During the last few months one of my major goals has been to shoot more food photography.  I am really interested in the subject, I enjoy all aspects of it, and I think I can do it well (eventually).

So my past few months have been focused on learning – studying food photos, “becoming” a foodie, learning styling techniques – I never wanted to jump straight into food but rather be a food person who knew how to photograph.  I’ve been studying food, food photos, collecting recipes, deciding on what I want to focus on. In learning to “be” a food stylist/chef  you learn about presentation.

Thus my thought for the moment – become involved in the shots you want to shoot.  You shoot sports?  Go PLAY sports more – referee for the kid leagues, shoot hoops more at the park and watch more games.  See how the pros present sports.  You want to shoot business people?  Get deeper into business – meet with SCORE, talk about business planning and attend a seminar so you can see how someone has designed their speech.  Desire to shoot more animals & nature?  Interact – get out there, follow wildlife, hunt (with or without the gun), track animals – learn their behaviors.

— Related tangent —

When I first started learning to be a wedding photographer I listened to everything wedding photographers said. Advertising, marketing, sales, websites, SEO, photography & lighting, everything!  Eventually it dawned on me that photographers were good at making images.  I should learn advertising from an advertising specialist.  I no longer pay much attention to wedding photographers when they speak on subjects other than booking or shooting weddings.  The thought is very similar to what I’m talking about above.  Learn to be great at your subject – not just aware of it.

Sometimes when I want to shoot something I just pull it up, shoot it, wonder why it doesn’t sell.  I think the main reason is because someone else understands the subject while I just wanted a good photo of it.  Can I take good photos?  Yes.  Absolutely!  I shot models for years – and then I realized that because I don’t enjoy it all that much, the images weren’t high-class.  I can shoot well enough but the connection wasn’t there.  The question is – how involved are you in the shoot?

It doesn’t make sense for a city-dweller to go shoot cows and barns.  It doesn’t make sense for a sporty jock to shoot ballet.  Who are YOU and what can you shoot better than everyone else?

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.

My upload strategy of late has been momentum.  I think if we upload consistently rather than doing Power Week then nothing, we’re going to be better with sales and have a better acceptance ratio.  So far that has proven to be true.  I am now almost a full week into this consistent strategy and what I’m finding is that sales on SS, DT and SXP are rising.  Fotolia always takes awhile and BSP/123RF don’t sell enough to notice trends yet.  This consistent approach is also good for my portfolio.  Let’s take a look at where I was/am as an update.

• Shutterstock 1/1 – 1441
• Shutterstock 6/7 – 2395




• Dreamstime 1/1 – 1570
• Dreamstime 6/7 – 2346




• Fotolia 1/1 – 646
• Fotolia 6/7 – 1696




• StockXpert 1/1 – 1365
• StockXpert 6/7 – 2758




• Bigstock 1/1 – 1540
• Bigstock 6/7 – 2857

5 full months of uploading has nearly doubled my gallery on many sites, +700 or 900 new images on many other sites.  However, I’m nowhere near where I need to be on images, sales or earnings to get what I want.  So this change, along with some other new things I will be doing, will hopefully get me closer to goal.

So from now on, I’m uploading 25 a day 5 days a week, every week.  I think 500 new approved images a month is going to have to be a “good enough” goal.  If I can manage that, by the end of this year I will have 3500 new images or over 5000 on every site (except IS of course!)

Another goal that will happen this month – I’m adding at least a couple batches to DeepMeta for Istock, submitting more to Fotolia and trying to create some images that may sell better than things I have now.  We need to improve out quality to keep up with the best in this business!

Yes!  My goal was to hit $500 for only the third month ever (first since my BME last July) and I did it!

Full earnings spreadsheet is here.

With February’s income totaled, I have reached $508.89

BME: IStock, Fotolia, CanStock (DT $1.10 off)

Shutterstock went up $45 this month, a decent start but not where I want to be.  I expect Shutterstock to be well into the $300s for March.  I am starting to gain traction there again so I hope to regain my momentum.

