Pursuing New Business
So, you have a digital photo gallery of great optimized photo files with enhancements and adequate resolutions per the microstock standards. You’ve monitored your statistics on image views. You’ve optimized your keywords. The feedback from multiple low cost legal image portals is less than enthusiastic and your passion for the microstock hobby may be waning.
But your product isn’t moving. You’ve read the FAQs and you’ve worked through your image submission issues. What are your online options? It depends on how motivated you are to get the ball rolling. If you are looking to see a quantifiable monetary return, factor in the monthly or annual cost of a web hosting plan. You can bypass the overly choosy microstock sites and vend direct. You can have a store or use Ebay to vend images.
If you have invested palpable resources and currency in a camera and a series of walkabout aimed at compiling a marketable image file portfolio, it may be time to change your game up. Assess what kind of results you want to see. Do you want to win awards and craft a resume that wins commissions? Or do you want to specialize in contracting photography jobs suited to your work temperament and photographic talent?
Internet Marketing for Microstock Photographers involved some strategic thinking and a specialized approach to YOUR individual talents and skills. Don’t follow the model from someone else’s career. Use what works for you. If you package your file sets and feature your images correctly you can lasso some private microstock clients in no time.
Be prepared to deal with the fact that your favorite subject or most commonly photographed scenes or compositions might not be the most in demand for the microstock image market. it comes as a surprise to many photographers that some styles and genre and themes they are very efficient at producing are not as competitive as others they merely churn out.
I advise working from two strengths. Determine your best pictures (in your opinion) and your best pictures (in the opinions of others). Obviously the intersecting tangents of these two groups should be promoted most of all. Ruthlessly pare down the series of images to the very choicest ones you have. About a half dozen per category is best.
Size an array of pictures from these files and layer a transparent image over the top so they can’t be saved & stolen online. Using your own photo gallery site to vend image files has advantages. You can operate with your own discretion using keywords, and you can put in typos. Then start registering at those online forums and discussion boards and start marketing to potential clients.
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