A guest post today from Mallard, a member of our awesome keywording team

Are your keywords legal?

When we talk about microstock photography some topics come to our minds immediately: equipment, subjects, models, creativity… We all know some photographers made really good money with already classical pictures: smiling woman holding a bottle of water while jogging, happy young man talking on the phone, perfect family walking outdoors or woman with shopping bags…

They might not seem spectacular but take a look at the objects! Do you see any brand on the bottle or can you recognize the design of the telephone? What about labels on their clothes?
What about keywords and descriptions? Can you find “Evian”, “Gucci”, “H&M”, “Levis”, “iPhone”, “Samsung”? If we’re talking about a successful photographer, I doubt it.

In order to make money from microstock, it’s important to understand the process is more than shooting great pictures. Keywords and captions are also important! If it’s true that good keywords make your pictures show up in front of the others’ it’s also true that wrong keywords can make great pictures be rejected at review. Or even worse, they can bring you a trial for using a protected trademark!

Not just a rejections problem

Usually pictures with brand names in captions or keywords are rejected from the start, unless the reviewer is sleepy. Maybe nobody will ever notice you put “iphone” as a keyword, but… why take the chance? Better safe than sorry.

So, under no circumstances are you allowed to use brand names as keywords or part of description. And even more, the biggest microstock agencies avoid now even the keyword “logo” itself!
Let’s see a short list of the most common mistakes regarding illegal keywords or descriptions: iphone, ipad, twitter, facebook, wifi, Bluetooth, martini, coke, coca-cola, rubik, lego and not only that… Avoid any popular brand name or image.

Many agencies provide a lot of useful information regarding legal requirements and they are also very supportive if you have questions. Even if it might seem a waste of time, reading and knowing all this information is what makes the difference between success and rejection.

Make sure your keywords (and your images) are not infringing on copyright or trademarks, check out these sites for more information:
The Getty Intellectual Property Wiki, Shutterstock’s huge restricted images list and their Trademark Rejection Reasons Post, Fotolia’s brief trademarks list and even a perspective from the outside asking Is Getty Guilty of Trademark Infringement?

Are you mindful of your keywords? Ever used any of the restricted words and been rejected for it? Or even not and had other troubles? Tell us.

Everything I’ve ever done has had one real goal… to help people save time. To help people focus on the things they do best. I did this for the large companies and clients I’ve worked directly with in the past, through process improvement, workflow development, and through the creation and introduction of tools to make that happen.

That’s fine, but why picWorkflow?

Why?

picWorkflow saves you time, lots and lots of time… and for the first time, I’m not alone in this…

How?

picWorkflow connects the good people who want to, and need to save time directly with people who know how to do this best. People who do this day-in day-out, and really are experts at what they do.

So, What?

What picWorkflow does is connect people, really really good people… with each other.
Why? Because I want to help you take back your time.

I think that’s something to be proud of, for you, for myself, and for the rest of the team stood beside me

Ask yourself this question…
Why do you do, what you do?

Just announced today the dates, speakers and programme for Microstock Expo 2013 in Berlin. I attended and spoke at Microstock Expo in 2011 (and will be doing both again this year) and it was freaking awesome.

I’m really looking forward to it again this year. I hope to see you and many other picWorkflow members there, and I’ll be available to anyone with questions to ask, issues to raise or anything else you might want to speak about. Come along and say hey

Use code PWF2013 for 20% off the standard ticket price.

What’s on the programme this year?

• Unique presentations from top authorities on increasing revenue and improving skills,
• Educational panel presentations from the best experts in the microstock marketplace,
• Masterclasses and portfolio reviews from luminaries in video, photo and illustration,
• A dynamic exhibit hall with some of the top vendors and service providers in our space.
• MEXPO Awards in 10 categories ranging from the serious to hilarious in stock,
• Plenty of time to make friends, reconnect with old ones and plan your professional future.

Early bird tickets are €249 + 19% VAT, until June 1st, when they increase to €299. The andel’s hotel offers a rate of €99, including breakfast and in-room Internet. Lunches are included with the conference passes.
The schedule, speakers and sessions will be regularly updated on MicrostockExpo.com as November draws closer.

The list shows the top 2000(ish) short-form searches (no more than 2 words) made by image-buyers on my various search tools, and the rank (i.e. relative popularity) of that search in my dataset of a somewhere near a million searches. The far-right column shows it’s comparison to the popularity of that word’s usage on stock images (collated from various agency’s over the years, across about a quarter million images).

This is essentially an epic update of my previous post from 2 years ago: TOP 1000 Stock Photo Buyer’s Searches – THE List, that post contains a lot more details about the data quality, relevance, demographics and more.

