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.? …

 The Microstock World         Comments Off

I make a strange comparison today because I have spent a couple hours with my charts in the last few days.? What I have learned is that weight loss and microstock have much in common.
A little setup
Last year from March to July I uploaded seriously.? Wedding season hit and my time was cut drastically and I was unable to continue.? My earnings grew every month from March through July and dropped after.? My July earnings were $575 and dipped to an October low of $380, or 66%.
Shutterstock had the biggest …

 Micro Tricks & Tips         3 comments

This is my “very quick start” to fractal generation.? Lately a lot of photographers/graphic designers have been creating fractals and I’m definitely one of those.? Half of my last 5 batches (125/250) have been fractals.
Video Tutorial here (no sound): http://niltomil.com/tutorials/frac/index.html
Here’s a quick example of what I do:
1) Start a new fractal.? Duplicate the triangle 4 times and move them out to evenly spaced spots around the center triangle.
2) Set all Linear 3d variations to a value of zero and all Linear to a value of one.
3) Now you can start …

 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 …

 Micro Tricks & Tips,The Microstock World         1 comment

Every day for four years, someone has posted about their “first 10 being rejected” by Shutterstock, StockXpert, or other agencies.? When you are trying to start in microstock photography, that first batch is often the hardest.? I’ve narrowed down a few reasons why it’s so? hard to get started and some ideas for getting approved.
1) Submit a variety of images.
This seems simple but you should always ensure that your first batch is not 10 textures, 10 photos of your kids in mixed light, 10 photos of a piece of …

 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 …

 Challenges,NiltoMil News,The Microstock World         4 comments

? Tomas Marek, Dreamstime.com

While NiltoMil covers a wide variety of topics from SEO on Technorati to shooting with models, the main point of its existence is to document our progress from $0 to $1,000,000.? As such, the end of the year is a good time for 2008 wrap up and goal setting for next year.
As of December 31st, our total earnings will be just a shade over $6,500.? While a decent amount of money, we will not get to $1,000,000 with years like that.? Obviously there’s? a need to greatly …

 NiltoMil News         3 comments

Here’s a hint: no matter how good of a photographer you are today, you’ll either be better in three years or you won’t be a microstock photographer any longer.? Standards improve so fast, so much that if you aren’t constantly learning a “new trick” you are going to get? surpassed extremely quickly in image quality, control of light, etc.
We have made it a priority for the last year to improve our work.? I think it has improved a thousandfold and I’m still learning.? One way to do that is by …

 NiltoMil News,The Microstock World         Comments Off

As valuable as I hope the information I provide may be, I would occasionally like to bring in others to do some blogging as well.? Share some information with the rest of us.? I’m not an expert in everything and unfortunately a one-person blog can never provide the level of expertise of a group.? So I’m inviting self-nominations and recommendations for guest bloggers.? If you have a topic you’d like to write about, especially one I’m self-proclaimed uneducated on, please let me know!? Topics that may fly would include: IStock …

 Micro Tricks & Tips,The Microstock World         Comments Off

Microstock is a fairly new and thus still growing industry, especially on the net.? So right now I?ve found few ways to stay on top of what?s going on, but I wanted to share some with you in case you found me and didn?t know what *else* you needed to be reading.
Forums

Microstock Group – 1200+ members, lots of forums specifically directed at each agency.
TalkMicro – 550+ members, simpler forum structure, but basically one big ?category dump? for MS.

Blogs

Microstock Diaries – Lee Torrens – his personal goal to get microstock earnings …