Microstock portfolio – Fernandocortes.com – 2 years into the microstock world. from FernandoCortes.es on Vimeo.

2 años en el mundo del Microstock y más de 40.000 fotografías vendidas. Para más info ver http://www.fernandocortes.com

2 years into the microstock world. More than 40.000 pictures sold. More info: http://www.fernandocortes.com

Music by: NIN

Dinero por tus fotos

Hace un par de años, me topé con una página web donde me llamó la atención el un banner que enunciaba… “haga dinero con sus fotografías” y más me llamaba la atención el que insinuaban que todos teníamos fotografías durmiendo en el disco duro de nuestras computadoras esperando a ser vendidas. Y así comencé, pensando que era sencillo y que sería una oportunidad para sacarle un rendimiento a miles de fotografías que tenía dormidas en mis discos duros. Del mismo modo era tentador y excitante poder mostrar mis fotografías al mundo y ver las reacciones o el comportamiento de las mismas. Hoy me doy cuenta de que cada día es más dificil tanto entrar en las agencias como en vender más. Hoy día, si queremos ganar buen dinero tendremos que trabajar muchisimo. No hay nada gratis en la vida y menos en el competitivo mundo del microstock. Veamos cómo podemos enfocar nuestro trabajo para mejorar el rendimiento de nuestras fotografías.

Rendimientos de las fotos

Lo primero que hay que resaltar es que el microstock (y la fotografía stock en general) tiene un componente de diversión involucrado durante la toma de las fotografías. Difícilmente se le puede llamar trabajo como tal, aunque si quieres ganar mucho dinero, debes tomártelo muy en serio y actuar cómo si de un trabajo se tratara, aunque lo pases muy bien!.  Igualmente hay que aclarar que nuestras fotos son un activo que generará dinero por mucho tiempo, incluso en momentos en que no estemos tomando fotos, cuando estemos de viaje, de vacaciones, durante todos esos días las fotos se seguirán vendiendo y produciendo un beneficio económico, se constituyen en una fuente de ingreso pasivo. Una vez tengamos un portfolio interesante estaremos ganando dinero incluso cuando estamos durmiendo!, sobre todo porque por horario, las mayores ventas se realizan en USA.

Ahora bien, ¿cómo se llega a tener un ingreso significativo?… la respuesta no deja de ser compleja, pero dependerá, de una manera más o menos sencilla, de dos factores: el primero es cuánto trabajo pongas en tomar las fotos y qué tan buenas son las fotos desde el punto de vista comercial (qué tan vendibles son). Existe autores con fotografías increibles, hermosas e impactantes…dignas de un museo, pero con un valor comercial bajo o nulo. En cambio existe autores que sin tener un toque especial o una estética impresionante, dan en el clavo comercial, y se convierten en Top ventas.

En esencia se habla de que un portafolios de fotos buenas debe producir alrededor de un dólar por foto por mes. Esto no es del todo realista para la mayoría, pero hay muchos ejemplos en los foros de los diferentes sitios en que encontramos reportes de gente que está ganando estas cantidades. Esto significa que potencialmente un portafolios de 2500 fotos puede generar $2500 al mes. Aunque 2500 fotos suena como un número muy grande de fotos realmente son siete fotos por día durante un año y hay ocasiones (por ejemplo, unas vacaciones) en las que se pueden tomar cientos de fotos vendibles en pocos días. Algunas personas solamente toman fotos los fines de semana, otros durante sus viajes, otros durante las noches en casa, cada uno se impone su ritmo y cada uno decide qué tan rápido quiere aumentar su portafolios y qué tan rápido quiere generar dinero. Los beneficios quizás no sean inmediatos, pero a través del tiempo, con paciencia, los ingresos suelen mejorar.

