Dear readers, things have been pretty quiet around here. I haven’t forgetten you, but I’m working on a super secret undercover i’d-have-to-kill-you-if-I-told-you project and that is consuming most of my time.

However, rest assured. I will continue posting once in a while when I have good quality material to post, videos, lighting schemes, and such. And of course, as soon as the project is launched, you will be the first to know!

Design by www.magixillusions.com

I admit, the title of this blog post is a bit oversized. There has been a lot written about how to produce images that sell. The list is of websites and books offering information on this topic is long. However, I think there is one point of advice which I want to emphasize and share with you.

You can reduce this advice to asking yourself these two simple questions:

Who are your customers?

What do your customers want?

It is really important that you think about these questions. Producing stock photography is not about producing nice, beautiful images. It is about producing images people want. In order to answer the two questions above, here is a three step process which I follow myself every few months:

How are your images being used?
Have you seen your images in action? Collect all your images in action and try to observe how designers used your images. Spend time analysing the designs and ask yourself what attributes of your images are important in those designs. Is it the copy space you added? Or perhaps the interesting tight crop? Is it the expression of your models? Is it the concept which works well? iStockphoto offers you the option to see some of the designs with your pictures. Use that option!

This will teach you what designers do with your images and let you identify your strengths and weaknesses.

Analyse designs in your segment
What segment of photography are you specialised in? Is it Fashion? Glamour? Landscape photography? Go out there and buy magazines regularly, surf the web, look at adverts, and try to understand how images in your photography segment are being used within designs. What is it that you see often? What trends can you spot?

This will teach you what designers are looking for and allow you to focus on that.

How is your competition doing?
Every stock agency has its heavy weight photographers. Find those photographers in your area of specialisation and look at their pictures. Learn from them. What pictures sell most? Do you see a relationship with your findings regarding design’s? It is not about copying ideas, it is about identifying trends. Design trends change every few years (ever heard of Web 2.0?) and you have to adapt.

What strategy do you follow to improve your sales?

Follow me on twitter, it’s fresh

For those of you who do not know it, Seen.by is a platform where international photographers showcase their portfolios. It’s an amazing collection with beautiful photos, and many of them can be purchased in print size to decorate your room space.

I am often asked if it is worth to upload photos there and sell them; is it possible to make money there?

I joined Seen.by fairly early, and was invited to offer pictures for sale. Back then, only three of my pictures were available for purchase, but since, almost all my pictures have been made available.

I don’t want to dissapoint you but my income at the page has been very low. Below 100EUR in the time I have been there. I can only speculate why this is so, but I believe the main reason is that my pictures are not well suited for printing and using as decoration. I have not spoken to other photographers on Seen.by and cannot offer you any comparisons.

Nevertheless, Seen.by enjoys one of the best collections around with top photographers contributing. The selection process is rigurous but once you are in it is a great place to show off your pictures. So I think everyone should give it a try.

Are you already on Seen.by? How have sales been for you?

After a nice holiday break, here my most recently published article on iStockphoto.com! Let me know what you think and please share your ring flash pics!