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hi
i'm rachel and welcome back to the
channel today's video
is going to be for amateur and hobbyist
photographers
who are looking to make passive income
by selling stock photography
specifically this video is going to
cover shutterstock.com
but most of the tips are applicable to
any stock agency
doing stock photography is really great
for photographers since
it's not only is it passive income you
can also put your photos to use
if you're just a hobbyist photographer
and aren't taking photos
professionally then you probably have a
lot of photos
from over the years of just taking
photos for fun
but if you put them on shutter stock
then you have the chance to actually
earn a little bit of
income on them so you can actually put
all those photos to use
every so often i like to go through all
of my old photos from years ago and pick
out ones that i think might sell and put
them on shutterstock
and sometimes i'm happily surprised by
the results
so continuing on this video is going to
be mostly
divided into two parts first i'm going
to go over
the type of photos that work best for
stock and i'm not talking like subject
matte matter like
still life versus travel or anything
like that
but specific elements within the photo
that
will help it to sell and then after that
i wanted to talk about
how to upload efficiently and make
sure that you are using keywords and seo
in a way that'll help your photos
actually make sales
so go ahead and hit that subscribe
button
and let's get started so first
what photos should you take for stock
photography
number one the most important factor is
that your photos have commercial value
if there's no commercial value they're
not going to sell
now you might be thinking what is
commercial value
those are the photos that can be sold
for ads
marketing visuals on websites or blogs
and videos anything like that for
instance take a magazine
flip through anything that's used for an
ad pretty much any photo in a magazine
okay it's going to be
stock so think of those kind of photos
and how they're selling
you're going to want photos that have
copy space on them so that's just like
negative space where possible
text can go that's not always the case
but it is an important thing to keep in
mind when you're shooting for
stock also on shutterstock you can list
photos as
editorial instead of commercial this
video focuses more on commercial but if
you are shooting editorial
then those are more timely based photos
or it's a photo of a property or there
are people in the photos and you don't
have a model or property release
commercial photos can be sold to anyone
for any reason pretty much
but editorial photos can't so they don't
sell as much
just keep that in mind so continuing on
to
tip number two that is the technical
aspect of your photos they have to be
technically correct
so when you submit a photo on
shutterstock
it goes through a review process if your
photo is out of focus
isn't very sharp is under or
overexposed is grainy
etc then it's not going to be accepted
or if it is accepted if it slips through
the cracks
it's not going to sell people want
photos that are visually
stunning but also visually
nice i mean they have to be correct you
know i mean you don't want an
overexposed photo
of the sky or whatever so
make sure you know what you're doing
when you're shooting the photos the
exposure triangle if you will if you
don't know what that is
maybe do some research maybe you're too
much of a beginner to start with stock
but after i mean you don't want to pick
up a photo and start
pick up a photo pick up the camera and
start taking photos and think that
you're gonna sell stock
okay sometimes i go
on the shutterstock forum and i'll see
people complaining that they haven't
made any sales
and then you go to their portfolio and
it's
not good it's photos of like a ditch
or a really close-up
photo of a fence post
just random photos they're not gonna
sell they don't have that commercial
value
they're not visually stunning so
keep that in mind while you take photos
would you buy this
to use as advertisement if not
probably don't put it on the website
and now tip number three don't submit
photos into an already overly saturated
market
so for instance let's take a look on
the website here i've searched eiffel
tower
and see so let's say you go to paris
you're taking photos
of the eiffel tower don't submit them as
stock okay just
there's no point there's already
thousands look
that's how many photos of the eiffel
tower are already on here
107 000 photos of the eiffel tower
the eiffel tower has been shot in every
lighting
every season every angle possible
your photo is not gonna stand out unless
you happen to be at the eiffel tower
when it
is attacked by terrorists there's no
reason in putting your photo of the
eiffel tower
on shutterstock it's just not going to
stand out it's going to be on that last
page of results on the
fresh content it's not going to sell
i'm sorry what i like to do is
tip four do research so before you go
on a trip do research about
where you're going let's say you're
going to
chicago because i'm going to chicago
soon
go ahead and figure out your trip plan
your trip
maybe you aren't planning it
specifically around photography but
wherever you plan on going
