First Month doing Stock Photography and Video

Today I am here with a quick update for you all interested in stock starting in stock photography and video. Was it worth it? Am I rich? All the time invest and hours of work paid off?

The quick and honest answer is: NO!

But it is not as simple as that. Let me tell you a little bit more about and my experience when it comes to be a newcomer in the stock photography world.

As I have said in other posts, and after reading and listening to a lot of REAL people that have been working with stock photography and video for years. And not all those clickbait videos or blog posts, on "how to make $500 a day selling your photos", I came into this with a long term vision, so although I said that this first month did not pay off.

I actually had better results than I envisioned.

What I mean is that coming in new and knowing that the market is way more open and easy to enter than before, therefore it is very saturated, I thought it would take me many months until I get my first photo licensed. And I was wrong, because not only I had my first image licensed, I already had 6 images licensed. I know the number is very small, and monetarily, laughable. But hear me out.

Want to start by saying that I have worked really hard on growing my online portfolio as quick as I can, because one thing you will learn, like many say, stock it is a numbers game. So the more images you have on your portfolio, the bigger chances you will have to get more different images licensed.

And why do I think 6 licensed images is a great number?

Because in this first month, the size of my portfolios in the microstock agencies varies between 100+ to 400+ images! Which is a very small portfolio compared with the majority of people that are getting a substancial amount of images licensed and also making some serious money.

Another reason is the fact that I am still going through a lot of my older images, that in my opinion don't have a lot of potential to be licensed. Because they are, or too specific and no one probably will be looking for them or they are in really saturated markets, so they have a lot of competing images.

But just in case, I am still getting those images out there, because mine might have something special that someone is looking for, you never know.

That brings me to my next point! The majority of the images I got licensed, were the most random images that I was even thinking twice if I should got out there.

So if you look at the image and think, I will not bother, because no one is looking for this. Think twice, because you might get surprised.

These are my results and a summary of my first month joining stock photography. Hopefully this information might give you an idea. And hopefully, it could be helpful to you.

I am excited to see if the results will keep improving with time and the increase of the portfolio, I will keep the updates coming. I will also have more data, of what type of images of mine people prefer, so whenever I start creating for stock directly and not just using what I already have, will also help with numbers, More information and details to come when it comes to that.

If you want to start your stock photography and video journey, get you patience cap, and get going. You have a lot of work ahead of you, and then a lot of waiting to see some substancial results.

So concluding, for me, this was actually worth it! It did not pay off but the results were better than my expectations and that gives me hope for a nice outcome in the future.

Let me know if you are doing stock photography, how is it going for you?

The Microstock sites I am on:
Shutterstock
Pond5
Dreamstime
Depositphotos
500px