Taking Stock of Your Stock
I can remember a meeting of photogs about 15 years ago where some “Stock” guru was telling all of us in the room that his trays of couples strolling the beaches and kids with ice cream cones would carry him through retirement. Stock was the saving grace of the commercial photographer.
Yeah. Right.
Recently I needed a stock image of a couple on the beach in wedding clothes. It was a small filler image and I got it at iStockPhoto for $2. And I actually could have gotten it free at a couple of other Free Royalty Free Stock sites. But the one I purchased was very nice, so I sprung the $2.
(So what is the point of this…? – ed.) Hold on, there is a point. Generic images of couples on the beach probably can’t bring much into the old coffers. But clever, niche category photos are in high demand. And they aren’t well represented on the free / nearly free sites.
Look through your files. Are there images there that are one-of-a-kind? Do they serve as a niche, or concept image? Could you Photoshop the ever-lovin –beejeesus out of them and create new art? Celebrities, cute kids in black and white?
Fact is there is still a robust market out there for stock images, and you should be selling your images for serious dollars. I am not pitching the big stock houses here… I am talking about your images on your own stock site. And I am not talking Royalty Free either… real traditional stock licensing where you interact with the buyer and create a customer instead of a sale.
Sell Your Stock (DAP5)
Create a set of portfolios on your site with categories and galleries. Create interesting names for the image sets and add the link to your home page. (OK… the PHOTOtool, of which I am an owner, makes this very, very easy. And the collaboration for the buyer/seller is awesome. There are other solutions, but they are not going to be discussed in specifics cause I like our tool best. Look ‘em up, they are out there.)
Tell everyone you know about your new stock. Price it accordingly (remember, you aren’t getting 40% anymore, so your prices can be competitive as hell and still provide a good fee), and then watch your stats for interest in your images. When you see a campaign that uses images similar to yours, market to them and tell them about your modest, but highly creative offering.
You aren’t going to be able to be as unattached as you would be with a traditional agency – send the images in and let them do the rest – you are going to have to involved in the marketing of the images. Come up with innovative ideas for getting your images out there. Make a few desktop backgrounds for downloading, give a couple of images away, set up an image auction, combine your stock with assignment work, offer a deep discount to non-profits, contribute a percentage to charity… GET PRESS!
I recently viewed a photographer’s work and was blown away by the sheer volume of black and white rodeo pictures he had. He even had lots of releases with them. I asked if he was selling them and he told me “no, don’t know how.” I met with him, set him up on a plan and sent him out to do his scanning and uploading. It is painful when I meet someone who tells me they are too computer illiterate to do what they need to do. I don’t accept that, it is too easy to learn. Gotta get committed to success.
A good way to drive visitors to your site would be to become involved in some of the free or nearly free sites. Go ahead and place 50 or 100 images at iStockPhoto. If they are good, they will sell like hotcakes… and the people who are looking to buy that type of work will come visit your site and maybe let go of some more money for even better images.
Look for trends and try to feed them, or even get ahead of them a bit. Lifestyle shooter? You better be shooting lots of ethnic folks in urban settings, and make sure you have lots of regular looking folks, even some overweight and older folks. That’s a trend… so is working at home, technology, mobile technology, families in crisis, teens in turmoil, kids having fun at home, home schooling… you get the idea. Research the trends in advertising and get images to fit.
Get the images out of the boxes, or off the old drives and make some money from them. One photographer told me he didn’t want to try to compete with Getty, and couldn’t handle that kind of volume. I told him he didn’t have to worry about that, as he would never even come close to that kind of traffic or sales. But selling 1 or 2 or 5 images a month would be a substantial increase in his bottom line.
I hope you agree and get your stock on line and in front of buyers.
Tomorrow: Fine Art Portfolios and Prints
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Web Design Options (DAP4)
Flickr… more than just a photoblog. (DAP3)
Show More Pictures (DAP2)
Be Found on the Search Engines. (DAP 1)
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