March was up overall but not a BME.  Kind of sad given a Powerweek in the middle of the month should have spurred new heights but when 50%+ gets rejected you don’t get very far.

Detailed results are here.

So let’s see, Shutterstock still hasn’t gained the momentum I need simply because I’m not consistent enough.  I’m going to make myself cry if this keeps up!  Dreamstime was down $15-20 from my last few months.  Istock was in the right range.

The good news was the other big agencies: Fotolia was BME at $83.68, BSP also a BME at $31.50 and SXP a BME at $43.50.

Overall March earnings: $550.15

That’s good enough for second best month ever ($575.46 is overall BME).  I would be happier if SS was picking up momentum but in June I had $398.59 with 1247 images online and now $241.97 with 2143 online.  Sad!

Portfolio size average for my top 6 agencies is now 1903.  Fotolia’s 1599 brings that total down but SS, DT, 123, BSP and SXP are all now over 2000.

Coming soon: my first year back and what’s next for N2M.

Ok, I know Powerweek was over awhile ago and I haven’t written.  To be honest I needed time to think about my next steps.

Here’s what happened

I submitted 550 images in 4 days.  Easily enough to beat the 700 in 7 days mark.  The “fail” for Powerweek v3 was our image quality.  On day 4, we had a BUNCH of images reviewed across many sites.  And the results were absolutely terrible.  Not my editing, not my keywording – but I had 4000 trip images to sort through and many were unusable at 100%.  I hadn’t noticed that while culling in Lightroom but upon closer inspection I knew it was going to be a hard week.

The second major issue we ran into was overdoing it.  Honestly it’s not a great idea to submit 1000 images in one week.  You lose the benefits of continued growth and spread as well as you “feed the beast” once instead of continually, which results in another loss for you.

1) My process ARE better.  I could easily edit and key MORE images than I should rationally submit in a week.  I like that.

2) I still need to get more new images up – we had several shoots since Powerweek which has kept me busy and one of our major goals is to improve our photography dramatically in the next 12 months.  I definitely think that will help all around.

3) Our trip images were not what we needed.  We had a great time, I’ve sorted through and picked another 1200 or so we can use but overall the images themselves were iffy at best and not very good stock.  Lesson learned.

What’s Next?

I think my next goal will not be a Powerweek but a Growth Month.  I would love to grow our gallery fast still.  I think a better way than 700 in a week and 150 for the rest of the month would be 50 new images uploaded 3 times per week.  150 new images a week for a year is not enough but I can add some in whenever possible to add to that.  I still want 10k up by the end of this year although I’m not certain I will close N2M if I do not, given our new education.

I still need – I still hunger.  I have to work on my lessons and what is next for us.

What is a Powerweek?

Basically I’ve cleared my schedule for the next 7 days.  I will be doing *nothing* except microstock from Sunday March 8th through Saturday March 14th.  I will track the total number of images submitted to my top 10 agencies.

Why do it?

I think I can get 700 images up in one week and break 1000 for the month.  But it’s not been done.  As far as I know about, the record for NEW image uploads in one month to the top 10 agencies is 1035.  I would like to break that mark one week!

What happened in Powerweek 1 and 2?

Powerweek 1 resulted in 400 new images in 4 days.  I quit 3 days short of goal because I simply ran out of images.  I believed it was easier to shoot 1000 new images than get them up to the agencies but that is incorrect.  To quote myself “The single most difficult and time consuming part of the microstock process is to shoot stock worthy images.” I learned that you need a backlog when you start.

Powerweek 2 resulted in about 400 new images in 3 days.  I quit before the halfway mark because I was simply going too fast to too many agencies.  I was submitting 200 images a day to 15 agencies.  My upload speed is decent but I waited too long to upload the first batch.  Do not upload 200 at a time.  The upload time kills you!

How will this time be different?

So I just admitted to “failing” by not completing Powerweek v1 or v2.  In truth I’m not sure how much 800 images in 2 weeks is failing but I have learned.

1) I’m only uploading to 10 agencies for the next 7 days. I will have a backlog of images to go to the others later if necessary.

2) I’m uploading batches of 50, not 200. 50×10 = 500 total images per upload.  That should take 1/6th of my previous batch time.  I’ll make up for the smaller batches overnights when I do 100 at the end of the day.  That should allow me to do 200 per day if I can edit that quickly.

3) I have my backlog! I have 3200 images to edit now.  I will not run out.

4) My processes are better. I edit faster, keyword smarter and don’t waste my time on borderline images.