Cómo optimizar los ingresos:

Mientras más fotos vendas más conocerás qué se mueve y qué no se vende, aunque tambien puedes analizar los portfolios de otros autores y ver qué se vende más. Con millones de imágenes en los diferentes sitios es casi necesario que aprendamos a mejorar la calidad de las fotos para garantizar las ventas. Cuando tus fotografías son de calidad los compradores te ponen en sus listas de favoritos y regresar a comprar fotos cuando tienen nuevas necesidades. Es como tener clientes fieles que retornan a tu negocio una y otra vez.

Powerful rhino at sunset. Nature against progress

8X12 Fine Art Photograph
The framed image is for REFERENCE only.

TITLE:Powerful rhino at sunset. Nature against progress
SIZE: 8”x12”
PRINT: Glossy professional paper

PRODUCT DETAILS:
All prints are professionally printed on glossy Professional paper, unframed and unmated. The watermark will not be present on your print. Prints will be signed and numbered on the back unless requested otherwise.

CUSTOM ORDERS:
Upon receipt of your order, the print will be processed and mailed to me for approval before I mail it to you. Please allow up to 2 weeks for delivery. If you need it sooner than that, I can make other arrangements

This listing is for a 8×12 (20x30cm) print. Other sizes available upon request.

All prints are mailed in protective packaging.

This print is available in various sizes and on different types of paper or canvas. Please see my profile or contact me for details.

FREE SHIPPING WORLDWIDE

PRICE: 25 €

Image copyright Fernando Cortés

http://www.fernandocortes.com

(All photos are protected by Copyright)

Fine art photography – A magical spring photograph – 8×12 Crystal paper

Pink water lilly

Digital print on FujiColor Crystal Archive Paper Supreme with archival pigment ink.

The framed image is for reference only.

8 inches x12 inches (20x30cm)

PRINT: FujiColor Crystal Archive Paper Supreme

===========================================================
PRODUCT DETAILS:
All prints are professionally printed by a professional Lab on premium paper, archival paper which has a matte finish and will last a lifetime . The watermark will not be present on your print. It will be signed by me and shipped in a resistant packaging.
===========================================================
CUSTOM ORDERS:
Upon receipt of your order, the print will be processed at professional Lab. Please allow up to 1 week for delivery.
===========================================================
Other sizes available upon request.

All prints are mailed in protective packaging.

===========================================================

FREE SHIPPING WORLDWIDE

PRICE: 25 €

The power of nature. 8X12 Fine Art Photograph

peregrine, falcon

8X12 Fine Art Photograph

TITLE:Beautiful Falcon contemplating sunset.
SIZE: 8”x12”
PRINT: Glossy professional paper
The framed image is for REFERENCE only.

PRODUCT DETAILS:
All prints are professionally printed on glossy Professional paper, unframed and unmated. The watermark will not be present on your print. Prints will be signed and numbered on the back unless requested otherwise.

CUSTOM ORDERS:
Upon receipt of your order, the print will be processed and mailed to me for approval before I mail it to you. Please allow up to 2 weeks for delivery. If you need it sooner than that, I can make other arrangements

This listing is for a 8×12 (20x30cm) print. Other sizes available upon request.

All prints are mailed in protective packaging.

This print is available in various sizes and on different types of paper or canvas. Please see my profile or contact me for details.

FREE SHIPPING WORLDWIDE

PRICE: 25 €

Star wars, Bobba fet illustration

Star wars bobba fett

Digital print on archival fine art paper with archival pigment ink. Limited edition of 500

Signed, dated, numbered, and shipped with care. Thanks for looking, and feel free to e-mail me with any questions.

BIG SIZE !!!!! 12”x18” (30x45cm)
PRINT: Professional Lab on premium paper

PRODUCT DETAILS:
All prints are professionally printed by a professional Lab on premium paper, archival paper which has a matte finish and will last a lifetime . The watermark will not be present on your print. It will be signed by me and shipped in a resistant packaging.

CUSTOM ORDERS:
Upon receipt of your order, the print will be processed at professional Lab. Please allow up to 1 week for delivery.

