How to Find Low-Competition Subjects: Quality vs Quantity in Microstock Photography

Yesterday, professional photographer Danny Warren shared a “shoot smarter, not harder” tip to make more money from your stock photos by carefully taking fewer photographs. If you missed that issue, you’ll find a link to it below. Today, he shares another trick – how to find stock photo subjects that don’t have much competition. Take it away, Danny… THE QUALITY FACTOR, PART 2: SNIFFING OUT THE COMPETITION By Danny Warren in Portland, Oregon Yesterday, I gave you a quick way to find out which photo subjects are highly marketable and which ones don’t sell as well.  If you missed it, you can find it here. Sometimes it’s obvious. After all, you could probably guess that a theme like “confidence” is highly marketable, whereas one like “bocce ball” is in far less demand. However, that doesn’t mean that setting up a bocce ball shoot in your backyard can’t be lucrative. Another part of the quality equation is the quantity and caliber of your competition. Try the same searches you did yesterday, but this time look at how many total images contain the keyword that you’re searching for. Taking our same three examples from yesterday, here are the total counts of images from iStockphoto: “Confidence”  = 219,297 images “Steak”  = 18,160 images “Bocce Ball” = 197 images Total, there are fewer than 200 images tagged with “bocce ball” — and most of them are probably average in quality, since it’s not a very popular theme. Therefore, it wouldn’t be that hard to compete with the best bocce ball shots, and generate some real sales. All you need is a $25 bocce ball set, a few friends, and a patch of grass. If you want to shoot an uncommon theme, just make sure you check out the competition, first. Try to make your photos better than what is already out there. So how do you determine where your photos stand among the competition in a more commonly shot theme? Stay tuned, and I’ll show you tomorrow… [Editor’s Note: Learn more about how you can turn your pictures into cash in our free online newsletter The Right Way to Travel.  Sign up here today and we’ll send you a new report, Selling Photos for Cash: A Quick-Start Guide, completely FREE.]