With a minimum effort – basically the result of trying out new lighting schemes on myself – I ended up with about a 50 different images of myself. Combining them into different conceptual groupings, all related to business methodologies, a vast series, quadrupling the number of shots needed, erected. This series [...]]]>

Reading time: < 1 minute

With a minimum effort – basically the result of trying out new lighting schemes on myself – I ended up with about a 50 different images of myself. Combining them into different conceptual groupings, all related to business methodologies, a vast series, quadrupling the number of shots needed, erected. This series even won me an iPod in the Dreamstime Engineering competition.

[View with PicLens]

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Thinking about the business methodologies and concepts, there is plenty of room to expand….:)

After only 5 months online as Wolf on Stock, a lot of things have happened, which resulted in a bit of downtime, to put it mildly. But, we're back!

36clicks is now fully dedicated to stock photography, separating the name from my other businesses, and I've reserved this domain for stock related [...]]]>

Reading time: < 1 minute

After only 5 months online as Wolf on Stock, a lot of things have happened, which resulted in a bit of downtime, to put it mildly. But, we're back!

36clicks is now fully dedicated to stock photography, separating the name from my other businesses, and I've reserved this domain for stock related issues only.

That's not all, folks! We also moved to a new provider, a new host, on a new server in a new datacenter. This also gave me the a nice photo-op, to extend the technological niches I tend to shoot. All photos are available through my agents.

[View with PicLens]

I’ve got quite a few topics in the pipeline, let’s see when I get around to actualy typing a few blurbs about them… :)

Following up on my previous post on finding your niche in (micro)stock, I’d like to draw your attention to a very useful tool in assessing if what you have in mind is a potential niche to be explored; picNiche

Also, there is an interesting article for comparison on mystockphoto worth checking [...]]]>

Reading time: 4 – 7 minutes

Following up on my previous post on finding your niche in (micro)stock, I’d like to draw your attention to a very useful tool in assessing if what you have in mind is a potential niche to be explored; picNiche

Also, there is an interesting article for comparison on mystockphoto worth checking out (and not just in respect to finding your niche!).

Thanks to Roberto Marinello and Bob Davies for re-drawing my attention to this subject!

PicNiche is a simple looking tool, but it’s far more elaborate than at first meets the eye. It works very straight forward: you can enter your primary keyword or set of keywords, and it renders a few useful, yet basic, statistics after pressing the submit (analyse) button.

It’ll show you how many images, matching the criteria you entered, were found, how many views those images have generated, as well as how many times the matching images were downloaded. Essentially, this information is key to assessing if you’ve found a niche or not, but picNiche does more.

In picNiches own words:

picNiche is an easy to use keyword search tool for assessing the supply and demand of online stock photography images from microstock sites.

You search for a keyword phrase such as ‘business man’ or ‘orange socks’ and the search system assesses the sales statistics (demand) for images found relating to that search, along with the competition (supply) for that phrase, and returns a rating indicating the likelihood of making a sale as a result of that keyword phrase on your image.

The system rates keywords on an open-ended scale, so performing multiple searches will provide you with the highest rated keywords, those most likely to make a sale.

Rating < 10 is BAD
Rating > 10 and < 50 is OK
Rating > 50 and < 100 is GOOD
Rating > 100 is a NICHE

Thoughts and observations on picNiche

I believe this is a very helpful added value of picNiche. Having toyed around with it a bit, its definitely something I’ll be using frequently to select and prepare my shoots.

However, as with all tools, the information provided should be handled with care, though. The information you get out of it is as reliable as the information you’ve put in. (BS in = BS out) To illustrate this:

As picNiche makes optimal use of User Generated Content, it is also very much reliant on how other users have keyworded their images, and we all know there’s a lot of spamming going around. The consequence of this, is that very specific keywords, or sets of keywords put together with quotation marks might render a lower niche rating than more generic terms. Going too generic in search phrases, however, will also reduce the niche rating.

Example:

In light of the presumed higher number of purchases generated with the words “water“, “treatment” or “plant “, this makes sense. However, neither water nor treatment or plant alone necessarily refers to a “blast furnace”, thus stretching the query beyond the researched niche.

Another thing to bear in mind, is that picNiche does not seem to incorporate the actual buyer’s search terms with which the image was found and purchased – in other words, it remains very important to use common sense and try to think from a buyers perspective when choosing the keywords. Then, there is the complicating factor of iStock’s controlled vocabulary and keyword culling policies, which could well affect the results negatively.

