Microstock Celebrity – Jack Hollingsworth
Posted by Lee Torrens
Jack Hollingsworth needs no introduction in the traditional stock photography market. Those familiar with him and his career will be surprised to see him appear here labeled as a ‘microstock’ celebrity. But there’s a good explanation. Jack is entering the microstock market.
I first met Jack at PhotoPlus in 2007 where he gave a presentation titled Stock Unplugged which I briefly reviewed. In 2008 he presented his Stock 2.0 presentation at PhotosPlus, followed by an adapted version at UGCX.
For a photographer who hasn’t touched the microstock market until now, Jack’s already been mentioned here quite a few times.
Jack is very entrepreneurial and always has a handful of projects going. His latest project is called Toginars – online seminars for photographers (togs). The topic of the seminars is social media and online branding for photographers and Jack has already lined up an impressive list of qualified speakers. The schedule is one session per week, 45 minutes of interview followed by 15 minutes of interactive Q&A, at a fee of US$19.99 per session. If you can’t make the scheduled time, you can purchase a PDF transcript and MP3 recording of the session for the same price.
So what about Jack and Microstock? Andres Rodriguez and I are helping Jack navigate the microstock market by uploading and submitting his files for him in exchange for a small commission on his sales. We’ve been quietly uploading images to the top microstock agencies for two months now. They are very simple studio shots with a range of models – photos he already had at hand. However, he has big plans for his next shoots for microstock.
The best part of Jack’s journey into the microstock market – well, the best part for us – is that he’s going full disclosure and will be publishing earnings reports alongside my own here on Microstock Diaries. Keep an eye out for Jack’s first numbers here next week. We’ll all get to see observe the financial results as one of the world’s top stock photographers expands into microstock.
Now let’s take a look at some detail about Jack Hollingsworth:
Jack Hollingsworth Background
Jack’s career in stock photography spans 30 years. He’s licensed photos through ALL notable stock photo agencies. He’s also shot stock in “every corner of the world”.
He’s built and sold collections of his own, most recently PhotosIndia, Red Chopsticks and 40260. He is also one of the founding members of Blend Images – a successful multi-ethnic niche stock photo agency.
All this has made Jack one of the best known stock photographers in the world, a sought-after entrepreneur, and an in-demand speaker.
Personal Details
Lives in Texas USA | Married with two daughters | Shoots with Canon
Links
JackHollingsworth.com | Toginars | @photojack on Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Shutterbug Column
Microstock portfolios
iStockphoto | Shutterstock | Dreamstime | Fotolia | StockXpert | BigStockPhoto | 123rf
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
So check out Jack’s Toginar series and don’t forget to check back here on the first of the month for his first microstock earning report.
Posted May 26th, 2009 by Lee Torrens
Jack is definitely a microstock celebrity (as are you, Lee)
Thanks to both of you for sharing Jack’s microstock adventures with us via this blog.
Rahul
hi Lee, i haven’t talked with you for a long time, but like always very informative and generous! i remember this famous photographer from other post from this blog:
cheers
Wow, he’s gotta completely underwhelmed by his microstock performance so far.
Yes, but his expectations are being well managed. He knows that the content he’s submitting now is relatively low-performance stuff.
I could really learn a lot from someone like this.
Just to learn the composition and framing for subjects would be a great talent.
I think it comes with experience and being around those who have an eye for stock photos.
Hopefully I can learn from these examples.
Is Jack keeping track of witch photo’s are selling and if those same photos are in all 9 stock houses? It would be interesting to see what is being sold and if there were any reasons. Also if there was a type of photography that each house was looking at.
Or is each house getting a different type/group of photo’s. If so what is that type of photo that is being sold at each house if there if a type.
If he was to down load those that sold at the other sites I think it might be interesting to see if the smaller seller site might move to a higher level.
With the obvious exception of iStockphoto, all agencies are getting the same photos submitted, and more or less at the same time. As the approval rates are so high, there’s very little variation in what each agency has available. This validates the agency comparison aspect of the data, much more so than my own portfolios which are someone scattered.
123rf got a bonus batch of variations so they have slightly more than the other agencies.
-Lee