Great article. In my case, with mostly Rights Managed images, trying to sell my own images would even be more complicated! I make hundreds of sales each month…I would never be able to handle the negotiations let alone billing, collections and so forth! Instead, I am trying to drive supplementary traffic to the sites that handle my work. Even with that more modest goal the amount of work to upload, enter the metadata, blog and market my site is staggering…and all that time that is spent could be spent creating more images. Oh well….

John

Loved this comment… “(in theory – in reality I’m spending the time doing other things like blogging!)”.

Isn’t that the truth! I’m doing that AND planning my upcoming Disney World vacation, so I’m far too busy to be shooting all the stock ideas I have in my head!

Thanks for the comment and great blog!

I must say that I enjoy reading all of the comments posted on this site. Everyone seems to be incredibly versed in the realm of microstock. I myself have just recently decided to get into the “lucrative” vector graphics microstock. Though everyone is mostly involved with photography, I still find it very inspirational in my endeavors. Keep it up everyone!

As far as promoting your work then try flickr (but you have to take part in groups and comment, don’t just upload photos) and then there is blogging, or even just making useful comments in forums is good.

Getting published in magazines, from what I learnt on a travel writing course it’s the words they are looking for and if you can supply the photos then that’s a bonus you will earn a little more for. Magazine editors are looking for content they can use right away – they are busy people. Your right in saying there is a ‘format’ for submissions, contact the magazine first and ask for their “writer’s guidelines” and while on the phone try to find who to address submissions to and if they are looking for something specific at the moment – otherwise you are sending and ‘unsolicited submission’. You can only send an article to one magazine at once then follow up to see if they accept it, if not you submit to the next. covering letter should say you want to be paid at the ‘standard rate’ otherwise you are sending an article in for free!

1. Price, price, price – intermixed with the keyword ‘free’, this is what that segment of buyers want. What they need is entirely different – minus the bloggers segment (which is by definition not a class where most people wish to grow from), if they want to be anything else other than ‘students’ or ‘small businesses’, then theyneed to prioritize unique and valuable imagery as key advancement material.

2. I personally don’t know how to ever reconcile the idea of drawing people in with highly artistic shots when the reality of volume-selling themes is known. I have never been a marketing type and at this point probably never will be. This is why I choose to work with those who are best experienced at these types of juggling acts. I would be up all night if I had to make those decisions.

I wouldn’t want to say the creativity of the imagery is based on what the brokers do or feel. I just think it’s an end-sum game like with producing beach sandals or cereal or whatever other commodities can be sold: there will always (and if not now, next year), someone who can produce the same product (image) for cheaper. To create a truly outstanding image (product) requires innovation like came with the iPod. I have a drawer full of MP3 players that I have sweated through over the early 2000′s, only one works out today.

At some point the critical mass of ‘generic’ stock photography (if we haven’t already reached it?) will be arrived at, you will have hyper-efficient teams of highly motivated workers sharing the company DSLR in some traditionally underdog country, to produce up-to-the-minute shots of every possible current trend or image concept. Pop media, papparazi, that’s all based on outrageously fresh ideas or characters, which are hard to come up with in a factory format and typically require millions of dollars in development to produce the ‘worth’ of the image (Brangelina are good looking but didn’t just drop out of the sky), stock is more subdued in that it’s usually a couple rungs lower on the freshness scale and in a lot of cases very easily technically reproducable.

I know for a fact that the lucrative vector graphics side of things is not only the realm of cool Brooklyn design kids anymore but also people living in near-slum conditions in whatever country the internet has reached – from direct communications i’ve learned that at this point, the basic showstopper for photography seems to be the upfront cost of a DSLR, vs the already in-progress upset of pirated or shared graphics software, used part-time at an internet cafe.

It is only a matter of time before the ball drops to midnight with photography production, editing, and distribution too, and the folks still wondering what happened to their clockwork RM/RF cheques from the 90′s are going to be in for an even bigger surprise.

It’s not very depressing in my mind, in fact I don’t think much has changed at the core – the people with original content will still come out on top. It’s just hard to keep aware of this when your normal routine is in freefall.

p.s. an interesting parallel I thought of when reading the description from the mentioned book about how Wal-mart has pretty crappy health care policies for it’s employees, vs it’s competitor Costco (which basically insures all employees, at much loss to the company bottom line). The value and job of the agency will be increasingly heading towards making moral decisions – like (disclaimer – Paul Melcher is Zymmetrical staff) http://blog.melchersystem.com/2009/05/06/its-your-problem-right-now/ – at some point someone of higher thinking needs to step up and say ‘hey, why should a blog-sized picture be licensed at a dirt-cheap price relative to a larger pixel size?’. So Ebay can license an image for their homepage for $0.50 but for a print-sized image it’s a couple hundred or RM.. makes no sense, except from a volume-selling perspective completely separated from higher reasoning.