The keyword tool picNiche offers is great to get ideas, and to check if the set of keywords entered is complete. As stated on picNiche.com:

These keywords are suggestions ONLY, any which do not describe the content of YOUR image, will NOT help your sales, and may even harm them, please use only as a guide

Needless to say, a high niche-rating is no guarantees for high sales. In the end, it comes down to the quality, composition and styling of your images, and how well they are keyworded. The line of thought:

“Hmmm; According to picNiche, “courthouse” (953 images) only has a niche-rating of 40,92, but “courthouse” AND “judge” has a niche-rating of 266,5 (282 images), so let’s get that judge there!” remains a dangerous conclusion. Adding the word “felony” to the query will reduce the niche-rating to 210,00 (2 images), however, I’m inclined to believe that’s mostly due to the scarcity of images that include all of those keywords, rather than a reduced demand for such images.

Toolbars

Another killer feature of picNiche is the firefox toolbar Bob offers. Won’t go into details here, as I couldn’t possibly top the review on microstockdiaries.com

Conclusion

Eventhough I initially looked over the tremendous potential of picNiche, I believe it’s an oustanding tool to determine niches and possible sales potential, as it is the only tool I know of that combines demand and supply in one, measurable, factor. But this only applies if handled with care and a bit of thought. I sure hope Bob Davies will continue his work on these tools, and perhaps eventually do his superb work more justice by spending a bit of time in a more fitting presentation?

It’s splattered all over the various forums of microstock agents: If you want to be successful in stock, build a large portfolio. Aim for a versatile collection of images, as that ensures a wide spread interest from buyers, designers, and such, and thus realises sales and generates revenues. All very [...]]]>

Reading time: 10 – 16 minutes

It’s splattered all over the various forums of microstock agents: If you want to be successful in stock, build a large portfolio. Aim for a versatile collection of images, as that ensures a wide spread interest from buyers, designers, and such, and thus realises sales and generates revenues. All very well intended opinions, shared by the big names in microstock.

Outstanding! Now that’s something to aim for, then! Pick up that camera, and go shoot everything around you. If it moves – even better, right? – Wrong.

Five tips to build a porfolio that stands out, and can potentially make you some cash:

1. Do your searches. Start with popular themes, such as “business handshake”, which’ll generate a lot of hits of high selling images. I
2. Don’t copy what’s already popular unless you manage to find a new, refreshing, approach, targetting new prospective buyers
3. Go take a good look at the popular images. Forget what those images are about, but remember the style. you’ll notice a crispness and refreshing style, that sells
4. Try narrowing down the search query to a theme that complies with two rules: the subject of the photos is accessible to you, and there are only a handfull of images depicting that same theme. If you find a search that results in a few images with a lot of sales, then you’ve found a niche.
5. Expand that niche. What could images of that readily accessible subject be used for? How many angles of use can you identify? And how different would photos using that share the same theme look for different uses?

Let’s analyse the situation, and see where that advise originates. I’m all for a large portfolio, and will be the first to acknowledge, that size, in this case, does matter. The more photos you have in your portfolio, the higher chances are, they will be noticed by prospected buyers,who will then surf on to your portfolio for that one image they need for their project. But, to put it simple, if the storefront looks great, but the interior is a mess, or you end up in a pet store whilst being allergic to animals, you’re not in the right place, and you’ll find your way out in no-time, never to return. With a stock portfolio, it’s the same. If buyers don’t see what they’re looking for, they’re gone, and before you know it, your images will be tucked far away in the darkest realms of the search pages.

The big players in (micro)stock have collections of several 10’s of thousands of high quality photos. Most of them have been around since 2004 or 2005, and have learned the tricks of the trade. They have literally spent years in perfecting those tricks, and in assessing the efficiency in terms of generated revenues, by exploring new things. Remember, as microstock is only reaching maturity, in 2004, or even 2006, a lot of things were still new. Back then, it was presumably easier to figure out which images would sell, and which images won’t. And in due course, the themes that sell became apparent to a following crowd of microstock contributors, who started copying what once was hot. The top contributors now take a professional – and full time – approach to finding and exploiting hot themes, backed up by experience and a production mentality. That’s a tough proposition to compete with.

1. Do your searches

At any time, its important to know what’s hot and what’s not. It tells you what has sold a lot – note the past tense! Therefore, it’s also important to establish how long it took to generate so many downloads. And while you’re at it, browse through the contributors portfolio, to see what more he (or she) has to offer. This is all common sense, and generates proper competition intelligence, but also will stimulate your creativity by forming an opinion about the top selling images you see. It’s important not to try to copy those best selling images, as it’s a David versus Goliath proposition, where David (your imitated file) is bound to lose, and it’ll prevent you from developing your own style, brand and the fingerprint feel of your images by which clients might eventually recognise your portfolio.

