Gatekeepers, Responsibility, and Stock Photos

The time has come for stock photographers to become their own "gatekeepers"!

 Gatekeepers and Responsibility

“Someone is going to be the gatekeeper, and it should be you.” Seth Godin. I read that a couple of days ago in Seth Godin’s blog (how does he come up with such great stuff day after day?). I think this is especially true for stock photographers. Being your own gatekeeper is not easy…and requires that you take responsibility for your self.  For me, it means working every day to give my images as great a chance to be seen by those in need of them as possible. It means getting my images in to stock agencies…which is were the bulk of the money is. But it also means getting images up on my site where I can add to the audience. 

Image Searches And Agency Links

Today, as I write this, 19 people have conducted Internet searches for Images that have brought them o my site…and have then gone on to the agencies that carry my work (a whole lot more made it to my site but did not follow a link to an agency). While I don’t know what percentage have gone on, if any of them have, to license an image, I do know that overall some of them are doing so. I know because every once in a while I am contacted directly when a link isn’t working or they want additional information on an image…or even sometimes when I get a compliment on the image and how perfect it was for their needs.

Animal Antics, Restrictions, and No Guarantees

As time goes by I am adding more and more images to my site that are not handled by an agency.  My Animal Antics (funny animal pictures) images I am increasingly handling myself. I recently had a conversation with a Getty executive who informed me that even though I have greeting card restrictions on some of the images, they can’t guarantee that those restrictions will be enforced. Gulp!

Greeting Cards, Royalty Percentages and Time To Negotiate

Plus, when I license a greeting card image for a royalty percentage, I stand to get a lot more revenue than a one-time fee through a stock agency. It is a trade-off. Without the agency, at least for now, way fewer people will see the image…and I have to take the time to negotiate…something I am not really well suited for! Oh well…at least I get 100% of the fee!

Gatekeepers, Hedging Bets, and the Internet

Ultimately my point is that it is better to take responsibility for your own success than to hand it over entirely to a “gate keeper”. Yes, I am playing the “gate keeper” game, and expect that stock agencies will always be a significant part of my business, but I am also hedging my bets on this new fangled thing called the Internet. I think it is going to be big…really big!

Long Tailed Key Words and a Tidal Wave of Money

Long-tailed key words are the key to success in generating traffic to monetize stock photos on the Internet.

Searching The Internet For Images...and a Tidal Wave of Money

Every so often I spend a little time searching the net using phrases that ought to bring up one of my photos…a little research as to how things are going and if I can learn anything new. Just now I searched the phrase “Tidal Wave of Money” knowing that I have such an image and that it has been up on my site for a couple of months…long enough to probably have been indexed by Google and other search engines. This is a great example of a “long tailed key word”. Fewer people will be searching for that term, but the ones that are searching for it are more likely to license it when, and if, they find it.

The First Page of Web Search...and Imagekind.com

I was pleased to see my image on the first page of the web search (in position number eight). But I was surprised that it was a link to my image at Imagekind.com. Apparently it does pay to have images on Imagekind, not just for print fulfillment, but for gaining visibility on Internet searches as well!  Perhaps it is because that Imagekind.com is such a larger entity and therefore carries more weight, that the image shows up earlier on the web search at Imagekind than the same image does on my own site…even though it has been up longer on my site.

Image Search...and More Money Images

Next I did the same phrase using an “image” search. This time the image showed up 14^th on the first page, linked to my site.  Two more of my other money images showed up later on the same page…both on the Imagekind.com site. By the way, I have started using the watermarking provided by Imagekind.com on the images I upload there…and with this kind of visibility I am glad I am doing that…though I wish their watermark was even larger!

Bing.com and Number One In Image Search

Next I did the same search at Bing.com. This time my web site came up number eight, but no sign of Imagekind.com. When I did an “Image” search my image came up number one at Bing...and again no sign of Imagekind.com. The same searches on Yahoo resulted in no trace of my image for the first five pages of web searches…but yet again number one under “Image” search.

