August 28 2009

Things have changed. I have over 1,000 photos taken with stock in mind. Many of them are not good photos at all, some are downright embarrassing, but they provided practice and experience and I have improved, though I have a very long way to go. You will find you need a lot of practice. It's much harder than I imagined to become good with a camera and lights.

I have 313 approved photos online at iStockphoto.com. I was wrong about their exclusive program. They need you to have SOLD 250 photos from their site before you can go exclusive. I have 195 today. Since they only allow 15 uploads per week and they usually reject something it takes a long time to get a lot of photos online there. But they do more with less. I can see now that when I finally have 1,000 photos up at iStockphoto.com I will probably do fairly well there depending on my ability to take photos that sell. I earn as little as $.19 per photo on their site, but usually I get $.65 to $1.50 or more depending on the size of the photo. I have made 185 sales at Dreamstime.com and they pay a little more than iStock photo.com, or at least it seems that way to me. I have 688 photos online at Dreamstime.com. Shutterstock.com made some changes to the way they sell photos and my income from them has dropped dramatically, but they still do more for me than any other site. I have 871 photos for sale there and have sold 2379 photos there. I have earned $1075.55 at shutterstock.com so far. After you earn $500 they pay $.33 per photo rather than $.25. They also sell enhanced downloads that can earn you more per photo. I have earned about $150.00 at Dreamstime total and $203 at iStockphoto.com. So obviously I have not been profiting from stock photography, at least not yet. I am looking forward to my first payout from Fotolia.com. I have 665 photos there and have sold 121. I'm also at Stockexpert and just got started with 123RF.com. And I'm considering becoming exclusive with one of these sites (iStockphoto or Dreamstime if they offer that option in the future) because it's very time consuming and boring to be uploading to 6 sites. You learn nothing about photography while sitting in front of your computer downloading photos.

Is this discouraging news? I hope not, but I'll be honest, sometimes I feel discouraged. But I enjoy photography, I'm learning, and I believe it will all begin to pay off sometime soon. August has been a slow month for photo sales, so I'm looking forward to September. I need to have 687 more photos online at iStockphoto.com in order to reach a goal my friend told me would lead to better sales there, having 1,000 photos online. That will take another year unless I go exclusive in which case I would be allowed to upload 50 photos per week. Would that be worth it? I think it might. It depends on where shutterstock goes when it comes to sales. Lately they are down dramatically there, but partly that's my fault for taking so many not so great photos. We'll see.

I just ordered a new lens which will allow me to take better photos and a variety of photo styles that I couldn't achieve with the 18-200 lens I've been using for all my product type isolation photos. The 18-200 is versatile, but it's soft and soft doesn't work in stock photography. The new lens is the Nikkor 105mm micro. I bought it at Amazon, but it's coming from J&R Music, so wish me well! The lens cost just under $900. I also need another light and I will be buying filters and gels and other light modifiers that I don't know how to use. I am learning by doing and that's working out okay for me.