April was an interesting month in my Journey into stock.

My big selling agency was still Shutter Stock. but it didn’t perform as well as last month, or even January. I had less income at all sites, though my portfolio is so small that I can really read anything into the stats.

I stopped uploading to a lot of sites in April, and slowed my input to Shutter Stock.  This was because I was spending my time and effort to get my own Micro Stock site up and running.

Stockimages.glennspecht.com

My own site is now open.  It is fully functional as a selling site, though there have not been any sales.  I have been tweaking to improve the look for viewers and search engines.  As well I am waiting for improvements in the Symbiostock Network.

Goals for May

Shutter Stock

I fell short of the number of images I have on Shutter stock, finishing the month with 235.  I need to increase my image output to feed the beast.  For Shutter stock I would like to add 50 more images minimum…. an outside goal would be to reach 300 on-line.

Istock

Istock has had a limit to 18 image submissions per week.  This slowed me down, and increased frustration levels.  That limit has been removed so I will start submitting more image.  I don’t have a goal, since I am un-sure of what they really will accept.

Other sites

I realize that I need to put some effort into submissions to these sites, but it is still a low priority.  no real goals except to improve my submissions.

stockimages.glennspecht.com

This site is still where I will put most of my effort, since I believe, it has the most chance of increasing sales and income.  I have branded the site as Editorial Travel Images, which means I can load and market a lot of my Tokyo images as well as the stock images I have on other sites.  My goal for May for this site is to load my Tokyo images.

April Chart.

I have made some changes. I have dropped keeping track of rejections, because at this point ir doesn’t matter to me.  What counts is numbers accepted, and sales.

Teaching Photography

On Sunday April 21 2013 I will be instructing the Zamora Foto Club on portraits and natural light.
My purpose is to start to show them how to see the light, which is where, I believe, the true art of photography comes.

The meetings I have attended with the club has been very interesting.  They learn a bit of English, I learn much more Spanish ( I still really really suck) and we discuss my favourite topic, photography.

My plan for Sunday is to start talking about Lens and Camera settings, and then move to showing what to look for and how to get good results. There will be a few concepts that I might not be able to cover or explain, such as “pretty girl syndrome” but I hope to cover the basics at least.

I have been busy loading images onto my own royalty free stock image site ( part of the site you are ready this on now.) You can click and bookmark it here…Glenn Specht Stock Images.

Once I get images uploaded, I still have a lot of work to do.  I need to work on the categories of the images, and the titles and descriptions for SEO ( search engine optimization)

And in most things I have found in stock, the payout will be down the road…. if it comes.

It has been awhile since I updated how my introduction to stock is going.

What started as a project over Christmas has turned into a bit of an obsession.  My first websites to visit every morning are now the stock sites to see if I made any sales overnight.  I am happy with every .25 sale I get.

This is an interesting time to be entering micro-stock.  There is great turmoil with some of the bigger contributors moving away from iStock ( seen as being a sinking ship) to other agencies, as well as the launch of the new Stocksy site ( a co-op curated high-class microstock site founded by the original iStock owner).

This leaves new comers like me to try and get my images excepted and placed into the search while 1000s of other high-quality images are also being placed.

I am holding out OK at the main money site, Shutter Stock.  For March I averaged a down-load a day.

It looks like I am going to miss my goal of having 200 images on their site.  I am at 188, with 14 waiting for review.  Even if I get a 50% accepted it still wont make it.  With the set I uploaded ( Rainbow bridge in Tokyo) I think it will be all or none…with none being the likely outcome.

Below is my chart.  I have not kept the submissions up to date, but the sales and income side are accurate.  I am not at the point where it is steady income yet.

As of Feb 09 2013

I am slowly learning how this market works.

As you can see from the chart my big earner is Shutter Stock.  Comparing my stats to the “normal” stats you can find online I am avaerage.  I get about 80% of my income from Shutter Stock.

I have to decide if the other sites are worth the effort for my very small portfolio.

Using other peoples numbers I now realize that it is going to take some time to create a worthwhile portfolio, that will generate a steady pay.

As an example Shutter Stock has an average download of about 30%-35% per month.

with a portfolio of 1000 images that may get me a payout of $85 per month.

Right now I have less than 100 images accepted. At the rate I get accepted it may take me 12 to 15 months to reach the 1000 images.

My acceptance rate may be higher if I was shooting studio images but right now I don’t have access so……

I do need to improve my acceptance rates, and shoot more salable images.

My Goal for February is to have 100 images in Shutter Stock, my long term goal is 200 by the end of March.  The first should be doable the second…. we’ll see

Here are my latest numbers.

If you have been following along you will see that my acceptance rate is falling on a few sites.  I am trying to figure out who likes what and when.

You will also see a new column  RTI… for return per image… the amount I make averaged over all the images at that site.

As you can see, the best site for me, right now, is Shutter Stock.  You can also see it has one of the lowest acceptance rates.

I stock is next…but the mess that is happening at iStock right now makes me question as to my future there. I will post more on that in the near future.

This has been an interesting experience, and I think I will continue for a while… it is rather addictive.

On of the difficult things about Microstock is the level and talent of the reviewers.  It is difficult to say what will be accepted and what will be rejected.

On of my favourite Snow Monkey images was rejected on iStock… for bad lighiting.  The lighting is back lit and the expression on the monkeys face is great.  This was also one of the images I had submitted to get accepted at Shutter Stock.

The image was accepted at Shutter Stock.  It was also my first sale ( within 12 hours of being submitted.)

Being accepted at Shutter Stock, and starting to make ( small) sales I think I can say I am on my way.  Now comes the hard part…..

This is the carts of images and acceptence at different sites.

I made my first sale today…. 3 images at .25 a piece…. not a lot but it is a start. The sale came on Canstock, and the three images where rejected by a lot of other sites.

I have my work flow ironed out, so that I can submit about 10 images a day easily.  I find 10 is a good number due to limits on the internet bandwidth I have here.

The rate I am going I will have “cleaned” out my harddrives by the end of this week, or early next week.  This means I need to start shooting for stock if I want to keep up this pace.

Here is my acceptance ratio chart.  I still have to figure out what different sites want.