Stock Photography 2.2 | Doing the Thing

Hello! Long time, no hear from me... It's not because I've been hiding or worse yet, procrastinating... again! No, I've been working on it or as a mentor once told me, "Doing the Thing," AKA, doing the thing you said you would do long after the compelling feeling to do it has vanished. Why do I keep returning to this theme, you ask? I firmly believe that 90% of the success factor in creating a residual income with stock photography comes from just doing it. Again and again. and again. then again. You see, most people will give up on it long before it actually has the opportunity to get started. You can even take this down to the micrometer. Alamy wants 50 keywords for each photo. FIFTY. If you do 25 you lose. Most people will quit on the pic before they hit 30.

That was me, too. I put in a dozen or so keywords on the 50 photos I uploaded two years ago and then basically walked away after I tried to search for my photos on the platform and they were nowhere to be found. I came back when I got this bright idea to expose myself on steemit as either a fraud or the real deal! Lo and behold, Alamy was shouting out to me that my uploads were incomplete and not performing very well...

So, I uploaded 25 flower photos and decided to not come back here to post any more nouns and verbs until I got my house in order. Some days I could only optimize 4 or 5 photos in my spare time. In a good session I could get 10 or more done. It was painful and humbling. Somewhere along the line I decided to search google for a photo keyword generator. Preferably a FREE one. Bam! I found it. It has changed my life! It works like a charm and cut my job down to a size I could tolerate. The tool can be found at My Keyworder

Since my last post I have optimized all 82 of the photos I have uploaded thus far. With that done, I uploaded 30 new photos and am waiting for them to be approved so I can get them optimized. That way I can upload more. and more. and more! More is better with this strategy of selling stock photos. Can I do 50 a month? That would be 600 a year. Can I do 100 a month? More is better. Stay tuned. We'll find out!

Speaking of which, how are you doing? Have you gotten stuck in your own rut? Yours could be different from mine! Many people can't think of what to photograph. This afflicts me often. Alamy blog comes to the rescue. Most months they release a stock requests blog post outlining what people searched for recently and were unable to find - machine learning is a beautiful thing! Instead of wracking your brain, find the knowledge or inspiration or just a kick in the pants! Alamy also publishes an Annual Trends article that exposes more of the collective knowledge they see through their lens managing millions of images.

So, here are some good ideas to run with in your quest to create a passive, residual and royalty based income from your photography. I hope it helps you. Doing this helps me! I have you to answer to every day. Did I do the thing? Or, did I fall back into the den of complacency?

I will keep searching for tools, tricks and tips to help us along the way. So, stay tuned. Last night I uploaded photos from a trip to Scotland that I took a few years ago. I had noticed in these trends articles that general travel landscapes are, in fact, in demand. So, Ive got a few hundred from that trip alone! The photos accompanying this post are some of the ones I just uploaded.

I look forward to hearing how you are doing with your stock photo journey! So, please, don't be a stranger :-)

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Read past issues of my Stock Photography How-To Blog!

Introduction to Stock Photography
Stock Photography | First Steps 1.1
Stock Photography | First Steps 1.2
Stock Photography | Choosing an Agency 2.0
Stock Photography | Rules to Follow 2.1