5) Need. I have to get through as many images as possible to earn as much as possible so that we can schedule our next trip.  The more we make the better, of course.  I like money.

So, wish me luck and see you in 8 days!

(That’s me – in case you didn’t know)

Flow: the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. *

Flow is what athletes refer to as being “in the zone.”  You can’t normally just be there at any specific moment.   The more you achieve Flow, the easier it is to reclaim, though.  I spend weeks seeking it then days living it.

Flow is:

1. Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one’s skill set and abilities).

2. Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).

3. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.

4. Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).

5. A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.

Sometimes after I pull something off that someone else deems impossible they ask me how I did it or “why can you do stuff like this?”  I think it’s a matter of finding that spot where you aren’t “working” but are rather being alive and merging action and awareness into one rolled up ball of activity.   When you are *fully* involved in the moment of life you’re living, you’re in Flow.  That’s what I need – that’s what I’ve been trying to find.

How do you find that state where your mind is clear, your work is simple and you are accomplishing more in one day then you do in the other 6 that week?  Music?  Solitude?  Exercise/running?  What clears your head so totally that you can think of nothing but what’s in front of you?

For me, I find flow in the late night.  I don’t know why but it all starts after 1 am for me.  I’m going to leave the actual time on this post (currently 5:15:45am) so you can see how my flow works.  I started this post about 45-60 minutes ago and haven’t yet been to sleep.  I will go as soon as I hit publish.  Late nights clear my head and allow me time and motive to think about the next day, about life and about finding my reasons.

See the photo at the beginning of this post again?  That’s me, in Flow.  That’s the focus I’m bringing to this game…

Let’s see how well you know logos.  Who am I quitting?  Want to guess why?

Do yourself a quick favor and compare the Long Tail we’ve been discussing to the chart on the “Recent Results” page of my spreadsheet.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pZEgM338rPYAiUQorCHGoYQ&hl=en

Now if you understand that I suck at Istock and just move on from there, if this were a Long Tail situation, I would have a few sales at one of the bottom agencies.  I would have fewer but *some* sales at a couple and I’d have nearly no sales but a couple at a few agencies.  The fact that those bottom 6 agencies have earned $1.73 COMBINED in November and $2.46 in October and never more than $25 COMBINED – it’s a sad day but they are being removed from our upload queue.

Agencies we are sticking with:

Shutterstock
Istock
Dreamstime
Fotolia
BigstockPhoto
123RF
StockXpert
(possibly Alamy)

Agencies we have accounts with that we’ll no longer submit to until sales increase:

CanstockPhoto
Crestock
FotoMind
FeaturePics
ImageCatalog
YayMicro
SnapVillage
MostPhotos

One reason we bottlenecked during our PowerWeek was upload speed.  It took HOURS to upload the first 200 images to these 8 agencies.  None of those 200 images will likely sell!  What was I thinking?!  I’m all for trying out something new but most of these agencies have 100s of my photos available and few sales to justify my effort.  This also gives me more free time to upload to Istock and push at Fotolia.

This is NOT a long tail situation.  I’ll say this about the long tail – if your time is NOT maxed out, (maxed out = you do NOT have enough time to get every image uploaded to Shutterstock, Dreamstime, etc.) then you should not worry about who you submit to.  If you have extra time, always do the extra submits.  It doesn’t make sense.  You can’t take the time with you.  It is gone after you waste it.  If your choice is playing a game online to pass the time or uploading to Yay, upload! However, if you are maxed out on time, like we are on PowerWeek, don’t waste your time!  Save it for what is important.  We have a huge backlog of images and uploading them to 7 sites instead of 15 will cut our upload time by MORE than half.  When you’re uploading 20 images this doesn’t matter.  When you upload 200 it matters a GREAT deal.

Note:  we will NOT be closing our accounts on these sites mentioned.  That would be even dumber than uploading to them in the first place.  You never know what’s going to gain traction.  I still think YayMicro could be a big player in our industry but I’d like to see them kick it up a notch or ten.

I’m on a bit of a Power Week v2 right now.  I’m trying to find out how many images I can get uploaded in a week – from editing, keywording, uploading & submitting.

Here’s the issue – you run into bottlenecks, tie-ups – places that slow you down.  It doesn’t matter where that place is, somewhere along the line you will hit it if you’re fast enough.  Does anyone remember Power Week v1?  My bottleneck was not having enough images to process.  I could literally edit images faster than Sarah & I were shooting them.  I ran out of images after editing 400 in 3 days.

