Assessing Your Portfolio
The diverse directions your photography jaunts have taken and the change in editing styles, stored images and file management techniques all contribute to the general condition of your entire photo image portfolio collection. Finding an assessment value for the portfolio can allow a photographer to assess progress toward returning value on a micro stock career. (The above image could be for home & garden market website, perhaps worth $5-$15).
Many photographers may have an allergy to spreadsheets tabulate value. But spreadsheeting formulas assess how much value in a given entity is valuable. List the file categories and numbers of image files and names of the files if you have them. If you have expended money on a camera or hosting plans or websites or batteries and memory storage.
Many images you have in each directory For every finished ready-to-vend image online and ready to be sold, a value should be assigned. Be conservative in your estimations and base them on similar sale prices. Use the same spreadsheet saved under different filenames and generate different portfolio values. This is an excellent way to project goals for earnings of microstock images creating value.
By projecting a financial picture associated with the microstock effort expended the photographer can review their productivity across markets. If you haven’t image files in certain markets shop the websites from the customer site and derive the net value to the photographer. These assessments can form new microstock goals. Perhaps pricing needs to come up for your images in certain markets.
Now, look at the next twelve months. If you feel that is too ambitious, look at quarters of the year or a six month plan. The business plan projection should veer towards experience with profits and return on value. Action toward the business plan should work to generate value in parts of the spreadsheet that are lacking, zero based, or indicative of other profits if the efforts were repeated or extended.
The areas which show a history of profit making microstock images need extra attention. the new areas and developing topics like green images, sustainable living, home design and pets, alternative energy and international generic markets may need fleshing out with sets of new images.
Make sure you have at least some images in every category. If you don’t, then those are the areas your photography jaunts and image editing efforts need to pursue. Make plans to capture these images. Hunt down online advice and techniques to groom these photo takes toward image polishing for these markets.
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