed at all.? It was a very difficult day and we considered turning around right then and coming home.? Joseph saved the day with hundreds of awesome photos.

One more trip photo for now – the Assateague ponies.? We now have a 20×24″ of this on our wall in the studio.? This print looks FANTASTIC at that size.? I love the subtle colors in it and the sense of depth with the second pony.? It reminds me how incredible our trip was.

Finally, we’re back to the studio for a little mother/daughter action where Michelle and Kelsey took over in the studio and produced some fun images on white.? This is just one of the series but we had so much fun!? We need to get those two back in here soon.

Once in awhile it’s great to remember that we enjoy our job and that we’re pretty good at it.? Sometimes that gets lost in SEO, business, goal setting, day-to-day business operations, etc. but it’s still important to remember what we do and why we do it.? I love being a stock photographer and despite having many other roles in my life (father, business owner, wedding photographer, book publisher, author) I still enjoy stock more than almost anything else in my life.? It’s the perfect job for me and I want to remember that.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work. – Thomas Edison

? Tomas Marek, Dreamstime.com

It’s not quite the end of the year but it’s a great time to review my last year of microstock.

We were not microstocking in January or February. While we’d been part of this industry and have had images online since 2004, we uploaded very few new images in 2007 and the start of this year.

A conversation in late February prompted me to start researching more about microstock photography. I found out about the success of people like Yuri Arcurs, Andres Rodriquez, IOFoto and Vegas Visions Studios. I learned more about Lise Gagne and started reading Microstock Diaries and Micropayment Photography.

As March started up, I thought it may be a good idea to change direction from my “search for passive income” to my current NiltoMil.com site so I changed format for this blog to strictly microstock.? A search for other blogs to monitor and read quickly pulled up several on my feedreader. I currently read:

Microstock Diaries – Lee Torrens’ great site

All You Need to Know about Microstock Photography – Todd’s site

Yuri Arcurs blog – Uhh…by Yuri, of course.

Pixels Away – Marek

JRTB – by JRTB

Captured Little Moments – no longer a microstock blog

Lookstat – Rahul Pathak’s microstock stat tracking service

Snapvillage – although not updated frequently enough for a company blog

Microstock Photography Blogspot – CJ’s site

Microstock Junction – Lorraine’s blog

Driftless Ramblings – Allen

PDTNC – a new one on my list

MelastMohican

(now that I’ve added the links, let’s see who has Google Alerts setup for their names/blog? names)

Once March was over, I knew we could “do” this microstock thing.? We went from an income of $85 to $189 with little effort.? Our portfolios increased by approximately 90 new images per site.? April and May we turned up the speed to see what we could do.? We grew portfolios by 300 and then 350 images a month.? Our income in the same time grew from $189 to $350 and then $450.? The increases from our work showed us our future in this business.? We started to believe we could get enough images online to pay our bills and then much more with new images.? I still believe a consistent effort will get us there very quickly.

June and July were also months things improved.? Our income rose to a high of $575 on 1250 images.? Not bad but we hadn’t seasoned in images at Dreamstime OR Fotolia and we had not done nearly a single new image on Istock – plenty of room to grow!

August through October are difficult months for us – wedding season is cranked up, we’re shooting a lot and editing all the time and NOT for microstock.? We added zero new images from August 1 through Nov 1st on most sites and our income dipped to 66% of our high.? The strangest thing that happened was Dreamstime kept rising.? No matter what we did, Dreamstime income gained & gained as the images seasoned in – definitely an advantage to multiple pricing levels!

November ended our run of NO microstock work as we added 50-100 new images across most site and finished pushing some queued images we had left there from July/August.? Our income rebounded from $380 in October to $450 in November – more in line with our income from May when we were starting to add more images.

We learned a LOT in microstock this year – from how to add IPTC data before upload to how to upload to multiple agencies at once.? Both are huge timesavers, which matters a LOT in the micro world.? We also made new microstock friends – Todd at Micropayment Photography, Lee at MSD, Leaf (Tyler) at Microstock Group, Bobby at VVS and many many others.? We continue to learn from those photographers and microstock afficionados and a lot of our success is attributable to their influences, help and work on getting us up to snuff quickly and efficiently.

Our two microstock and travel sponsors came on board this year – ThinktankPhoto and Pro Photo Rental.? Both provided us with new gear to use on our October trip and we appreciate their support and hope 2009 is productive for all of us!