Quality Content, Long Tailed Key Words and A Lot More Money!

What do I make of all this? Uh…keep plugging away. I am growing in confidence that with enough consistent work on getting quality content up on a site (and sites like Imagekind.com and CafePress.com) sooner or later (probably later) I will be generating the kind of revenue that I used to make in the heyday of stock photography. Actually, I plan on making a lot more (a tidal wave of money you might say…)! I am also more and more convinced that long-tailed key words, and lots of them, will be more important than ranking highly for single keywords.  The only way to get huge traffic numbers with long tailed keywords is by having lots of well-key-worded content, which means you will have to excuse me…I have a lot of work to do!

A Photographer's Rant!

A photographer's Rant: Sometimes you just want to get your voice heard!

The following is an actual  "Rant", if you will, from a photographer who posted it on a forum I am involved with. He agreed to let me share it on my blog provided he remained a "man of mystery" So be it.

I've transitioned into stock from assignment work and this year (2010) I've not shot any assignments at all. The world of assignments for me became a place of extreme stress and frustration as the new blood with their kit DSLRs and Clickpic websites flooded the market over the last few years with not a care in the world about licensing or copyright or charging anything like a workable fee just so they could get "in print". They have generally undermined the licensing business model so that I now get prospective clients telling me "I'm" unusual for not handing over copyright....!


What I can't stand in the modern advertising assignment world is how we photographers are essentially squeezed from both sides. We have to almost beg to get assignments, or offer up 20% to a rep, advertise in ridiculously expensive source books to be seen as 'hip', enter ridiculous competitions that the organizers extend deadlines on to maximize profit, yet that never lead to any real meaningful work. We have to run round with three or more ridiculously expensive snakeskin/zebra/armadillo bound 'folios' available at all times with our work printed on dried virgin's skin just to impress some acne-ridden twenty-something with the title of "creative director".


If he does commission us we have to fight unrealistic budgets, give away unrealistic rights, jump to someone else's timetable, work with pretentious a-holes on set and deliver work to unrealistic deadlines. Then we have to wait 90 days to get paid. Oh, and we have to be super grateful too.


The turnover can look good but the profit margin is the real story.and what cost to us of all that hassle and built in jerk-factor?


When I entered our illustrious industry it was partly because I enjoyed making images and partly because I enjoyed the idea of being my own boss. I found that increasingly with assignment work I lost the enjoyment of making images and I was never really my own boss. I found that client loyalty existed as long as the next estimate and if someone else was cheaper well.... you all know the ending.


With stock production I am, as much as can be expected, master of my own destiny. I can shoot when I want, take a day off when I want, and arrange my own productions so I can maximize profit. I treat stock as a pure business model and simply put, I shoot for money not pleasure. I have always said that if I could find another way of leveraging money from this industry I would do that too. This may still come. There's so much naive blood out there coupled with rich hobbyists that there's got to be money to be made. Good luck to the Chase Jarvis's & the Vincent LaForet's of this world, they've realized that for us all to survive we've got to do something alongside making images for a living. Lectures, apps, DVDs, seminars, courses, the list is endless.


While prices may be falling I'm a relative newbie in stock (3 years seriously and 5 years altogether) so I'm still working out what works and what doesn't. I wasn't shooting stock in the glory days so for me any sales are good sales (apart from PA of course...;)). The more I'm images I'm placing the more money I seem to make. So I'm continuing for now along the same trajectory while simultaneously reducing my expenditure as much as possible.


Success is a goal that each of us sets dependent on our expectations, our needs and wants and what we think is achievable. For me, being able to live by making images, or talking about making images and being master of my own destiny is a measure of success. I count myself lucky that I can pick up a camera and earn a living without having to be a corporate cube-farm slave like many of my friends. Sure they make more $$ than I do but...are they happy???!! ;)

My comments:  Where did he find a rep that would only take 20%?!!!

