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.

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!

January – blessed January!? How do I love thee?

It was absolutely fantastic to get back to uploading with any sense of regularity.? I only uploaded about 200 new images during our busy bridal show/booking month but 200 is more than enough to get me back on track!

As always, our spreadsheet of microstock earnings is here.

The January numbers were great!? In fact, this was our best month since I stopped uploading last July (other than the ridiculous ELs from SS in Nov (3 of them!)? The final total for all this excitement was 424.82

To put that in perspective for us, Shutterstock was actually down a few dollars.? We had SIX BMEs – Dreamstime, IStock, FeaturePics, Crestock, ImageCatalog and SnapVillage.? Also, StockXpert would have been a BME but we had an EL in Nov.? Our old BME was $19.10 though and so this month’s $30 would have destroyed that!

IStock – no clue.? No new images but it was almost TWICE my BME.? I’ve had almost that many images online for FOUR YEARS and never gone up over $10 really.? $17 was a huge leap.? There’s some speculation that it was a result of all their Best Match changes.? We’ll see if it continues (plus I’m going to be uploading to IStock this month like mad so we’ll see if that helps!)

FeaturePics had a … slightly insane month!? I actually repriced all of my images to $10 from $2 before.? I only had 2 sales but those 2 sales resulted in $15.75, or 61% of my all-time FeaturePics earnings.? It was TRIPLE my prior BME.? I’m going to be working on some ideas to push my FeaturePics gallery around the next 6 months so we’ll see if I can’t keep getting a few sales there each month at the new price.

Check out my Fotolia gallery size increase on the spreadsheet – from 465 last April to 646 as of Dec 31st to 1350 as of tonight!? I over doubled my Fotolia gallery in one month!? The power of the push, I guess.? I worked hard on Fotolia (while watching TV) so we’ll hope that pays off over this month and beyond.

Other interesting bits – I passed 2,000 images on FotoMind and MostPhotos and will pass it on a bunch of other sites this month.? Gotta keep pushing!? You’ll note there are *new* agencies on the list – more on that in a future post…

My BME total is $575.46 and I’ll state for the record now that I hope February can beat that.? I’m only $150 away so I think I can make that up without much problem.? I wouldn’t be surprised to go well over $600.? I have a big month ahead – some news coming soon on our next stock photo trip as well!

Other sites reporting earnings:

Microstock Diaries

jrtb

CJ Photography

Microstock Junction

Driftless Ramblings

PDTNC

MelastMohican

Pixels Away

Bankizdjec

Microstock Experiment

Any I’m missing?? This list is getting rather comprehensive!

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.

We reached a few portfolio milestones this month already and may reach a few more before the month is out.? This is the current list and what we hope to accomplish by the end of the month.

On 123RF we are at 1973 on our way to 2000.? We will definitely surpass this goal by 1/31/09.

At Bigstock we passed 1500 by a ton – 1878 out of 2000 as well and could easily hit this mark.

Dreamstime sits a bit lower with 1733/2000 but I have just over 100 pending.? Assuming a good final 9 days, we could make it close.

Fotolia will be our big surprise for the month.? We started the month with 646 images and may top 1500 before the month ends!? Go me!? ? I have pushed nearly 600 images into the queue there this month.? And yes, next month I plan to finish that up and do Istock a few times as well.

Istock is only 89/100 and close to reaching my *first* milestone.? Sad, I know.

Our Shutterstock gallery is just over 1500 images at 1635/2000.? I don’t know if we’ll get 365 more approved in just over a week.? I would like to hope so … we shall see.

StockXpert gallery size is 1651 passing the 1500 mark earlier this month and headed toward 2k as well.

So our average gallery is nearing 2000 images.? Not good enough but a start.? We’ve also decided to spend a good portion of February improving our image quality to a level that will SELL a lot better.? I’ll post some trials soon.

(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!

So far in 2009 I’ve done almost 8-10 hrs a day on some part of microstock or NiltoMil.? Whether blogging, editing, keywording or submitting I’ve definitely put in the hours.

So what’s the return?? So far, so good.? I’ve uploaded just over 100 new images to all 7 sites and had 70-95 accepted on each.? I also have 100 more edited images and will keyword them tomorrow morning.

I was a bit surprised by Shutterstock today.? I had a large jump in downloads but with that? many new images, on a Monday – well let’s just say I expected more.

Dreamstime, on the other hand, has been great to me lately.? I love image levels.? I think it’s the right way to do sales.? I’ve never been tempted at ANY level to go exclusive with any agency but if I were to do so, I think Dreamstime has the best shot of getting my images.? It seems fair and it’s our second-best earner.

By the end of January I should have submitted close to 1500 images – if a consistent 70% gets accepted, we’ll add just over 1,000 new images to our portfolio this month.? Now *that* is worth waking up in the morning.

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.

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:? The Long Tail

Read that but understand one thing – it’s vital to your success in microstock.? The number one selling image on Istock for stock legend Yuri Arcurs has 8537 downloads.? While that’s a TON of downloads, Yuri is going to make over $1 million dollars this year and 8537 downloads accounts for under $25,000 of that and that’s over four years.? $6,000-8,000 a year is a VERY small portion of what Yuri will make.

So how do you make $1 million a year?? You don’t have just one photo.? Your long tail in microstock is the vast majority of photos that only make a few sales each month or year.? According to the book, “a quarter of Amazon?s
book sales already come from outside its top 130,000 titles.” The average Barnes & Noble only CARRIES 130,000 books.? All that extra profit – you can’t get it if you don’t offer it.

Quick 3 Rules from The Long Tail (for those who don’t read it)

1) Make everything available.

2) Cut the price in half – now lower it.

3) Help me find it.

We’re going to evaluate those one by one. For now, I think that’s enough.? Read the article.? Get on the same page so we can have this conversation.

The Long Tail, Part 1
The Long Tail, Part 2
The Long Tail, Part 3