Approval ratio
Your approval ratio is an indicator of the quality of the images you upload. Basically it is the ratio of your accepted images and the total amount of images you tried to upload.
Let's illustrate this with an example: if you uploaded 100 images and 70 were accepted and 30 were rejected then your approval ratio will be 70% (70/100).
The approval ratio is important because the microstock site will use it to distinguish between "good" and "bad" photographers. Bad photographers cost the site a lot of time without generating revenue because someone will have to review your images and reject them. Sites prefer to get good images as the time to review is shorter and more importantly, the image migh generate some revenue once accepted.
Therefore microstock sites will encourage you to upload good images by punishing in some way a low approval ratio. They will do that by lowering the amount of images you can upload daily and by placing your images at the end of the search results. Especially this last measure is important as you will get less exposure and therefore... less sales.
So be careful with what you upload. Learn from other stock photographers, browse through successful portfolios and learn from your own mistakes. When a photo gets rejected, don't grumble but analyse why the images has been rejected: bad lighting, non stock-oriented subject, dull colors or technical problems such as noise and chromatic aberration . Try to pay attention to those problems and try not to repeat them.
A lot of new microstockers burn themselves in the first months... they upload every kind of subject and often get a lot of rejected images. That's normal and as stock photography is a learning process, I believe it's good and unavoidable. Like I said, one has to learn from his own mistakes. This implies making them in the first place.
However, you can avoid getting multiple and useless rejections of the same subject by not uploading all the images you have of a same subject at once. If you have 15 images of the same building taken on the same day, upload one or two and see what the site reviewers think of it. You will soon find out whether it is worth uploading some more of them or whether it's better to stop.
Niche / Specialize
In order to be successful in microstock it's essential to create a some kind of brand. So it's a good idea to specialize yourself in a particular type of subject, if possible you should try to identify a niche that suits you well. Specializing and finding a particular subject which is not yet well covered will contribute to your success.
Working on a specific niche will gain you visibility because you will be one of the few contributors selling that kind of image, specializing will make the buyers understand that they can rely on you to continue to provide them with the images they want. They will return to have a look at your portfolio when they need that kind of image or just to see what's new.
You could concentrate on travel photography, on food photography, on business or lifestyle images, on children or other types of photography.
Choosing a specialization does not have to be boring, for example if you decide to concentrate on food images, you will not be obliged to shoot 100.000 photos of pizzas or steaks. There are so many ways of shooting food and what comes with it: thousands of different dishes, people eating and drinking, ingredients, cooking, buying food,... It's all up to you and your creativity. And of course, don't limit yourself to your specialisation, there's plenty of room for other kinds of images, as long as you make it clear to the buyer that you are good at providing "those" images.
Limited Budget
Are you dreaming of getting a big studio, a lot of expensive material and a set filled with well chosen props to make those great shots that will make your fortune? Or do you think about traveling all around the world taking great travel photos of famous landmarks and landscapes to sell them on microstock sites?
Well, forget about it. As the total earnings per single image are usually quite low (sales often go from less than a dollar to a few dollars) you have to think carefully about your budget. Or better, you have to think that you do not have a budget at all.
Take advantage of objects you already have or that you can borrow from friends or relatives, ask the same relatives or friends to be your models (explaining carefully that you do not know how their photos will be used by the buyers), don't go travelling especially to shoot those travel photos but when you do go travelling (you do take holidays, don't you) don't stop shooting even for an instant. Choose your holiday destinations carefully, some sell better than others.
We talked about finding a niche in order to be more successful. Identify that niche taking into account the budget. If you live in a famous and touristic place, you might consider specializing in that. If your wife is a medic, why not make health care your subject. If you're a cook, what about photographing those wonderful dishes you prepare.
The important thing is: don't spend more than you can earn!
Photographic equipment
Ok, so you don't have a budget. Nevertheless you will need to make a small but necessary investment: a camera. How else will you be able to shoot the images you want to put on the microstock sites.
So what to buy? The best kind of camera would be a DSLR camera (Digital Singe-Lens Reflex) but it's not a prerequisite. There are some photographers who take images with point-and-shoot cameras and sell well. Of course not any point-and-shoot would do, you need to get a decent one such as the Canon G10 or a Panasonic GF1. However, no point-and-shoot camera will be able to compete with a DSLR camera.
So let's talk about DSLRs. These cameras are available in a wide range of prices going from entry-level DSLRs (such as Canon 600D) to professional cameras (such as the Canon EOS-1D Mark IV). Fortunately, you do not need to buy a professional camera to do microstock photography. That's good news because prices are quite elevated, the EOS-1D Mark IV sells at around 5.000$ while the Canon 600D at around 800$. I think you can all calculate how many images you have to sell at less than a dollar each before paying back your EOS-1D.
The first thing to remember is that if you have a limited budget, even though it is important to have a good camera body (and the sensor that goes with it), it's better to invest in a decent lens than in the body. In the end, your lens quality will have a greater effect on the photo than the actual camera body. The lenses that are often sold in a kit together with the camera body are not really that good so you might consider buying the body seperately and invest in a good lens.
Before buying anything, get informed. Read reviews on the web (more than 1) and pay particular attention to quality issues such as noise levels and chromatic abberation. Having more megapixels isn't always important, quality is.
Commercial versus editorial photographs
Stock photography is often associated with smooth business images, that is very well setup studio shots of slick-looking individuals shaking hands or having meetings. Just have a look at the "Best Stock Photos" gallery on this site for some
examples. This, and many other kind of photos, would be what we call commercial photos.
There is another kind of photo which is quite different from the commercial photos mentioned above. Editorial photos are photos that are in some way newsworthy, just imagine them as the kind of image you would find in a newspaper or magazine to illustrate an article, without wanting to sell you anything but just simply to illustrate some fact. This means that editorial photos could contain almost anything: a politician, a hollywood celebrity, a number of chinese minority people, a product such as the iPhone, a company's offices including the company's logo and so on. Editorial photos were at first not accepted by microstock agencies but in the last few years they have been added to the market's offering.
Compared to commercial photos they cannot be post-processed that much. We're talking about newsworthy images which means they need to represent reality. Cropping images or changing the mood of the image in some way (eg. a cloudy day becomes sunny all of a sudden) can convey a totally different message and can distort reality. Therefore these interventions are usually not allowed by most stock agencies.
What's good about editorial photos is that you don't need to have model or property releases. In fact, the photo is not being used for commercial purposes and therefore getting releases is not an issue. This does not mean you can just shoot whatever you want, the limit is probably that any image you're submitting should be taken legally. This should not be a problem for
most people in most cases (unless you're breaking into Angelina Jolie's house to get an exclusive picture of her ironing Brad's shirts). Of course, the fact that the photo isn't used for commercial purposes somewhat lowers its sales potential. You probably shouldn't expect to get a bestseller editorial photo but exceptions exists, just imagine how many magazines have included iPhone images in their articles.
Editorial photos are a great option for those photographers who enjoy street photography, don't have a big budget and do not have a studio and a bunch of good-looking models to go with it. Just go out on the street and photograph what you think might be "newsworthy".
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