Produce Images that Sell

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?

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