Why aren’t my stock photos selling yet?
You’ve uploaded your first batch of images and they have been online for a week now. You keep clicking for the first button waiting to see that first sale showing up in your earnings area, but it’s still not there and you start wondering if this whole stock photography business is really worth your time.
Stop right there, this is not the time to second guess yourself and give up. It’s the time to grow your portfolio, the more images you upload, the more exposure your portfolio will receive and the more chances for your images to be spotted and downloaded by designers.
Recheck your titles, descriptions and keywords, look for errors, irrelevancies or simply tweak a bit here and there. Don’t do this too often as that will not be helpful but rather hinder your efforts. If you find a winning combination stick with it as changing the title, description and keywords too often will leave your images being indexed all the time rather than having a spot in a specific search.
The first rule in stock photography is (no it’s not “we don’t talk about stock photography” 🙂 ) : keep uploading! This implies that you will keep shooting images, have a small camera to carry around with you. Even your smartphone can shoot good enough images these days, provided that you apply some technique. Don’t miss opportunities and you won’t have regrets for the shots you didn’t take.
In a few simple points, you are not selling images because:
- you’ve not been discovered yet
- your title, description and keywords are not accurate enough
- your images are not good enough
- your photographic subjects are too general, or too specific
- your portfolio is too small
What you can do to fix this in a few simple steps:
- put yourself out there, have a webpage, a blog, a Facebook page, tell your friends and family to promote you
- recheck your title, description and keywords for accuracy
- improve your photographic and post processing technique
- re-evaluate the  subjects you are choosing to photograph
- upload more
I hope this has answered some of your questions.
Till next time, happy shooting!