This listing is for a 12”x18” (30x45cm) print. Other sizes available upon request.

All prints are mailed in protective packaging.

FREE SHIPPING WORLDWIDE

PRICE: 35€

Motorbike's chromed engine. Bikes in a street

Harley Davidson, motorcycle fine art photography

8 x 12 inches Archival paper supreme – Black and white vintage style

8 inches x12 inches (20x30cm)

PRINT: FujiColor Crystal Archive Paper Supreme

===========================================================

PRODUCT DETAILS:

All prints are professionally printed by a professional Lab on premium paper, archival paper which has a matte finish and will last a lifetime . The watermark will not be present on your print. It will be signed by me and shipped in a resistant packaging.
===========================================================

CUSTOM ORDERS:

Upon receipt of your order, the print will be processed at professional Lab. Please allow up to 1 week for delivery.
===========================================================
Other sizes available upon request.

All prints are mailed in protective packaging.

===========================================================

WORLDWIDE SHIPPING FREE !!

PRICE: 25 €

suggested microstock sites

Uploading towards the only the leading earning websites will conserve you a great deal of wasted time more than uploading someplace that offers a bad return. The caveat on this really is that everyone’s portfolio is various, and it may nicely be that you simply possess a speciality angle in your pictures like a concentrate on 3d rendered company metaphors, this might market truly nicely on a few of the websites, rather than whatsoever around the other people, landscapes may market nicely on shutterstock although not on istockphoto and so on. The portfolio I’ve uploaded to every with the websites that I’ve carried out an extended phrase evaluation is really a specifically chosen generalised sample of numerous genres of stock pictures. Because they say ‘your outcomes might vary’.

I personally would suggest if you’re in any way severe about promoting your pictures as microstock that you simply upload to as a lot of our leading ten microstock websites while you can. The majority of the function in microstock is within the sorting and key-wording. Uploading could be relatively automated aside from the classes the primary websites have (therefore a few of the would-be microstock leaders have dropped this stage from their uploads which means the entire factor could be partly or completely automated with software program).

stock pictures website critiques What We Suggest

Initial up, you need to upload to greater than 1 website. Ideally as numerous while you can. The outcomes we’ve collected from our critiques supplied a great estimate with the earnings that every website will return to get a ‘general’ picture assortment, but niece or professional collections may function substantially much better on some  micro-stock websites rather than whatsoever nicely on other people. We recommend a minimum of the subsequent leading five websites are in your checklist to submit function to. (bear in mind that with a minimum of three million pictures at every website, acceptance requirements are incredibly substantial for these companies)

• Dreamstime
• Shutterstock.com
• Fotolia
• iStockphoto
• Bigstockphoto

… see the remainder that didn’t allow it to be in to the leading five

How do we arrive to this conclusion?

The amount of pictures a microstock website is really a extremely great benchmark of it is ‘quality’ as will be the visitors / alexa rankings which display the number of individuals are going to the website i.e. purchasers searching for pictures. Much more essential within our ranking will be the quantity of cash we’re earning from our ‘weighted sample portfolio’ which we’ve submitted to every website. A few of the smaller sized websites possess a smaller sized portfolio, and this continues to be factored in to the calculations.

Uploading Microstock Pictures

There’s much more than 1 method to upload your pictures for sale, some techniques are much more time consuming than other people…
For your Microstock Newbie

Newbies usually choose for upload utilizing their internet browser (so known as http upload) this is actually the easiest technique and 1 which nearly all web customers are acquainted. The majority of the good microstock websites permit you to upload batches of five or ten pictures at 1 time creating the method a bit simpler having a ‘java’ or ‘flash’ uploader.

The following stage in streamlining the upload procedure would be to embed IPTC meta information (key phrases, description and title) into your pictures, that way in the event you upload to much more than 1 website there isn’t any have to re-enter a description on every website. Embedding can both be carried out with standalone software program, a picture editor like photoshop, or among the microstock submission resources detailed beneath. Additional studying on this within our manual IPTC key phrase placing software program.

