NiltoMil News         1 comment

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 …

 Micro Tricks & Tips         Comments Off

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.? …

 Micro Tricks & Tips         2 comments

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 …

 Challenges,Micro Tricks & Tips,The Microstock World         1 comment

(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 …

 NiltoMil News,The Microstock World         4 comments

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 – …

 Micro Tricks & Tips,NiltoMil News,The Microstock World         2 comments

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 …

 NiltoMil News,The Microstock World         11 comments

(Note: I hope my regular microstock photographer readers will allow me a few posts here & there to help out the newer microstock photographers amongst us – I promise my normal focus will stay on high-level microstock thinking and progression.)
I know a lot of my pro photographer friends are thinking about getting into microstock this winter to help pay some bills, earn some extra money and possibly there are those who want to transition into commercial photography more. Everyone asks me virtually the same questions every time so I thought …

 Micro Tricks & Tips,The Microstock World         11 comments

In a study of 14 million Google search terms:

Top 100 terms: 5.7% of the all search traffic
Top 500 terms: 8.9% of the all search traffic
Top 1,000 terms: 10.6% of the all search traffic
Top 10,000 terms: 18.5% of the all search traffic

Would you rather own the top 1000 searches or tail after the top 10,000?
So let’s talk about the first rule.?? Make everything available.
The guiding principle of The Long Tail is that *someone* wants it – and those people end up adding up to a very large sum of people.? What …

 Challenges,The Microstock World         14 comments

We’re going to be talking about Chris Anderson’s book The Long Tail on this blog in the coming weeks. First of all, you can download the miniature ebook here…