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Written by Perry Correll
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Sunday, 18 June 2006 |
 …came to me recently. The photographers who are experienced and successful at microstock actually know what they are doing. And I also have determined that their advice is good! I tried following some advice I received from someone who’s work I admire very much, Nicole Weiss (I’ll be introducing her in just a moment), and I got instant results.
So the overall message of this article is to encourage you to take the advice of those who are succeeding at microstock,. More specifically, I’ll tell you the tip I got I got from Nicole. It’s keywords. Yep. Keywords. Not a big surprise if you’ve been paying attention to what all the pros say. However, it hasn’t come easily to me, so I just ignored all the articles. Well, it occurred to me to give it a try and my statistics picked up immediately.
In an effort to avoid keyword spamming, I have been perhaps overly cautious in my efforts to stick to the specific subject matter of the photo. Ms. Weiss made some suggestions to me regarding some of my photos, and with her guidance, I was able to see that it is possible to use metaphorical or conceptual words.
Nicole Weiss, was kind enough to spend some time answering some questions I had. Nicole, an extremely talented individual out of New York City www.shatteredlensnyc.com , has been hooked on photography since high school, and her passion for it shows in her portfolio.
Perry Correl: Nicole, first, thank you for your encouragement and advice. It has been so helpful to me. I have to admit I was surprised when I asked for tips and you went straight to keywords. I take it that means you have some pretty good vocabulary skills?
Nicole Weiss: Hee hee, I would say they are horrible!
PC: Seriously, are you a linguist or something?
NC: Funny you should ask that! My major in college was actually linguistics. I wouldn't say I apply any of that to keywording my images, or what I actually do for a living, but yeah, I guess one could say I have inside knowledge (smiles)
PC: Why doesn’t that surprise me? So, you’re involved in modeling, photography, you majored in linguistics…
NC: Hee hee, I don’t model. I’m actually quite camera shy. I just enjoy working with models. I do work in Fashion though.
PC: ….there must be more!
NC: I love to snowboard! Been boarding as long as I’ve been shooting. If I could be on the mountains all day long, then shoot at night and on the weekends I would be in heaven
PC: So now you’re a professional photographer?
NC: I wish! I'm slowly working on it though. Photography was definitely not on the approved list of things my mom was supportive of career wise when I was growing up, but it's something I'm really passionate about and think I have a chance at making a living with
PC: How do you find clients or customers?
NC: Being that I live in NYC finding clients doesn't seem to be too big of a problem since everyone wants to be a model, actor or dancer.
PC: With such a large source of models and clients, then why bother with microstock?
NC: Between all my sites combined I'm able to get at least one payout a month at this point and on two sites it looks like it's going to start to be an every other month kind of deal. The fact that my galleries are so people heavy keeps my sales steady even if I don't upload much.
PC: That sounds like a nice way to supplement the income!
NC: I'm working hard at building up my stock and model ports and hope to go part-time by the end of the summer
PC: Wow – that would be nice! You must have a lot of images on line to be able to consider doing that
NC: I'm all over the place, but in general my galleries are really small. By far my largest, which is with Shutterstock, has 346 as of writing this. None of the others are even close. I'm think I'm pretty selective of what I choose from a shoot, plus I also just don't have the time to really grow my port the way I would like to. I know this hurts my sales and I see the potential if I could get my numbers up over a thousand. I'm working on it though!
PC: Well, you have been an inspiration to me, and for what it’s worth, I personally think you’ll have no problems reaching your goals quickly. I would love to be able to pick this up again sometime soon if you’d be willing to share some more with us.
© 2006 Perry Correll [contact] [bio ]
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 18 June 2006 )
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