Stock Photography and a Nine to Five Job

No matter how you juggle your time, a stock photo career will require a lot of it!

Stock Photography and a Nine-To-Five Job
A lot of times you hear photographers saying that a photography career is way better than a nine-to-five job. I don’t know about them, but for me to achieve success as a stock photographer has required not a nine-to-five approach, but more like a eight-thirty to seven-thirty approach…or something similar. No matter how you juggle it, and whether you work better in the morning, or better in the afternoon or better at midnight, stock photography, as a career, requires systematic, consistent dedicated time…and a lot of it.

The Worst Is Behind Us…Maybe
I used to think I was going to get rich from stock…that was back twenty years ago when I would bring in $10,000.00 a month off of a hundred and fifty or so images. Now, of course, things have changed. I think, like a new car that has just been purchased and driven off the lot, the worst of the drop in stock photography value is behind us. We are settling into a new paradigm…micro stock prices are going up, RF and RM have taken huge drops, and none of the industry looks quite as rosy as it once did…even to a lot of micro stockers.  But perhaps the worst is behind us. I still very much believe that I can continue to make quite a nice living from stock photography (actually, a part of me is still planning to get rich at it...what gives with that?). But to do so will probably require that nine-to-five mentality…at least in the sense of having the approach and the discipline to regularly produce images and to produce images that are both unique and needed in the market.

Diversification and Regular Investment
In the other “stock” world, financial experts counsel diversifying and contributing to your investment regularly. The same advice applies to stock photography. To be successful to the point where you can earn a good living requires consistently producing images day in and day out…in researching the market to understand what to create, where to put it and in what business model...and so forth. I am always planning ahead, by at least a couple of months. Right now I am setting up a November shoot in Thailand. I have already shot the raw materials for the next two weeks worth of imaging, I am planning a shoot in three weeks that also involves motion, spent yesterday shooting images and getting props for photos that I probably will be able to start imaging on in a month or so…and oh yeah, I am kind of double-booked because I have enough greeting card images in the works to keep me busy through the end of October!

Being My Own Boss.
It isn’t just me either. A great example of a tremendously successful stock shooter who approaches the business with discipline and consistency is Tom Grill…who has told me that he plans his shoots a year in advance!  Everyday I think to myself how fortunate I am to be my own boss and to get to work when I want. Then I get to work by 8:30 in the morning and leave for home by 7:30 in the evening. When I get home I usually end putting in another hour or two of internet work before the evening is over.  In addition, rare is the week-end that doesn’t see me spend at least a half day working.  But hey, the number of hours I put in pale compared to the likes of another extremely successful stock shooter, Colin Anderson...who makes me look like a slacker!

What It Takes To Succeed In Stock Photography
That is what it takes to succeed in stock photography. Treating it as a business…with discipline and consistency. It takes putting your heart and soul into it. Succeeding in stock photography is not for the feint of heart. It requires monetary investment, faith that what you are doing will work, and huge amounts of time and energy. And I can’t imagine doing anything else that would reward me as well or satisfy me as much.

Twenty Months of SEO and Monetizing Photography

Even with a bad sales report the only reason I might be tempted to jump from a balcony is to make a splash!
Getty, Corbis and Abysmal Sales Reports
My Getty and Corbis royalty reports this month were both abysmal…the lowest in each case in a decade. Now I consider myself a pretty optimistic person, but even for me that is something that makes me sit up and take notice. Am I tempted to jump off a tall building? No…unless there is an inviting swimming pool below. Mitigating factors include the fact that the previous two months at Getty were pretty good for me, and that June found my sales at Blend being very good. But still, my Corbis monthly drop was truly spectacular and my Getty drop was down to half of what is normal for me. Yikes!


Creativity, Action and Depression
Strangely though, I don’t seem to be depressed. Which is really good because depression is the biggest enemy of creativity and action…the two things that we need most in challenging times. In trying to understand why I am not depressed I first realize that I know that my income will rebound…it always has…and that it isn’t time to panic. As I mention, my Blend income is looking good and overall I have been producing some of the best images of my life. I have robust and diverse distribution. Also, I am really glad I started SEO on my website almost two years ago.

