In the Beginning

July 1, 2009

With a lot of encouragement from my friend and stock mentor pdtnc I have joined the world of microstock. I have been taking very average photographs for years and because I am not precious about my ‘art’ I was more than willing to jump at the chance to make a few bob by letting a stock photography agency sell my wares. I started off with istock, but it only took a small amount of reading on the subject to realise there were lots of micro stock agencies lining up to sell images produced by enthusiastic amateurs as well as professionals. I don’t see it as anything more than a bit of a hobby and don’t expect I shall make much money out of it, but I was definitely inspired by the ethos of one microstock blogger, who posts under the name nil to mil. Their goal is to go from $0 to $1 million dollars through microstock sales. It is a great read and I hope they get there. It would make a great book.

So, once you decide to have a go at selling stock photography, where do you go to find out more about the subject? I dare say there have been one or two books published but they certainly aren’t in every book shop. It seems the miscrostock world, while growing rapidly, is still quite niche. The best information I found was on blogs, published by people who were selling their own photographs and telling their story along the way.

I wasn’t planning to document my journey into microstock, because I didn’t think I had any information that would be of use or interest to anyone, but thinking about how much I enjoy reading other people’s experiences, and how valuable their information has been to me, I decided one more blog on the subject could not hurt. So I hope what follows will be of interest to someone.