Search for “business handshake”:

• on iStockphoto, you’ll find 3379 results.
• on Shutterstock, you’ll find 6895 results
• on Fotolia, you’ll find 5544 results

Considering the above agents have a collection of 2,000,000 to 6,000,000 photos those search results may not seem like a lot, and I’m sure you can come up with queries that result in far more images, but “business handshake” is already pretty precise, narrow it down to hands of businesspeople. I’m sure you’ll get my drift. (business alone generates 541,702 hits on shutterstock, for example)

2. Try to improve on what already has been done!

The key in such a search is to stimulate your own creativity – a trick that can be taught – Try to describe “the feel” of the images that appeal to you, and then think about how to achieve and perfect that feel in your own style. Also think about what you whould have done if it were you taking the photo,what you would’ve done differently, and try to guess the photographers motivation for his (or her) choice, resulting in the image you’re looking at. This is, as far as I’m concerned, the most important revelation of analysing top images, but a difficult one. If answering those questions result in a flow of new ideas and approaches, then there’s nothing stopping you form staging such a photo shoot. If you don’t, then pursuing other themes might be more advisable.

3. Analyse the general impact, feel and image quality of top sellers.

If you perform a similar search, as discussed above, you might notice something else: the clarity, vibrance and crispness – the general impact – of the images on the first pages makes even the thumbnail pop out from the screen. Browsing further back through the pages, images become sulkier, lacking contrast and thus also appeal. Try to describe “the feel” of the images that appeal to you, and then think about how to achieve and perfect that feel in your own style. This is, as far as I’m concerned, the most important revelation of analysing top images, and one I’m still struggling with. From experience, meticulous planning of a photo shoot plays a vital element in the quality of the final result.

4. Find your niche

By just looking at the astronomical number of sales of one of the top selling images, it might be tempting to try to achieve a similar type of image. However, I think you’ll find your chances improve by finding your niche. Although finding such a niche might be easier said than done, it is very well possible. If you apply the same types and techniques I described above to subjects and themes in your own personal sphere and surroundings, you are already half way there. Think which locations, what people, and which themes are easily accessible to you, and with which you feel at ease and confident. Explore the potential messages you could capture at such locations, and start planning a first shoot. Having knowlegde and experience in that area will definitely help to provide you with an a competitive edge. Then perform a few searches, using the prime keywords you would use to describe your idea. If you notice that those queries only result in a handful of decently selling images, then you might have found your niche.

Beautiful technology (ambiguous) as niche

As this might still sound a bit ambiguous, I’ll give you an example from my own experience. Being an industrial designer by education, I have worked for a large steel manufacturer for several years. This strengthened my passion for- and knowledge of technology, as well as sheer enormous structures. I decided to combine that competitive edge with my passion for night photography, motion, and long exposures. This resulted in what is now the top tier of my selling images, generating roughly 75% of the total revenues earned. My niche themes range from infrastructure (bridges, motorways, intersections, to logistics and construction. (off topic – Lookstat is a great tool to analyse the performance of individual images over time) The absolute sales figures are still far from impressive, but considering I’m only a small-time microstock shooter, I’d like to think those images have served me pretty well.

Good image, very little sales

The other end of the stick is also quite familiar to me. I have a huge collection of landscape and travel photos, which are lovely to look at, but with one or two exceptions, that collection stays well behind in sales, and quite frankly, most of them are still gathering digital dust on one of my hard drives.

5. Expanding your nice

After a first exploration of your newly discovered niche, get about 10 – 25 images online at your agents, and follow closely how they’re received. If you receive quite a few “abundant category” rejection, then it’s best to get back to the drawing board. On the other hand, if – depending on the agency – your images start selling almost immediately, are added to lightboxes or receive special recognition(initial ratings, editor’s choice), then you might be on to something.

Expanding the niche in transportation

The next step is to carefully examine the performance of individual images from that series. Try to determine what messages and concepts seem to be favoured by the prospected clients. Then start diverging to both improving the general appeal of that message, as well as to think of other potential markets with the same theme.

Friendly industry: pure steam (water)

Using my technology series as example, one could easily think of themes such as global warming, environmental damage and pollution as possible uses. Yet the reverse concept – illustrating heavy industry in a positive and more friendly concept – is also a valid – more positive – aspects to cover. Then, there are various other another angles that could covered: the current economic situation, triggering the decline of production, the hassle of commuting through heavy traffic by car in urban regions, or introducing the human element in the above mentioned examples to illustrate either the downside of automation, or the positive side of quality control. If executed properly, capturing these different themes will result in different images, thus creating a versatile collection of images, all derived from the same basic niche.

Disclaimer:

• These tips are derived from my personal experiences, and may or may not work for everybody.
• The steps described can be applied and will have a positive effect, but there are other ways, too, which might even work better.
• I’m still refining the process of finding a niche and exploiting it.

If you have any thoughts on his please share them by leaving a comment!