hello everybody hi. Welcome back today we're going to do a deep dive into micro
stock so yeah let's go!
so what is microstock? So micro stock is basically where you put all of your images on the Internet and other people buy licenses
to use them in their own thing. So that could be like a graphic designer like me
in my other day job and I could go and get an image, say, for example, from
Shutterstock and they could go ahead and use those images for a graphic design
projects like a flyer or a poster or a social media post for example and they
don't have to go out and get their own content, as in they don't have to go and
take their own content, because they can use your content so that's essentially
microstock. I'm going to talk to you today about five truths of micro stock
photography and there are a lot more than five but this will hopefully
give you a bit of a background and tips on how to manage your portfolio and if
you're looking into micro stock as a way to make money this will hopefully help
you to see whether it's for you, I hope, so anyway so let's just jump straight in
there so number one on the home truths that is that quality is absolute key a
lot of photography that you see especially on social media would not
pass micro stock portfolio guidelines so all of the different stock sites so like
the five, the big five that I'm on, Shutterstock, Alamy, Getty, iStock and
Adobe Stock - all of those have got quite stringent quality guidelines that you
have to meet so technically the quality of your shot has to be solid you can't
have like a noisy shot you can't have a shot that is out of focus you can't have
chromatic aberration, blown highlights, lost shadows
you know you can't be wrong you have to be right technically every single time
also leaving copy space at the side of the images does work well you want to be
doing that a lot so a copy space for example is like the space here so
you could put text here or this similar to this side again I'm going to show you
an example right now
so once you've got your technical skills on point obviously you then want to submit
to different stock sites some of them work better for different types of
images a lot of its going to be trial and error - Alamy for me not really a
great place to be Shutterstock every single time and the others they work well
and they top up that little bit of pocket money that I get every month so
next thing tip two is a big portfolio is a must so if you only have ten pictures
that are stock worthy you can 100% go ahead and upload them but
realistically you're not going to be seeing the return so the bigger the
portfolio the better I'm going to take you on a little walk through my
portfolio in just a second but the size is really important so if you have over
a thousand images that you can put out there for license then that's going to
really help you to boost your monthly income. The size of your portfolio is not
the most important thing it's very important to have a large portfolio but
it's not THE most important thing because coming up in number three, you do
not need to stick to a specific niche so this kind of goes against everything
that you know as a photographer where, you know, you should follow and you focus
on a niche, or a "nitch" if you're in America, sorry, if you focus on one niche
that's fine but for stock it's not important, people find your images in the
search results so it's kind of like Google but for pictures - yeah Google but
for pictures so people put in their keywords of what type of image they want
to get and then the images come up in the bottom now if your portfolio has
everything in it as in every genre of photography going then that's not going
to be a problem because you're not going to show up on all of the searches for
all of your images in all of your niches...
mind blown. So yeah... *unknown* niche
if you want to *unknown* niche *unknown* *unknown* *unknown*... If you want to CROSS niches
that's not a problem at all in fact on my portfolio yes it is vast majority of
it is dogs that's just going to be the truth but it's not just dogs so there is
some people and there is some other animals on there and some
still life stuff on there - one thing with people you're gonna need a model release
but just follow the guidelines on your stock portfolio management site.
Tip number four which is kind of a home truth really is that one or two images
are going to completely carry your whole portfolio so I have one top earner which
is head and shoulders above the rest of all of my other images within my
portfolio I do have a couple that are chasing up the you know the back end of
that and trying to rival that one particular image. Now I wouldn't have
personally picked this image to be my most successful it's just you know what
happens I'm gonna show you that image now on my portfolio so I'm just gonna
switch to the Mac...
Now my most popular image is this one over here it carries
the whole portfolio as I've mentioned there are some others this one I don't
I don't know if I'm gonna be able to find it... another one that kind of looks
like that, those guys do do really well, but just as an idea of where this
picture over here has been used I did a reverse image search and you can
find where your images are being used so it's been used here
apparently it's on this page although oh hang on
it's also there...
It's on Huffpost...
I don't know I've managed to get to there... there it is
it's on Huffpost, so this one was purchased through Getty, it apparently
been used as a "dog mural". I don't like the use of this, it did come up as being on
this, it will be somewhere within those 40 pages, we're not gonna go through them
it is over here, they also pop up on Facebook now and again, in fact a lot of them do
so we're on Purina Dog Chow, not UK, and it
is being used here.
458 stock images up and I've made... I think the takings from
Shutterstock alone, about $6500, over $4000
of that is this one picture, just just that one picture which we will
edit again soon from its original raw file. I'm keen to get that done, I've got
it ready if we're on Shutterstock, and you type in "happy dog" we've got this
image here, this is is also one of mine - so that's Piper again - I think we should
have some more, so we've got Ozz over here, this is one of mine as well. Nice
yellow backgrounds popping up! So I've got three images on that first page, probably
some more, ah I'm going too fast.. It's not impossible to make money just I
wouldn't put all your eggs in this basket - it's great for extra pocket money
I think that's probably the best way to put it, it's really good for
extra pocket money! Finally thanks for watching to this point, tip number five
is that you cannot, you will not, you will never be able to police your images from
stock sites so this is really important to note because if you're a bit of a
control freak...
Like me. Then you're gonna probably want to look at who's using
your images where they're being used and then in my case, personally I don't
know if anyone else is the same, you do sometimes wonder have you paid for this
picture - like have you licensed this properly - is that really the right
license for this usage? For example a New York Times bestseller front cover - I
haven't got any premium licenses out for that particular image so I know that
something's not quite right there, but finding the buyer of that is impossible
even the stock site finding the buyer of that is next to impossible so you just
need to get over it. I mean I'm really sorry to say it like that, but you do
just have to get over it. Deal with it...
yeah so that's it guys
asked their five top tips to microstock if you
have any questions about microstock please drop them in the comments below. I will
read every single one, and if there are a number of different requests for certain
answers to questions, or tips or tricks, I will make a whole separate video on that
specifically, because I think it's really important. If you've liked what you've
seen today please please please please please subscribe to my channel I would
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give it a comment. Enjoy your weeks, take great photos, and I will see you soon!