Fast forward to Power Week v2 – I’ve now got a backlog of almost 4,000 shots from our trip to edit & upload.  I will NOT run out of images this week.  So what now?

My internet upload speed.

I edited 200 images yesterday.  After about 4 hours of work on those same images today I had them ready to upload.  I pushed upload SIX hours ago.  I was out for a few hours this morning and pushed images at 6:30 pm.  It’s almost 1am and I am 31% done with my upload!!  According to this speed, if it stays constant, it will take anywhere from 19 to 24 hours to complete my UPLOAD.  In the meantime, I’ve already edited another 85 files.  By the end of that 19 hours, I should have another 150 to upload.  I am pushing the VERY limits of my upload speed.

I think my next post will focus on ALL of the steps in this process – so I can find & eliminate bottlenecks before this happens.  But for now, just know that if you submit 200 images to 123RF, Bigstock, Dreamstime, FeaturePics, Fotolia, ImageCatalog, MostPhotos, Shutterstock, StockXpert and Yaymicro at the same time, you will beuploading for a LONG time.

No image with this post – I’m too busy and too lazy at the same time.

So what happened?  Did I fail?  Why am I back already?

Well the answers are long & complex – I learned a lot the last 4 days though.  I  have submitted just over 400 images in 4 days.  If I kept going, I would have made a serious run at 1k in 7 days so why stop?

The answer lies in my beliefs going into the challenge.  I believed that it was easier to shoot 1000 images than to take them from the camera to the stock agency.  I was wrong.  The single most difficult and time consuming part of the microstock process is to shoot stock worthy images.  Period.

The second reason we ‘quit’ our challenge early is that my computer bit it.  I spent 11 hours on the FIRST DAY changing over to a brand new 4 gig RAM Vista machine.  I’m not familiar with Vista so there was a learning curve.  Add in the 11 hours out and I was already behind.  When I realized I had to start shooting, it was over.

I gave up the challenge because Sarah & I simply could not *together* shoot fast enough to keep images coming.  As of right now, I have under 50 images left to process.  I thought that we could add shoots this week, we’d have plenty of images.  It simply wasn’t true.  If you are going to “add 1000 images” in 7 days, you need to have a backlog.  You can’t add 1000 AND shoot 1000 in one week.  I don’t believe it’s possible.

Here’s more of what I learned:

* I can edit, keyword, upload and submit about 10 pictures per hour.  This meant during my 12 hour days, I would put between 110 and 150 images online.  If I did longer days, I could easily hit 200 images in one day.

* No matter how tireless a worker you are, you will get tired at the end of 16 hours of editing, keywording and uploading.  If you do it for 4 days in a row, you will be exhausted.

* If you shoot 40-70 useable images per model session, over 1-2 hours, you can upload 500 images per week (10 hrs of shooting, 50 hrs of editing, kw, upload & submitting).  You could * with difficulty* do about 600.  At my speeds, you’d average a 12 hour day everyday 7 days a week though.  The most you can reasonably add is 400-600 per week.  Anything more is blitzing and it’s less likely you can keep that up for a long time.  Of course at 600 per week for 6 months, you’d be retired or very close!

I’m a chronic measurer.  I need to know how much, how long, how many, how can I?  I measure my speed editing weddings, I measure my speed editing a portrait shoot, I measure how many images we take vs. keep, how many we shoot at a portrait session vs. a stock session.  I measure EVERYTHING.  How long my cards take to DL, how long it takes LR to import them.  I can make better decisions if I have more information.

SO – one thing I have no information on is the question “How many stock images can be edited, keyworded, uploaded & submitted in one 7 day period?”

I’m going to find out.

In my ongoing research, I could not find a submitter who had contributed more than 1023 images in one month to Dreamstime (without having a preexisting large collection offline).  (IOFoto did 1023)  My goal is to come AS CLOSE to 1023 new images in the next 7 days as possible.  Keep in mind that there’s 2 of us – Sarah shoots.  I shoot, edit, keyword, upload & submit.  So I do have new images coming in everyday.  She shot some today, she has a 3 hour model shoot tomorrow & other ideas lined up all week.

The rules: Sunday May 25th, 12:00am until Saturday May 31st, 11:59pm.  No forums, no blogs, no IM, no email except twice a day (need to check on my clients), no anything but stock for 7 days.  Just to see what can be accomplished.  The goal: 1024 of course. *laugh*

Serious goals:

under 200 = failure.
201 to 400 = acceptable range.
400-500 = great!
500+ = stunning & excellent!

Wish me luck – although unless you write in email or within the next 40 minutes, I won’t see it for a week!