Stock Photo Workflow

For anyone who has ever dabbled in the world of microstock photography you quickly would discover how imperative it is to be organized. Often times those lacking organizational skills will quickly fall out of the commercial photo field. Along with the stress of coming up with creative ideas that will translate into profit you also are working around the clock to improve the speed at which you produce these high quality images. As the old saying goes, “Time is money.” In the stock photo world this couldn’t be any truer.

So how does one create a workflow? This isn’t a question a single person could answer; we each do things differently and tackle each task from a unique perspective and in a unique way. What I suggest is to simply find out how other photographers do things and try out various methods until you piece together one that suits your personal needs. A lot of what has made me so weary in producing more stock images is the lengthy process of uploading, naming, describing, keywording, and submitting each batch of photos on multiple sites. The more I do this the easier my work flow becomes; most importantly the higher my profit margin.

There are a ton of tools and guides out there that list ways to make your life easier, so I definitely suggest setting some time aside to research and take notes; get a feel for various methods and apply them in your own routine. One important bit of advice I can offer that most overlook is that you must look at selling stock photos as a secondary job. For those of you with self-motivation troubles (We all know that feeling) you really need to organize yourself, put the time aside, and most importantly remain determined. Since you essentially are your own boss it is your responsibility to create a work schedule that you must strictly stick to; imagine if you spent 3-4 hours each day producing images and uploading them by the end of the week. If you work 5 days in a row you are putting in 15 hours worth of productive work that essentially will turn into profits.

Anyways, I hope this post can be found useful to some in a very similar situation as I am. If you have any questions feel free to ask! I love collaborating and sharing ideas; you can always expect a quick response.

Why I’ve Been Gone, and What’s to Come!

It has been a while since I’ve last posted, so pardon for my negligence. With the holiday season finished up and people’s lives returning to their normal routines I can also get back to work and stop being so lazy. What’s in the works? Well right now I’m just sorting out some college admissions things so I’ve also been tied up with that. I begin my classes in early February so that will definitely be keeping me busy 15 hours out of the week, while the rest of my time can be spent doing other productive things.

As for my stock photography people may be wondering why I haven’t uploaded more photos other than the original batch of 10. My excuse for that is the internet here; although you’d think uploading 10 photos (times 4, since I upload to different websites) wouldn’t take long, but I will assure you that it can take anywhere from one to three hours depending on my wireless connectivity quality. So what does this mean? What I plan to do now is batch around 50-100 great photos over a week-two week period, then spend a day uploading them and filling out keywords/descriptions. Most stock photographers would probably disagree with this workflow since it’s not exactly the most efficient, but for my current conditions it’ll have to do. Especially since uploading steals a lot of bandwidth from the rest of the people in the house, so if I sporadically upload photos no one would be very happy. At least this way they’ll know when the Internet will get to crawling speeds.

Now onto good news! You know that tradition when someone starts a new business it’s customary to frame your first dollar? Well the other evening I decided to check the progress of my current batch of photos on Dreamstime and noticed I had made my first sale! It wasn’t exactly a whole $1.00 and by no means did I expect to hit the jackpot with my first sale; but heck, $0.41 is definitely something to be proud of. I can say that I reached my goal of selling stock photography, even if it’s just one at the moment; now it’s time to set an even higher goal.

Anyways, I’ll finish this post on the high note of being happy I made a sale; stick around and expect a ton more stuff!

Obligatory First Post

Although at the moment there are very few readers I feel it’s necessary to hit the ground running. So to get started I’ll talk about my current plans for the near future regarding my career. My first priority at the moment is assembling a portfolio of around 30 photographs of what I would consider decent Stock images. I’ve already been asked by a few people why so few pictures and why an organized portfolio for something going directly online to essentially a new portfolio. The key reason is because of how important understanding what the market needs and where my quality lies. If some photos are rejected then I can evaluate myself on what was wrong and make appropriate changes.

Once I’m able to get my hands in on the market and understand the flow of things I will set another goal; for example: upload 100 good quality photos a week. I’m really wanting to spend as little time possible playing catchup with everyone else and essentially inject myself into the group of successful Stock and Microstock photographers. With most competitive fields the most ambitious make it out on top, which is quite admirable when you see someone start from nothing and build a very stable foundation that they continue to build upon. Before just pouring images into the market I’m going to ease myself in and build that steady foundation from which I will work to gain great success.

To complete this first post I would like to provide everyone a link to my Flickr account which contains most of my non-stock general travel photography while living here in Europe. Once I start submitting photos to various stock agencies I will provide various links and post a few sample photographs from my lightbox.

FlickR Account

Thank you all for reading, I hope you look forward to seeing what’s to come as much as I am; before I leave I would also like to let everyone know that I have been contemplating creating a YouTube show based around Photography and such, so I will keep everyone in the loop once I figure everything out.