Yuri Arcurs a blog about selling your photos online

If you want to be a microstock photographer, then look no further!

On this page you will find everything you need to get started. Links to all the major agencies, help and tools for keywording your images, model release templates that can be used with all agencies and a quick guide on technical issues that causes the most rejections. You can also find resources explaining the differences of microstock when coming from traditional stock.

2 Minute read: Microstock Agencies overview

Which microstock agencies are the most profitable and which are a waste of time? The purpose of this post is to give you a super quick overview of the landscape of what microstock agencies so you know which ones to contribute your photos. Here you will find graphic statistics and comparison charts.

What should I shoot and what sells well

A super easy guide to successful microstock themes and concepts to get you started. If you are a traditional shooter and want to enter microstock, you need to be aware of a few key differences in what sells. Microstock is filled with loads of imagery and literally millions of images so if you don’t stand out you will be completely “lost in the crowd”. Branding yourself by having a unique style that is recognizable and consistent is probably the most important aspect in microstock and also something that makes it so hard for traditional shooters to enter the microstock market. You cannot underestimate the importance of branding yourself! If you don’t you’ll be wondering… why aren’t I selling anything? The reason is that you have not made an impression on the buyers so they go directly for your images when searching for material to buy.

One universal model release for all agencies – finally

Save yourself a lot of time and download this fully approved universal model release form. Get started the right way with the formalities and use one single model release for all agencies. Download our generic model release template as a Microsoft Word document and use it as you like. It works on all agencies including iStockphoto. This post also describes what a model release is and can be used to explain model releases to your models.

Keywording

In microstock you have to do your own keywording. You do this by applying the finished keywords to the IPTC data in the jpg file. You can do this in adobe bridge or other similar programs. Don’t ever underestimate the value of good keywording. However, doing it well takes and manually is very time consuming. Thankfully there is help: I have had my programmers design a web-based system that makes keywording your images with high quality keywords as simple as can be. Check it out!