The drawback of uploading to websites individually is the fact that it’s fairly time consuming, and every website requires a various method to batch upload. Distributing to much more than a couple of websites by doing this turns into fairly tiresome.

Batch Uploads with FTP

To help microstock photographers, the following stage up from utilizing the browser upload would be to upload in batches by way of FTP. To complete this you’ll need an FTP consumer (numerous accessible at no cost) much more particulars within our round-up with the greatest FTP customers for microstock photographers. Also refer to our fast reference of microstock websites and their FTP deal with.

It is also essential to notice that FTP upload is usually utilized in mixture with embedding IPTC key phrases (on some websites this can be a prerequisite). All of the top microstock websites assistance FTP other than for istockphoto.

For a lot of microstock contributors FTP will be the greatest method to streamline their workflow, particularly when they submit somewhat various batches of pictures to every website. Some FTP customers will automate the uploading with the exact same batch of pictures to numerous websites, and a few allows you to make a queue of preselected pictures to upload to some selected website or choice of websites.

Microstock Assistant Software program

There are some items of software program accessible aimed particularly at microstock photographers. A few of these resources help in discovering and placing of key phrases (embedding IPTC Metadata) in addition to uploading pictures to microstock websites in batches. Some also keep track of acceptance and product sales of pictures.

We talked about certainly one of these microstock resources, ProstockMaster, within our Fast begin manual for newbies; but there are many accessible:

PicNiche Toolbar
Firefox Browser plugin supports six companies, with monitoring and keywording. Totally free

StockPhotoExpress
I examined back again in 2008, but discovered it relatively awkward to make use of(?) some customers fee it extremely. Totally free trial. $36.95

CushyStock
Procedure, upload and key phrase to ten companies, totally free trial, regular edition $49.95, professional $89.95.

Syndication / Redistribution

For your severe microstocker you will find presently a few solutions permitting you to redistribute your pictures by way of FTP transfer immediate from 1 server to a different. This removes you’ll need to upload pictures out of your pc to every and each and every website you need to market these pictures on, just one upload then distribution to each and every website you employ inside a issue of seconds.

Picworkflow (evaluation) permits you to upload a picture as soon as and distribute it to numerous websites, also supplying extra keywording and figures resources.

Photoshelter offers picture storage and web site facilitates to photographers, additionally they bundle inside a versatile ftp delivery support which permits you to distribute single pictures, folders, lists or galleries of pictures to anybody supporting ftp or safe ftp uploads (see over for particulars on that). At time of composing photoshelter expenses $29.99 month-to-month for his or her ‘standard service’ which permits you to ftp upload and redistribute pictures. Less expensive accounts don’t have any ftp upload, but there’s a free/$1 account choice having a fifty MB/month restrict you may prefer to ‘try out’ with only a few of pictures.

Outsourcing

lookstat provide expert photographers (and severe amateurs able to spend) having a pay-as-you go processing, keywording and uploading support. You’ll need to get in touch with them straight for complete pricing particulars, the support is aimed at photographers who’s time is much better invested shooting pictures than keywording and coping with submission.

An additional option would be to outsource the method to somebody overseas who can function for much less (ethics apart) I have heard numerous stories concerning the reduced high quality with the function that will get carried out, and problems discovering somebody appropriate for your task, and naturally you nonetheless need to organise a method to get your raw/original files to them to procedure.

You can also think about using an nearby person or group to complete the keywording and uploading and so on, which means you can solely shoot pictures and handle other areas of company. This choice permits you to help keep a nearer eye around the high quality with the submissions. This is actually the way that a few of the large names in microstock run; there’s nevertheless a great stability in between the elevated wages and costs that you’ll need to spend and little revenue margins in microstock.