A very short Photobanks intro.
- Introduction
- Prerequisites
- Preparing images
- Meta information
- Choosing photobank
- Registration
- Uploading
- Post-uploading
- What to expect?
Photobank is a web site (with a company behind it), that takes your photos and does all the rest, from promotion to legal paperwork. We could have called them online photo agencies if not for one signifficant difference: they use different price model.
If you think about it, microstock price model is closely related to Internet, and I doubt, that it can be used offline. For a company to successfully sell images at ultra-low prices, an amount of images must be great, and therefore, number of customers has to be great, too. So, the Internet is a must.
We are going to look at photobanks from the point of view of a photographer: how to use their services, what to sell, how to maximise the result, and is it worse the effort.
Photobanks' business is emerging, and - according to rumours - they sell well. However, as in any business, there are some pitfalls, and some things to learn.
So, let's start. As usual, I provide a bare minimum. You can find more information online, but it is anough to start with. And you can not start without it.
It is as simple as that. You need to be able to shoot photos of acceptable (not superior, but above inferior) quality. You need a portfolio. And... you need to start.
I used to say that already, in Creating a small profitable web site text, and I'd like to repeat it, as it is very important. "No one will buy your product, if you do not sell it".
I know many brilliant photographers, who do not sell anything, because they are - what? Not confident in themselves? Do not believe that they are able to read "rules of submission", that each photobank has (a page or two)? Cannot handle Photoshop's "File info" section? No.
They are lazy, and the rest is just an excuse.
So I assume that you can create photos, and you are willing to sell them. No more prerequisites.
First of all, you need to have an image of certain resolution.Usually, the low end is 3-4 megapixels, and high end is 20 megabytes. Rules are on each photobank's web site.
Then, you need to make sure the that what you have is a "stock" image, which means, it is demanded and can be legally sold. A sunset can be astonishing, but please keep in mind, that there are MILLIONS of sunset photos - so most photobanks will be very sceptical about accepting another one. A photo of a BMW car? Forget about it, to sell it you need a company's permission. Same with people, if your photo contains a recognizable person, you need to accompany the submission with a written permission from that person, so-called model release. It is not impossible to get, by the way, just keep in mind that you have to provide it with your image. Or it will not be accepted.
Now, you need to edit your image in Photoshop, or some other image editor. If your camera can shoot RAW files, edit them, and only after editing convert them to JPEG. Adjust colors, use sharpening and blur, in other words, edit the image to make it look perfect.
After editing, look at the image at 100%, or even at 200% magnification, to make sure there are no defects that can be corrected.
By the way, there are some things that you can do, but probably should not. Consider a photograph of a beautiful mountain. It is perfect for a calendar, so you add a calendar to it. This is a bad idea. People in a publishing house, that is (might be) looking for a picture for their calendar, can add it to your picture BETTER then you do, they have software (Photoshop is NOT the best choice), they have experience, and they have requirements, like "need to have enough space on top to add a title". So they will not use your image with calendar, but they may use one without a calendar.
After the image is edited, save it as a high quality JPEG.
Here is a checklist:
Open at 100% magnification. Make sure you see no noice, chromatic aberrations and compression artifacts.
Make sure there are no overexposed areas (RGB(255, 255, 255), unless you have white bacgrouns, of course.
Look at image composition. Read, if you do not know it already, about rule of 1/3 and golden proportions.
If there is a concept behind the image, it will make it more valuable.
Do not upload many similar images. Photobank will reject, because they are "similar". Upload part by part.
Make sure sharping is right - not too much, not too little.
Make sure horizont is horizontal :)
In addition to the picture, the image file contains meta information: image title, description, keywords and so on. You can edit it, using Photoshop's File-Image info... or a similat feature of other image editors.
Why bother? The reason is simple. When you submit the image to a photobank, it will try to automatically extract meta information from your image to their database. Later, when you open this image's page on a photobank's site (and you will have to do it, this is the only way to send an image to photobank's staff for approval), you will see your image's title, description and keywords already in the form's fields. It is especially convenient, if you work with more than one photobank, because otherwise you will have to retype this info many times.
In my text called Creating a small profitable site I described the way you can work with keywords to promote a web site. Surprisingly, many of these techniques also work with keywords in photobanks, so if you want your images to be displayed on first pages of photobanks search results, consider reading that resource.
Here is a list of photobanks, arranged based on their expected profitability, based on the data, that I got from Internet. It is not necessarily accurate, or complete - use your own judgment.
If you decide to register with one of these photobanks, please do it by following a link below, as it contains my reference id. It will cost you nothing, but may give some extra credits to me :)
Shutterstock
iStockPhoto
DreamsTime
Fotolia
Crestock
StockExpert
BigstockPhoto
ALBUMO
FotoMind
MOSTPHOTOS
123RoyaltyFree
Can Stock Photo
GimmestockYou are on your own :) Usually, it is simple. However, a photobank may ask you to submit sample images (up to 10 of them).
Choose best quality images, and LISTEN to what they say, especially if they reject them.
Also, some phoblems with photos are not applicable to 3d modelled images, to fractal images and so on. Sometimes, to pass the image quality test, people send those. I personally do not like the idea of cheating, besides, you can learn a lot from rejections, and you will have a chance to try again.
This one is simple. Every photobank has few options, from FTP to Flash and plain HTTP uploading (through HTML page). Choose what you like more.
After you uploaded images, photobank will usually ask you to go through images, one by one, filling fields with missing information (like keywords) and checkmarking "I agree with terms and conditions".
This is a rather boring process, fortunately, there is a Cortex script to Automate post-upload image processing in photobanks.
Note, that Cortex is our software, but the script is not, it is created and supported by one of the users.
According to our results, you should expect an average return $1 / image / year. If you are good (I am not - yet), you will make more.Good luck.
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