How to read the data?

A green entry suggests the search is more common than the keyword, a red entry suggests the keyword is more common than the search. It’s not bulletproof as I haven’t vetted the raw data too heavily, but it IS a good quick-reference to many of the most popular stock photo ideas and whether they’re under or over supplied.

What do you think?
Any gems in there for you?

Please feel free to share with others; published under Creative Commons (CC-BY) so you must state it’s by me if you republish it (or derivatives). Would be great if you can drop me a link-back to here or the homepage too

Traditionally The West has always been the major market for stock photography sales. Despite that success industry-wide growth has been limited in the west for several years.

Many stock photo agencies seek new markets outside their home territory, setting up a localization strategy, targeting their collections to specific languages and even moving their headquarters to try and connect better with foreign markets. It depends on their business and strategies, but Asia is a common place for their new home. Asia is so attractive because the economy (particularly in China) is continuously growing at a very fast pace across the continent, and there are enough people in Asia coming online to present a broad userbase to try new products and services.

What does it imply to you, the average microstocker? Seeing limited growth in sales to the American and European audience?

How about trying something a bit different?

As companies in all markets are increasingly eager to sell products in Asia, the volume of commercial media targeted to Asians is increasing hugely; and as a result the demand for Asian imagery grows with it. It does not mean that you must produce photos of Asian people, landscape, and objects immediately though you should consider it. The demand for local content is increasing in many Asian countries and many Asian creatives still use western-focused images to market to their customers. It’s ideal for you to expose your existing images to the current market and use the results of your sales to help research when/how you create Asia-targeted content for future production.

As the first microstock agency which focuses specifically on the needs of users in Asia-Pacific region Photokore provides a platform for talented artists like you to sell your images in one of the fastest growing regions in the world –Asia! Whilst some agencies are still struggling in the wilderness, there’s an untapped goldmine waiting for photographers interested in reaching such a new and exciting marketplace.

Get started in Asia, signup with Photokore today!

This week I’ve been getting a lot of requests for help from people deactivating their images/portfolios on iStock as part of Deactivation Day as a result of iStock’s crazy Google-drive partnership ripoff.

I only have a tiny portfolio on iStock (52 images) because their submission process is such an inefficient time-sink anyway but will be removing 48 of them, keeping the last 4 images till I reach payout before removing them too.

How can picWorkflow help you?

For anyone using picWorkflow to upload their images to other agencies I’m offering free storage for a month or so (usually a week, but I’ll round up to the end of the following month from your contact), and will provide free distribution credits to anyone using picWorkflow to distribute more than 200 images.

Just signup for picWorkflow (or use your existing account), add your agencies, upload via FTP and import your images (or wait 24 hours for them to be imported automatically), then drop me an email to bob@picWorkflow.com from your registered email address. I’ll extend storage for all your recent imports, and credit your account with distribution credits for any pending-auth upload tasks you have active when I receive your email.

Suggestions and Tips:

picWorkflow also offers keywording (and re-keywording), captioning, and retouching, with a focus on metadata for non-exclusive imagery. I can’t discount these services as they’re already as low-cost as is realistically possible (the keyworders and captioners work really hard, and take ~90% of the paid amount) but be assured our keyworders know their stuff and if you choose to use any of these services we’ll do our very best to ensure you’re 100% pleased with the results.

You can also speed up your image submissions using the picWorkflow microstock submission assistant browser plugin for Firefox.

You may also want to check out my recommendations on previous post written specifically for people leaving iStock which includes lots of tips on optimising your distribution/workflow, my video tutorial for people new to picWorkflow, and my full list of agencies to sell photos and illustrations through now. I’d also like to put in notable mentions for Shutterstock and Depositphotos, both of which sell like crazy for me (far outpacing my RPI on iStock and most other sites).

A lot of people are fed up of constantly getting royally-screwed by iStock over and over, will you be taking part in Deactivation Day and which agency/agencies are you moving to?

Beginning Microstock

My guide on how the industry has developed over the last few years: Is there still money in Microstock photography?

Must-read Microstock blogs covering all the latest news and changes in the industry, as well as thoughts, tips and tricks, processing tutorials and all kinds of other useful info.

Must-follow Microstock bloggers, agencies and knowledge-leaders who announce the news/events, share what they know, and give you access to everything you need.

My Top 10 tips for new microstock photographers.

A complete (90min+) video of how microstock has developed in the last few years, and where it seems to be moving in the near future.

Finding/Refining a Market for Your Images

A massive TOP 1000 Image-buyers Searches, gathered over more than a year and with some decent niches highlighted.

