Microstock How To

I decided to write this to save some other photographers the pain of trying to piece together all the different facets of microstock. The are several little tricks that save a lot of time and effort, most of which I didn't learn until after mistakes were made. For anyone that is interested about microstock and wants to learn how their pictures can make money for them (maybe paying for some equipment here and there), then this is for you. Microstock is an easy way to earn money, but fairly difficult to earn lots of cash. Stock photography is a great way to easily earn money for camera gear and help make a hobby pay for itself, but if you want to earn the type of revenue that will allow you to quit your day job, then be prepared to treat it like a business and really work at it.

Buying and Selling Microstock

Designers, advertisers, etc need images and photographers like to sell them. Microstock provides an interface to make both sides happy. Often it is much too expensive and time consuming for designers to hire a photographer to get the picture they want. Instead they go to microstock sites where they can search for and download the images they need. Photographers upload their images to various microstock sites (more detail on these below), where they get reviewed and approved or rejected. Approved photos are then put online where designers can buy them. The entire process is free for the photographer and once the photos are online, they will sit there waiting for buyers to continue to buy them, until you decide to remove them. When a designer decides to buy one of your stock images you are paid a commission, usually 30 to 50 percent of the cost. This may not seem like much, specially when images typically sell for less than 10 dollars, but it is all about volume. Good pictures can sell many times over and sometimes thousands of times. The other nice thing is that even when you stop uploading pictures, ones that have already been uploaded can continue to make money.

IPTC Info and Keywording

IPTC is information that is saved as part of the image file itself. This is a must if you are going to upload to more than one site, which I highly recommend. Adobe photoshop has a feature under the file menu called "file info," which lets you enter and edit IPTC info. There is free software out there like PixVue and IrfanView that also let you enter the IPTC data. There are three things that I enter in: title, descritpion, and keywords. Then what happens is when you upload the file to each microstock site this information transfers over as well (saves lots of typing and/or copy and paste). Don't slack on your keywords. I feel they are very important, because this is nearly the only way for buyers to find your images. I first enter all the keywords I can think of and then go on a microstock site and lookup a similar type of image. See if they used any keywords that fit your image. Don't just copy others keywords, I have found that if I think up my own first, I get some that others missed.

File Preperation

Just a few quick tips to check before uploading images. Use some kind of image editing software on zoom in to 100%, scan over the entire image looking for dead pixels, dust spots, logos, trademarks, etc. Fix any of these you find. Look for image noise and if you find any use software like Noise Ninja to remove it. I use a program called Bibble to convert my RAW images to jpeg, which includes a version of Noise Ninja. Also check for any recognizeable faces, because these will require that you have a signed model release (these can be downloaded from each stock site or I downloaded one from Istock removed the logo and the part about Canada). I have had no problems using this release at all 7 microstock sites I upload to.

Upload Methods

Each site offers a variety of upload methods, the main ones being FTP and a web based form. I highly recommend downloading a free FTP program like FileZilla, Core FTP LE, or CoffeeCup. All of which can be found at Download.com. By using FTP you can set it to upload a big batch of images and then leave your computer. When you come back you can upload to the next site and so on until done. Then go in and put your images into categories on each site. Istockphoto doesn't offer FTP so you use there one image at a time upload process.

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