Dreamstime nearly hit a  BME but failed by $1.10 to reach it.  It was my third month in four with basically $103.

IStock is the same old, same old.  Still 89 images but a new BME of $17.81 so whatever change they made to Best Match has helped me lately.  My last two months are my best two months in 4 years.

Fotolia did the expected and more than doubled this month due to my doubling of portfolio size.  Last month I went from 646 images online to 1350 and now at 1599 so a huge leap from Fotolia was expected and received.  Fotolia became just my third agency to start crossing the $50 barrier.

123RF and Bigstock did about usual.  No surprises.  I would like to see some growth though.  These two were earning $22-30 for me in June and same now but I’ve added nearly 800 new images!

StockXpert continues to improve.  my second $30+ in a row with only my EL month beating it (2nd BME).  I like the reviews there, I’m climing up their user charts and everything is starting to go well for me there.

The only other real surprise this month was Canstock.  I have been dumping my portfolio on Canstock because of the new Fotosearch acquistion of CSP and so far so great!  My previous *FOUR YEAR* earnings were $61 on around 125 images and lately on 470 images.  I finished uploading my portfolio so I now have just over 2000 images there and this month made $26.55 which is HALF of my all-time earnings there!  It won’t make me rich but it’s a start for Canstock.  When Canstock finishes 5th on your list, you know something is weird!

Yaymicro, FotoMind, MostPhotos and most of my small and new sites (Image Catalog, CutCaster, Vivozoom) all were at $0 for the month.  When I do Powerweek I will NOT be uploading to those sites.

Microstock Diaries

jrtb

CJ Photography

Microstock Junction

Driftless Ramblings

PDTNC

MelastMohican

Pixels Away

Bankizdjec

Microstock Experiment

This won’t be a huge surprise for anyone that follows my numbers at all anymore but March is going to be *huge* for me.  I  have done the work in February – not as much as possible but a decent amount of work.  I think I will be rewarded for it.  So many people want to doomsday and naysay on how stock is going but next month we’ll see if that’s true for me.

Why do I predict such a huge month?

• February is going to finish as my best month since July (BME).  I’m back to my max levels from before.
• According to 123RF, I submitted 450 new images in February (that would be 450 to all sites).
• My Shutterstock gallery is nearly 2000 now with 550 new since Dec 31st.  They are selling very well.
• BMEs on at least 4, maybe 5 stocks tomorrow.
• As summer comes, sales pick up naturally.  Add in the work from this month and the work I’ve done in Jan. and will do in March.  It’s coming together.
• Finally – I’m doing Powerweek v3 from March 8 through March 14th.  I will be posting about that more around the 3rd or so.

So overall March is looking like the month to beat for me.

I’ve felt challenged lately – many people have found the site.  A lot of them question my “insane” $1,000,000 goal.  I understand that.  I disagree with where I’ll end up, but I understand.  I think it’s doable or I wouldn’t bother trying.  Of COURSE it’s not doable from where I am today.  I get what needs to be done.  Keep watching!

The most time consuming part of the uploading/pushing in microstock is categorizing images on certain microstock websites.  The worst offenders are Dreamstime, Bigstock, Fotolia, and Shutterstock.  Categorizing takes time and the more time you spend, the less you are earning per hour.

I use two methods to ensure I spend as little time on categories as possible.  The first is to know the categories on each site.  The second is to “type” categories rather than mouse to them.

Know Categories

The first thing you need is a list of categories on each site.  I’ve saved you a LOT of time and put together a canononical list of categories on these four sites.

Download the list here

It’s a printable word document (four pages) that lists every category and subcategory on each site.

Type Categories

Bigstock

Click the first category and close it.  Type the first letter of the main category until you reach the one you want.  Tab, then type the first letter of the sub category.  For instance, Objects > Over White = O Tab O.  People > Men = P Tab M.  When you’ve finished the first category press tab again to go to the second and repeat through all three categories.  When you get quick at this you should be able to do all three categories much faster than clicking directly on them.

