Microstock and Stock – Nuances and Observations

Over the last week I have been updating my microstock libraries and stock photography, and thought I would share a couple of interesting observations and nuances I have come across in the process.

Microstock Newsletter

I have been a subscriber to Lee Torens newsletter from Microstock Diaries for a  few months, and there is quite a bit of useful information when you dig around the site. I find the regular updates on how Lee’s stock is selling across different sites interesting.

Tracking spreadsheet

I was getting a bit confused over which images I had submitted as the number of images built up, and found it useful to build a excel spreadsheet to keep track of it. (I looked for a field in Lightroom that could help with this, but could not find anything.)

Some stock sites delete images if they have been rejected, so it is hard to determine what has not been submitted or rejected. In the spreadsheet, I can track what has been submitted, accepted, and rejected.

I also have a couple of columns where I can record images statistics from sites such as flickr. This helps give me an idea of what images are popular.

Image Rejection

I can also record the reason for each image rejection in the spreadsheet. Over time this gives you a picture of trends as to what sort of images a particular stock agency is interested in. (e.g some agencies do not like the film grain in my high resolution slide scans, but others like the scans for their large size.)

Each stock agency is trying to cater to particular customers requirements, and an image that fulfills the requirements on one site will not necessarily fulfill the requirements of another.  The classic rejection comments are “not aesthetically acceptable” or “no business value”. In other words, there is technically nothing wrong, but they just don’t like your image. Unfortunately, this can also be down to the individual reviewer (…reminds me of English literature at school).

I try not to get too stressed over such comments because I know the image in question is selling on another site….

Submission Notification

Some stock sites send you an email notification when images have been processed with details of acceptance or rejection, and some sites do not. For those that do not send notification, the spreadsheet becomes more important. Reviewing it regularly will remind you to check the status of submitted images.

FTP Upload

Most major sites allow you to upload images by FTP. If you have several images to upload, using FTP can make the workflow a bit smoother than uploading one image at a time.

Keywording

Keywords are really important in stock photography if you want people to find your images. Each stock agency seems to have their own approach to keywording formats.

• Some sites allow multi-word keywords in commas: – e.g  reef, coral reef, fish
• Some sites do not use commas and allow multi-keywords in exclamation marks:- eg. reef  “coral reef” fish
• Some sites only allow single words, taking multi-word keywords  and stripping them down and delete duplicates: – eg. reef, coral, fish

There are also differences between sites for minimum numbers of keywords. Some sites require a minimum of 5 keywords, some 7 and some 10. Naturally the more accurate keywords you can use to describe a picture the more chance it has of being found.

Unfortunately there is no way around this, and you just have to deal with each sites requirements.

Conclusion

In these days where every dollars counts, it is worth keeping track of each submitted image, and treating your stock submissions as the business that they are. Attention to detail is important.

I hope these tips have been helpful. Let me know if you have any others…..