Monetizing Imagery, Time and Effort
Ultimately I believe that the best insurance against the demise of the stock industry as we know it is a strong presence on the web in order to monetize our imagery in as many ways as possible. My experience is that it is a painfully slow process…but that it will work. In my recent interview with Rolf Hicker, who is making such an effort work, he points out that what it takes is a huge expenditure of time and effort. That is also borne out by the other people I know who are profiting from the web. Overnight success only comes after years of hard work.


Twenty Months of SEO
Let’s take a look at where I stand after about twenty months of SEO efforts. I started with about one person a week visiting my site. This past week I have had over 600 people a day for at least Monday through Thursday. Not bad…but nowhere near where I want to be. I am earning somewhere around $6.00 per day on click through advertising. In the last year I sold about $1,200.00 dollars worth of prints through Imagekind.com. Not particularly good, but better than the zero dollars I earned before I started this effort. At CaféPress, sales of photo imprinted gifts such as coffee mugs, mouse pads, and other gift items, has reached an average of about one sale a day. I guess can’t quite retire yet! My new “funnyanimalpix” blog is up to a whopping 20 visitors a day. Hey, it has only been about a month now! Most importantly, I am getting around twenty people a day who find an image on my site and then follow the link to the agency that handles that particular image. I have no way to know how many actually license an image at that point…but I know some do because I have occasionally managed to talk to some of them…sometimes when they contact me directly to try and get a better price (which they can’t). Keep in mind that for the above figures, it seems to be that the summer months usually finds a visitor drop-off of 20% for website traffic.

Three to Five Years and Decent Money
From the above it seems reasonable to me that if I can get six thousand visitors a day instead of six hundred, I will be making some decent money…mainly from increased stock sales. I totally believe I will get there, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes me three to five years more. In the meantime…hey, at least this industry isn’t boring!

The Evolution of Stock Photography: The Merging Of Traditional and Micro

The Stock Photography Market is in transition; Will the future see our stock photo revenue be coming or going?

The Merging of  "Traditional" and "Microstock"
It is not only inevitable that traditional stock (RM and RF) will soon be sold side-by-side with "Microstock", it is already happening with a vengeance. I believe it is a good thing as well. As traditional and micro stock images are increasingly sold alongside each other the market will be better able to mature, become more efficient, and reach it's equilibrium. Stock shooters and the industry will be able to better understand what price points really work for both the producers and consumers of stock imagery.  The industry is truly a mess, and this is a natural step to help straighten things out.

Lee Torrens, Microstockdiaries and the merging of RM, RF, and Micro
To find out where things stand today I checked with Lee Torrens, who among other things, has a site called microstockdiaries...a good place to check on the pulse of the microstock world.  Lee put together the following summation of the current state of the merging of micro and traditional stock photography when I asked him where traditional stock and micro stock are being licensed together:

The simple answer is: Thinkstock, Pixmac, Moodboard, Glow, Reflex and quite a few other distributors and resellers.

But, as the definitions of 'micro' and 'traditional' blur and the prices cross over, it becomes more complex:

- Some traditional agencies have 'downgraded' certain collections to micro level pricing (Getty-Thinkstock)
- Some of those have also introduced micro-priced small sizes (Getty, Corbis, Blend, everyone)
- Some microstock agencies have 'upgraded' collections to near-traditional pricing (iStockphoto with Vetta,          Fotolia with Infinite)
- plenty of traditional agencies have added a "microstock" tab to their website and are reselling microstock via Fotolia, Dreamstime or 123rf reseller programs (Glow, Reflex, etc)
- others are resellers of content from many different sources both micro and traditional (Pixmac)
- others just launched with both (Moodboard)
- a few traditional agencies have just purchased microstock agencies and are cross-promoting (Getty with iStock, Jupiter with StockXpert, Masterfile with Crestock)
- some are trying to build it themselves (Inmagine with 123rf, Corbis with SnapVillage and then Veer Marketplace)
- there's some new agency collections coming which will be available on both microstock and traditional platforms
- and there's a few companies starting to distribute microstock content through the traditional channel
- then there's the whole Getty-Flickr thing
 