Dreamstime

Dreamstime gives us a bit of a headache for a couple of reasons.  First, many categories start with the same letter.  Industry, IT&C, Illustrations…  So what we do to save time is click to open the first category, click the first letter of the main category then simply scroll and click the right subcategory.  Not as time-saving as the rest but effective nonetheless.  Unfortunately because the categories are “all in one” on Dreamstime, there’s no simpler way.

Fotolia

Simply put there is no fast way to categorize at Fotolia.  I *ABHOR* categorizing here.  I put it off for so long.  If you have been watching my charts you know that I made a real “job” of Fotolia last month and added over 1000 new images!  I simply had that many stored up from not doing them.  THE most important part of categorizing at Fotolia is knowing the categories.  Please refer to the chart often and make it as fast as possible.

Shutterstock

The terms of service at Shutterstock include categories and descriptions so I’ve included them on the list above.  They are the best to type other than Bigstock.  I do end up tabbing a LOT though – but for me it’s faster.  To type categories, open & close the first one as you did with Bigstock.  Now type the first letter until you get the category you want.   (ie. A = Abstract, AA = Animals/Wildlife, T=Technology, TH or TT = The Arts, TR or TTT = Transportation)  Note – Shutterstock includes “VECTORS” as a category on their list but this category doesn’t actually exist.  I included it because they did.

After the first category, press tab.  Now type the second category.  Press tab (space if you need to check the first box), tab (space if you need to check the second box), tab (type “I” for “I will include it now” for a model release, “E” for Editorial, no release needed) and then tab all the way to the next category on the next image.  Basically you can tab all the way through Shutterstock’s submission process and you should.  It takes you through the keywords of the second image, etc. but you will get back to categories and once you know how many tabs between each field you can easily just type your way through the form without ever once touching the mouse after the first two clicks to open and close the first category.  I can submit a batch of 50 Shutterstock in about 5 minutes or less.  I will time it soon.

Batch and Groups

I was reminded by Adelaide that one other speed tip on categories is to do bulk/recent whenever possible.  Bigstock lets you select “Import from previous image” so series’ are great there.  Dreamstime, Fotolia and IStock also allow you to do batch/bulk categories.   Using these tools will also speed up your categorization.  Thanks for the reminder!

Ok?  Conclusions?

So that’s it.  I type my way through almost every set of categories I possibly can.  I have a cheat sheet to know what those categories are and I spend as little time doing the boring humdrum work of stock as possible.

Hope the sheet and the tips help!

Today is going to be fun I hope – I’m going to show you how I edit.  I don’t claim it’s the ONLY way.  I’m not even sure it’s the BEST way.  But it’s fast.  REALLY fast.

This image was shot over grey instead of white because I like the flexibility of being able to isolate on white OR having some texture to a background if I want to colorize the available texture with some sort of blend mode.  For stock, I’d always turn this white though and let the buyer decide what to do with it later.

The entire edit ends up taking less than 2 minutes.  You can add another 15 seconds because after I finished recording I realized his shirt had a few small mistakes on the edge so I cleaned it up.  At any rate, editing at this speed would give you 30 images per hour or slightly under.  At even 20 images an hour, you could edit 100 images in 5 hours.  That would be quick and gives you 3 hours of “work day” to keyword, upload, push and submit those 100 images.  People have asked me before how I plan to sub 100 a day – this is the general idea.  Of course some days you have to shoot.  Some days you don’t get 100 edited and subbed.  Heck, MOST days I don’t.

Every trick you can learn will help you.  The difference in 10 images per hour and 15 is also the same as 1000 online vs 1500 or 10,000 vs. 15,000.  The difference in 5 images per hour and 30 is 6x your income each month.  Speed IS necessary.