A few review posts of picNiche data showing some excellent photography niche subjects, photoshoot ideas, subjects with a lot of opportunities for sales, some science-themed shoot ideas, some more stock ideas. And just to balance it out, some photo subjects you should either avoid, or be prepared for very challenging competition in the field.

Some awesome blog posts from others on choosing what to shoot for stock sales.

Improving Your Workflow/Process

Use Image Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to maximize your visibility to image-buyers.

A huge list of stock photo agencies to sell photos with to choose from.

Spring-clean your stock portfolio for better buyer-targeting and improved sales (conversion/performance) on the agency’s search engines.

My HUGE guide to improving your photography workflow, everything from basic prep through to uploading and submission processing.

Have I missed anything? Tell me in the comments

The same cannot be said for Luis and Oliver at Stock Performer… Their tool for analysing your microstock sales and performance really is FANTASTIC, well built, easy to use, well maintained and damned good to look at too… I can’t recommend it enough.

Want a free Sparrow membership? (Winner has now been chosen, congratulations to Oleg M!).

Stock Performer

Stock Performer is an analytics and statistics service for Microstockers started by Oliver Rivo and Luis Alvarez. It strives to offer the best microstock analytics service and has gained the trust of many top-notch photographers, amongst them Andres Rodriguez, PressMaster and Joshua Hodge.

Stock Performer captures in real time your sales amongst the 5 big agencies and additionally supports iStockphoto’s partner programs (including sales on Getty Images). On top of seeing all your sales in one place, its Collections feature allows you to group them into shootings or themes and extract meaningful reports. Identify your strengths with the Top Sales feature clearly seeing how your big earners come and go, as well as seeing how market trends evolve, giving you time to produce exactly what customers are asking for.

New sign ups automatically get a complete one month free trial.
Check out Stock Performer and decide for yourself!

Sparrow Package Giveaway

The Sparrow Package is Stock Performer’s offer for microstockers who need accurate and real time sales data from all supported agencies. The Sparrow package allows you to see exactly what you upload each month and the complete sales data for those uploads. Each file is presented with complete historical data and the basic metrics. If you are a demanding microstocker who needs clarity on your sales, then the Sparrow Package is for you!

I have 1 free sparrow package subscription to give away! (I won in their random drawing, but I’m a beta member anyway so figured I’d pass it on to one of lovely people on picWorkflow)
To enter to win the Stock Performer Sparrow Package, simply comment on this post and let me know your thoughts and experience of Stock Performer, or of microstock analytics in general.

Geotagging isn’t all that new (flickr have been doing it for a decade), but using geo-tags (latitude and longitude embedded in each file) to help image-buyers find and purchase images certainly is. It’s something I hear from designers quite often that they’d like to be able to search for images of specific locations, actually by location, GeoStockPhoto are doing that, and I think it’s a great niche to be in.

If you have images of specific locations and want to find a good market for them, I think these guys are targeting just the right market to sell your images. As a nice bonus, all uploads from picWorkflow to GeoStockPhoto are free.

Here’s some more about GeoStockPhoto from their team:

GeoStockPhoto: the only dedicated marketplace for geotagged photos

A groundbreaking service in the world of photography: set your price and licence for your own pictures.

GeoStockPhoto hosts pictures from every corner of the world, displaying information about the place they have been shot in. That is why photos appear as spots on a big map, calling for your attention and stirring your curiosity.

The best is yet to come: submitting pictures on GeoStockPhoto allows you to set your price and licence, which can be modified at any time. Here is the great deal: photographers get up to 85% revenues on each sold photo!

Contributing is free and easy. Go to geostockphoto.com, and create an account filling up the form or using your Facebook login. Photos can be uploaded also via picWorkflow or FTP, in a simple and fast way.

GeoStockPhoto offers you a million good reasons for joining the community! New subscribers will get a special GeoStockPhoto welcome gift: 100x100x100. Just so: upload at least 100 photos and get 100% revenues for 100 days, starting from sales opening (coming very soon!). Exclusive conditions, only for you and only on GeoStockPhoto!

GeoStockPhoto is growing day by day also on social networks! You’ll find them on:
Twitter: @GeoStockPhoto
Facebook: facebook.com/geostockphoto

Check them out at GeoStockPhoto.com or contact them on: info@geostockphoto.com.

Releasing the first version of the picWorkflow Microstock Submission Assistant to make submitting images to your microstock agencies faster. Give it a go, and tell me what is the priority to be added next to make this tool totally awesome

Install now for Firefox.

Edit 11-Feb-2013… Now also available for Chrome.