The Democratization of Stock Photography
These are all steps towards the true democratization of stock photography. They are steps towards a marketplace in which everyone can, and most likely will, participate in all price levels of stock photography. Microstock prices are in many cases absurdly low.  In other cases the prices are appropriate given the reality that it is easier and cheaper than ever to produce certain kinds of photos, and that more people than ever are doing exactly that. Harsh for many of us traditonal shooters, but a reality nonetheless.

iStockphoto, Vetta, and a Step In the Right Direction for Microstock
Hopefully with the merging of the different business models of stock (traditional and micro), images that are more valuable will find their prices rising to more appropriate levels. Traditional shooters may benefit from having their work seen by more eyeballs as the majority of all those seeking stock images are actually going to microstock sites. I have heard that half of all stock images licensed last year were licensed through iStockphoto! It is also interesting to note that the higher priced Vetta collection on iStockphoto has been enormously successful.  That is a step in the right direction for Microstock shooters to be more aware of the money they are leaving on the table. The ones who produce higher value images need to have access to collections that can and will charge appropriately for such images and pass enough of those commissions on to make the production of higher-end and needed imagery worth doing.

Images The Market Needs, Wants and Values
We are in a transition phase from the past where the gate keepers made the rules and determined who got to play, to the future where the value of an image will truly be determined by the market place. The sooner we get out of the transition phase and into the future the better! I base that on my belief that there will always be substantial rewards for those who make images that the market truly needs, wants and values.

Best Selling Stock Photos That Aren't

This funny concept stock photo of a man in a bodycast and traction illustrating themes such as disaster, calamity and medical issues will eventually be a best seller...or not!


A Recovery Room, A Body Cast, And No Traction
I have a number of best sellers that aren't. That is, I have created a number of stock photos that I was sure would be best selling images that have either barely sold at all, or, indeed, have no sales at all. In the example here I went to quite a bit of trouble to gain access to the recovery room, have a body cast made (actually a plaster mock of one ), execute the shoot and spending the better part of a day using Photoshop to put the whole thing together (the visible patient parts-nose, eyes-fingers etc. are actually mine) and clean up the recovery room. But in this case there doesn't seem to be any traction (pun intended).

Hope Springs Eternal
So far, in the last six months, since the image went online with Getty as a Rights Managed stock photo, I have raked in a pretty disappointing $136.00. That is about one tenth what I anticipated the earnings would be in this time frame. Of course, tomorrow there could be a $10,000.00 sale (hope springs eternal) and it would indeed be a best seller. Particularly with RM images, you never know when your going to either get that one big sale, or some small shift will happen in the collective conscious and suddenly a non-seller will generate some serious revenue. I have experienced many occurrences of images that have a pathetic sales history for several years then suddenly bring in thousands of dollars. 


Hedging Your Bets
Of course, even though I was, and still am convinced, that this image is/will be a best seller, I hedged my bet by shooting various other images to go along with it. From an elephant in the recovery room to wheel chairs to a bare-assed patient wondering down the hall, this shoot is returning revenue at a sufficient rate that, even low by many stock standards, still outpaces the stock market by a considerable margin!

Make A Decision and Get On With It
I have also had my share of images that sell well from the beginning, even though I had doubts that they would be worth submitting. Stock photography is a great business for second-guessing yourself for everything from choosing the right model to making an image to begin with, to what business model to submit it to. I do know that the un-made images and the un-submitted images both tend to generate very little income (duh) and that therefore the most important thing to do is to make the decision and get on with it.  Now I am I'm off to make an image!