Click the photo above for the video on what I did.  There’s no audio – it’s a visual process.  Tools used:

• Wand – grab the grey background.
• Lasso – select and unselect with shift and alt after the initial selection has been made.
• Feather 1, backspace – clear the grey background.
• F5 – custom action for curves.  Just brightens it up 2 steps.  I undid one to find a happy balance.
• [ and ] to resize the brush.
• Dodge/highlights around the hair.
• Eraser to trim unclean edges.
• Contrast for skin tone.
• Clone for the logo.
• Brush – for the screwdriver (alt-clicked the color nearby to grab it)
• Smart sharpen – 60/1.3 I think.
• After the vid ends, I also used clone on the edge of the shirt a bit.

To show you what my 2 minutes did, I’ve uploaded a watermarked version of this finished image to here.  One of my next goals is to upload some actual Photoshop tutorials – one using only the keyboard, NO mouse.  One as a speed drill and whatever else you guys want.

(chart taken from StockXpert top portfolios)

Figuring out where I rank on stock sites is a curiosity more than a necessity.  I don’t need to know – my goal is $1,000,000 regardless of whether Yuri or Lise has made $55,000,000 or what Lumaxart is doing.  However, it’s interesting to compare progress and see where we’re at and where we reach in what time periods.

Here are the tracking tools I’m aware of:

Istock Charts

Bigstock Gallery Size Listing

StockXpert Gallery Size Listing

(Araminta Studios has a great listing but it’s currently offline.)

As far as my own rankings are concerned, I only  have rough estimates of past results and all of today’s current data.  These rankings are for GALLERY SIZE only.

IStock – last time I looked, I was roughly 7900th.  Today I’m 7213th.

Bigstock – last time I looked, I was on page 9 ranked roughly 420th.   Today I’m ranked 267th and on page 6.

StockXpert – last time I looked, I was roughly 750th.  Today I’m ranked 338th.

So it looks like there are roughly 350ish photographers with  larger galleries than I have online.

What would it take to make progress?

On IStock, just 100 new images would raise my ranking from 7213 to 4480.
Also on Istock, just 300 new images would raise my ranking from 7213 to 2375.
Real progress would be 369 new images and top 2000.

On Bigstock, just 130 images raises me to page 5 and rank #240. 
On Bigstock, just 750 images would raise our ranking from 267th to 144th.
Real progress would be 1360 new images, bringing us in the top 100.

On StockXpert, just 100 images would raise us from 338 to 295th.
On StockXpert, just 620 images would raise us from 338 to 200th.
Real progress would be 1738 images and would take us from 338 to 100th.

3000 new accepted images (my goal for 2/28/09) would give us the following rankings:

Istock (140 new images max) – 3180th.
Bigstock (3000 new images) – 43rd.
StockXpert (3000 new images) – 60th.

So that Istock one may be a bit of a reach – but top 100 on the other sites?  Totally doable.  Where do you rank?  Post below and you’ll always have it to look back on – and compare to!

First of all, I know this is my second post on exclusivity in the last week and so it may appear that I’m considering it.  At this point, we are not.  I do want to consider what exclusivity agencies offer and why it may be beneficial in our future or for others.

123RF

Type of Exclusivity: Per image.
Method: “May be arranged” – asked support and they had no idea.
Terms: An exclusive agreement may be arranged for a better commission.

Dreamstime

Type of Exclusivity: Per image or per photographer.
Method: Per image – upon image submission, check the box.  Per photographer – submit an application.
Terms: Exclusive images earn 10% ($0.10 to $1.40) more per download.  Exclusive photographers earn $.20 per accepted image + 10% more per download.

Fotolia

Type of Exclusivity: Per image.
Method: When submitting a file, choose “Yes” to “Is this file exclusive to Fotolia?”
Terms: Commission is 17% higher for exclusive images.  Maximum sales price on all sizes may also be set higher after contributor reaches the Bronze level instead of Emerald for non-exclusives.  Exclusive images may be opted out of subscriptions.

IStockPhoto

Type of Exclusivity: Per photographer.
Method: Apply when you have 250 downloads, a minimum 50% approval rating, and have no royalty-free stock images, vector illustrations, video footage or Flash files available at other agencies.
Terms: Higher royalties (+5 to +20% so 25-100% higher), extended license bonus, larger upload queue, Exclusive-only events, higher search rankings, business cards.   Full artist Exclusivity means no images, video or audio files may be sold on other royalty-free sites or businesses with the exception of Getty Images.

