P#4 Q6: What Are The Secrets To Making Money Selling Stock Photography?
Using keywords -- and having a thick skin -- for success in stock photography
Successful stock photographers must have some secrets that set them head and shoulders above the rest of us. Selling stock photography isn't easy, as Scott Stulberg has pointed out.
I asked Scott how he became successful. He was generous enough to share his secrets.
Hard work and fearlessness are critical ingredients for successful stock photography
Scott Stulberg: Secrets -- I would say work all the time. I don't know if that's a secret but that is really the key. If you want to be a stock shooter, you're going to have to work all the time.
The other thing is you're going to need a thick skin because I cannot tell you how many times I was rejected by agencies -- it seemed like for years. I wanted to be a stock photographer for years.
I kept thinking, "This is what I want to do; this is what I want to do." I kept getting rejections. You know, you get tired of either not hearing back from the company or, "Sorry, at this time, we're not..."
Just what Nike says, "Just do it." Keep trying again and again. Resubmit to the same agencies, with new shots. Look for new agencies. Do whatever you can but work your butt off. Study everything, get every kind of magazine you can.
I get all the magazines. I look at everything, and I see ideas and I learn everything from Photoshop to all kinds of night photography.
The other secret is never stop learning.
Take classes, buy magazines, buy books. I sit in the bookstores on my tochis (that's behind in Yiddish), reading all the time and getting great ideas. I bring a pen and paper and write down ideas.
It's work, work, work, Audri.
Another big part, along with the pain in the tochis of getting model releases and minor releases and property releases -- you don't know what it's like traveling with all of these releases and keeping track who signed what and which model was what photograph -- is keywording the images when you get home.
Not only do you have to edit all your images and see which ones are the best ones and then work on them, get them all organized, number them all, etc., but many of the agencies -- except for the top agencies that do it for you -- require keywording.
That means you have to put in exactly what I was talking about -- "women, beach, child." Then you have to think of other keywords that are going to help people when they are looking to buy an image like yours.
I have a list of the top 500 words that Getty is looking for. There's "domestic life, disaster, disbelief, dieting, development, conservation, conscience, deadline, danger, curiosity."
All these words that you put in that a client might be typing in because he's looking for an image that has to with beauty, arrival, architecture, anxiety, and all these different things.
You have to think of all of these yourself for each particular image and put these keywords in with your image -- in the meta data in Photoshop usually, or some other way, like in an Excel document -- and then send it off with your image.
It is a lot of work that it drives us all crazy, but that's another thing about stock photography -- keywording.
The two words we hate in stock photography are "releases" and "keywording." Welcome to the world of stock photography. :-)
In conclusion
The biggest secret to selling stock photography is to work constantly. Expect rejection but don't let it deter you. Learn to use keywords well to make sure your stock photography suits the agency's needs, and always get your model releases.
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