search that on shutterstock are there
photos on the website
are there only a few not very good
photos
if that fits go ahead and
make a note of that and when you go
there take photos and
actually make it
so that there's good stock photos on
shutterstock of that place
or whatever and then your photo is more
likely to sell let's go back on the
computer here's another example
so this is the thorn crown chapel in
arkansas
this photo right here the second one
that's my photo
if you scroll down and look at the other
photos here they're
not very good most of them are
underexposed
or are extreme close-ups
or our weird angles
so even though this is a really old
photo and i did not take it in mind
of using it for stock once i posted it
here it has now become
the second result and has sold a few
times
because really it's one of the best ones
on here
so that's just one example of making
sure that your photos stand
out if they are unique original
and cover a subject that isn't covered
on shutterstock then you're more likely
to make sales
okay so those are the main tips on how
to take a good photo for stock
now we're going to go ahead and move on
to my computer and i'll show you
how i upload and submit a photo i'm
going to talk about
keywords and seo and how to use those to
make sure your photo
comes up in search results and actually
sells
so here we go
so after you submit your photo it's
going to come up in a screen
like this one go ahead and select
whichever photo you want to work on
all your photos will be here i just have
the one right now
and over here oh well first this
is the photo we're going to be looking
at today it's just a photo of my horse's
eye
pretty simple so first make sure you
have photo selected
and then whether it's commercial or
editorial
then i always do the keywords first you
can type your keywords in right here but
that's obviously going to take much
longer
or you can select keywords right here
these are just suggestions based on what
the system thinks your photo is of
then i always click on find more
keywords down here
and then it's going to bring up photos
of what
it's going to bring up photos that are
similar to yours
so right away we have a bunch of eyes i
always search in here too
it's not always accurate down there for
what it thinks your photo is a picture
of
all right so then you just have to
select at least three photos that are
similar to yours
and then it's going to bring up relevant
keywords over here
and you'll just read through all of
these and click on any that you think
are relevant only choose relevant
keywords because if they aren't relevant
they're going to come
up in search results that you don't want
them to
and they aren't going to sell you can do
up to
50 keywords
so trying to get as close to that as
possible
so let me just go through and click
through these really quick
all right and then if nothing comes up
that is
super relevant or you want more you can
always deselect the photos you have
selected and select
different photos and see if anything new
comes up
or you can type in here so i'm going to
put like equine
um we do like horse health
all right so then we just attach those
to the photo and they're all going to
show up right here
we have 34 which is a pretty good amount
and then you'll have to add a
description try to write as many
keywords
into the description as possible so i'm
going to say
something like close-up of a horse's
eye
with copy space
and you can add that into your keywords
too copy space
negative space
okay so close up of horses i with copy
space
and then go ahead and do the categories
i'm going to do animals
and then i'm going to do nature having
two categories is optional but always do
two categories even if there isn't
anything to choose from you can always
choose miscellaneous
and then location if location is
relevant obviously this photo
is not so i'm not going to put anything
but if it was taken in a specific city
or area you can add that
then just make sure everything is
spelled correctly that your keywords are
good
i if you see i chose keywords like calm
thoughtful thinking
pensive those are emotions that can be
associated with a photo so if you add
those
in it might help when people are
searching for certain concepts
rather than a specific subject matter
and then once everything is okay you can
go ahead and hit submit and then it'll
go into your pending folder
here at the top you'll see that pending
once it is reviewed it'll go over here
if it's not accepted it'll tell you why
if it
is possible to fix that you can and
resubmit it or sometimes if you submit
it as commercial and they want editorial
you can fix that and resubmit it
sometimes however even if you resubmit
it it's not going to get accepted
sometimes if it's a little bit out of
focus
you're pretty much out of luck but yeah
so
in the end that's pretty much it let me
know in the comments if this video
helped you at all
if you have any more tips on making good
if you have any more tips on making good
stock photos
and hopefully this helps you let me know
if it does
let me know if you have any more
shutterstock videos you want to see in
the future
i don't know what that could entail but
if you have any ideas let me know
and i'll be happy to help alright have a
nice day
peace out
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you