Bigstock

Type of Exclusivity: None.

MostPhotos

Type of Exclusivity: None.

Shutterstock

Type of Exclusivity: None.

StockXpert

Type of Exclusivity: None.

So what did we learn?  I think it’s safe to say I won’t be going exclusive for a long time, if ever.  The “best” royalty increase is with IStock on the high end (20%) but as you know, my sales always suck at Istock.  So second best royalty increase is Fotolia.  Again, I make *some* money on FT but not my best results.  17% more wouldn’t help me enough.

The most likely candidate would be either a) Shutterstock figuring out that exclusive is the way to go or b) Dreamstime.  Dreamstime gives one of the “worst” exclusive bonuses (10%) but 10% of my monthly earnings would almost eliminate one of my smaller agency’s income (say 123RF).  Until that extra 10% would eliminate as well as give me a bonus, I can’t consider it.

Exclusivity has benefits for those photographers in one of three situations:

1) The Time Swamp – if you have a full time job that isn’t microstock and you simply don’t have time to upload *everywhere* you may be better off spending time building your gallery on *one* site.   At this time, I’d suggest Shutterstock though, and  since they don’t have an exclusive program…

2) The EasySimple – it’s “easier” to upload to one site.  You don’t absolutely have to  use IPTC data for keywords and descriptions, you can manage reading the news on that site, keep up with what’s  new,  and even focus your attention on what downloads when and how you can better yourself.

3) The Student – if you’ve had trouble getting accepted to Shutterstock and IStock and you want to maximize  earning potential it may be worthwhile to try submitting to only Fotolia or Dreamstime for awhile as you grow your talents, not just your gallery.  This is by far the best reason to go Exclusive right now.  Dreamstime and Fotolia are both “difficult” agencies so if you can master them there’s nothing stopping you from Shutterstock and IStock.  Dreamstime and Fotolia both also offer per-image exclusivity so you can “test” exclusivity and see what you like and don’t like about it.

Are you exclusive?  Why or why not?

Welcome back to another exciting episode of SlowLinks, my version of Speedlinks but with far too many for it to be considered speedy.

Today’s SlowLinks book list is all about books you should read in the coming year.  I listed books about photography, microstock, business, branding, personal advancement and growth as well as organization and motivation.

These have been accumulated through conversations with other photographers, small business owners and in my own reading.  I tend to read a *lot* of business books and own about 99.9% of the books on the list.

Nobody will be surprised that the #1 book on this list is The Long Tail.  After that, hopefully more than a few are new to you.  These are *not* in order so read whatever appeals to you.  We’ll probably talk about a lot of these in 2009.

1. The Long Tail – Chris Anderson

2. Light, Science & Magic – Fil Hunter

3. Lighting and the Dramatic Portrait – Michael Grecco

4. Matters of Light & Depth – Ross Lowell

5. The Moment It Clicks – Joe McNally

6. Understanding Exposure – Bryan Peterson

7. Microstock Photography: How to Make Money from your Digital Images – Douglas Freer

8. Digital Stock Photography: How to Shoot & Sell – Michael Heron

9. Tell the World You Don’t Suck: Modern Marketing for Commercial Photographers – Leslie Burns

10. Love is the Killer Ap – Tim Sanders

11. Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell

12. Blue Ocean Strategy – W. Chan Kim

13. Good to Great – Jim Collins

14. Getting Things Done – David Allen

15. Talent is Never Enough – John Maxwell

16. Primal Branding – Alan Sklar

17. Creating Customer Evangelists – Ben McConnell

18. It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be – Paul Arden

19. The Millionaire Mind – Thomas Stanley

20. The Brand Called You – Peter Montoya

Disclaimer: these are all Amazon Affiliate links.  If that bugs you, search them on Amazon.