This year we increased our income from $2700 total to $6400+.? We have more than doubled but that’s not good enough by far.? Our goals for 2009 are to increase from ~$500 to ~$5000 a month by next December.? We would like to add roughly 10-15k images to our portfolios and we’d love to start pushing IStock images harder.? Our goal is to reach $50k on our total earnings as fast as we can.?? That’s a good start on our ultimate and real goal of hitting $1,000,000.

Another goal for 2009 is to add more sponsors/advertisers to N2M.? We keep them fairly well contained so they don’t take over the whole site but by adding advertisers, we are able to become 100% focused on microstock AND this blog – to spend the time to help, educate, learn and teach that we need.

So that’s 2008 – and here comes 2009.? Don’t forget that you can follow our progress on here and also at our spreadsheet on Google.

Thank you ALL for reading NiltoMil.com? I appreciate everyone who’s taken their time to bookmark, subscribe, read us, link to us, and sponsor us.

This is a fantastic trick that helps your model understand the session you have planned (and helps you execute it and not get sidetracked).? Simply come up with a title for your shoot and pass it along to the model.? Maybe something that?s the title of a song, a book, a movie, something made up – whatever.? As long as you & the model are on the same page, you?ll go far.

For example – our last shoot we wanted to do a painter, artist, writer & pianist set – all with one model.? So I called the set ?Portrait of An Artist? and she got it.? She understood our vision was an inside peek AT an artist at work.? We did our set and it was a great shoot.

Another example is an upcoming soon.? The model wrote ?I do martial arts – tae kwon do, capeoira etc.
I also do weapons training – swords, sai?s, staves, etc.??? Now, I know my martial arts well so I immediately thought of a title for this – Only the Strong.? There is a movie with the same title and so I immediately went to that as my inspiration.? Now, our model will know the source of our inspiration and react accordingly.

One more great reason to use titles – it?s fun!? Seriously, what?s more fun ?we?re going out to shoot some martial arts? or ?We have our ?Only the Strong? shoot today????C?mon!

Ok, ok, one more good reason – finding images & naming folders.? When we have no title, I name my folders by date.? 20080410 for April 10th, 2008?s shoots.? Boring.? Hard to find too.? 20080410 Portrait of an Artist with Tammy?? Now THAT is a folder.

We have currently setup EIGHT model shoots in the next seven days.? Tues, Wed, 2 Thurs, 2 Sat, Sun, Mon – at least.? We may end up with 9 or 10 this week.

We get our models from a couple of sources – you have to diversify how you get your models in case one place dries up/flakes/no use.

1) ModelMayhem – this site is the new OneModelPlace.? OMP is good but not free – thus a lot of models & photographers skip it, especially NEW models, the type you want.? Go to the link & add me as a friend!? To find models in your area, click Browse, then choose your criteria.? I always keep it as open as possible, sorting by ?recent activity? so you know they?re still on MM actively.

2) Craigslist – You can view our new ad by clicking here.? We got the basic structure for this off of the LuckyOliver forums, adapted it to our needs, added some of our photos from stock shoots and we try to tell everyone straight up front what the shoot is going to be like so we don?t get a lot of rejected models.? We keep everything as up front as possible about our goals.? On MM you can use model-speak.? On Craigslist use simpler, common?language like ?Compensation will be FREE professional digital photos on CD? rather than TFCD.

3) Friends – this can be your friends, your kid?s friends, your family, your family?s friends – you get the point. ANYONE can be a stock model.? How good they are may vary but you can get started almost anywhere.? The best tip I got was from (I think?) Andres Rodriguez who said he asks models at the end of a shoot if they know anyone who?d like to have some fun & do a similar shoot.? By doing that, you may get a whole lot of answers from ?no? to ?here are 8 email addys & ph numbers! Call them now!?? Do it?- it?s a trick, like a real live, honest TIP.? Do it.

4) Anywhere – get a business card that says you?re a commercial & stock photographer, hand them out when you see possible models.? Talking to people isn?t ?easy? at first but it gets easier – try it with a person who seems friendly & like the type of person you want to model.? Try this – ?Hi?uhm, I?m a professional photographer and I think you?d make an awesome model.? I?m going to give you my card & let you check out my stuff online.? Call me if you want to get together for a free shoot.?? Then walk away.? Make your site good enough that people actually call, too!? Learn that little blurb – then use it!? It?s easy, you don?t seem creepy, and it?s a very professional way to approach someone if you see someone you have to shoot with.? Keep your eyes open!

(8 model shoots in 7 days means I?m going to be a bit quiet this week on the blog – I?ll try to post some interesting stuff if I get a chance, maybe some snips from our shoots, but no promises!? This is your chance to get out, get some shooting in, watch your RSS feeds and kick mid-month butt!)