The Biggest Lesson I learned about Stock Photography in my first 6 months (and it’s a total “duh” moment!)
I believe that asking the right questions is what takes us higher and lets us into that “next level” of the game of our lives. I’m signed up to the Daily Stoic newsletter - so even when I miss a few days in my daily stoic journal - Ryan’s still dropping into my inbox with gems from Seneca like: “Where are we choosing to make life harder for ourselves?”
So what does this have to do with the biggest lesson I’ve learned in the last 6 months of being a stock photographer?
My primary goal this year was to test out about 10 different photography income streams that worked around me being a homeschooling Mum to 3 monkeys. So my basic checklist was: no long hours shooting weddings, nothing that required me to be gone long periods of time - things I could mainly do from home, work into my weekly routine for myself AND quite possibly involve the kids in.
Stock photography was the lowest-hanging fruit option - and to be honest, I had YEARS worth of old photos I needed to clear up and edit. So, win/win.
Today’s stock report is a reflection on the first 6 months of my stock journey, and the MASSIVE, HUGE lesson I only learned last week that’s already totally changed the way I’m approaching… well, everything!
I knew early on, that the only way I was going to have THE year that made up for the past crappy 6 or 7 years, was if I threw myself into it all. I asked God, The Universe, (whatever you would like to term powers bigger than me) - for a HUGE, ALL IN year in EVERY aspect of my life, and I knew that would be messy as hell until I managed to get systems in place around what I was doing - which is why I figured that if I introduced one new thing a month, it’d give me time to… ease?... into it. (yes, I’m slightly delusional.) lol. I knew that all my new routines had to work together, or I would end up burnt out running around like a chook with my head cut off.
Whatever the outcome - I had to go ALL IN with EVERY aspect of my life this year, to truly see a different view by the end of this year.
January and February started out kind of easy - I just knew that every week I had to get through about a year’s worth of old photography and editing, and then upload the good ones to the stock sites. I was pretty stoked to get 200 images out of that.
So - January I introduced stock photos, February I uploaded my first YouTube about my stock journey, and March was meant to be starting to take photos and get into video too.
But we had some family issues in March and April that took priority, and I totally lost my momentum. No photography, no uploads, no youtubes.
Now I’m not saying this as a “poor me” - as I said: I asked for this. I asked for this year to be the year to learn ALL THE LESSONS. Y’know how American’s say “all the things” - well, I asked for ALL THE LESSONS.
One of my biggest lessons I was just never getting past was this: I’m the kind of person that would prefer to just keep learning till I know everything, and then do it. Which has stopped me from doing ANYTHING. It’s kind of like how being a perfectionist can stall you in life.
Quick story - and maybe you’ll see your own lessons in this too:
About 13 years ago, when I was 30, I went to University to learn marketing and management. I loved it, I found it totally fascinating. But I realised quickly that what was really pulling at me, was the new world of social media marketing - which, it was 2011, Facebook was still only a few years old at that point, and we’d not long gotten out of our MySpace era. Yes, I am MySpace level old - and d’ya know while I was scripting this I googled it - it’s still going!
I THREW myself into it outside of doing my university stuff, getting up at like 4am just to get a few hours in, researching on the computer before our then 1 year old and 4 year old woke up - and yes, that was a pretty big burnout at the end of that year.
I really wanted to start a blog and talk all about this thing I was learning and excited and pumped about - BUT - I was afraid that I didn’t know enough, and that people would trust me, and then I would let them down because I’d missed some piece of the puzzle I hadn’t yet learned.
So I kept learning. And learning. And reading. And downloading every freebie I could, and taking courses… but not stepping up.
A couple of years later, in like 2013/ 2014, I came across a blog that was someone else’s, who was writing about the same stuff I had wanted to. They were 3 years into their journey, and releasing monthly reports on what they were earning from their little blog. And it was enough to have replaced their full-time income.
And it hit me, that if I had just started when I originally felt pulled to, I could have been in the same situation. So I started my own blog. I wrote like 50 posts, threw myself into it - and never released it. For the EXACT SAME reason. Because I just couldn’t get over that feeling that I might inadvertently give the wrong advice.
I’ve always been pulled to share what I’ve learned in life. I had some incredible influences in my life that have shaped who I am, and all I ever wanted was to pay that forward. To be that for someone else.
The moral of all of this, is that this year I decided to just throw myself into it all, Memento Mori as the stoics say, and document my journey - the good, the bad, and the lessons along the way. To talk about both what I do know, the lessons I’m learning AND the mistakes I’m making along the way.
So - with that as a base, lets jump into the lessons I’ve learned in the first 6 months of this year to do with stock photography!
THE BIGGEST LESSON I’VE LEARNED
First of all, I want to say - if you’re sitting on the sidelines here and wondering if stock is going to be for you - just do it! Give yourself a year, set a target of like 1000 images and see what happens. You’re going to learn one of three things:
1. Worst case scenario: You hate the grind and it’s just not where you want to put your attention and energy. Or you realise, actually it’s kinda boring, you can’t be bothered, it’s not as interesting as you thought it was going to be. Sweet, now you know. Let it go, move on to something that does spark you and light you up.
2. You LOVE it and you’re totally succeeding at it, and you can’t believe it took you this long to start! Or
3, You LOVE IT, you’re not succeeding at it, but you’re willing to learn, adapt and keep trying.
I fall into category 3 at this point, but I’m determined to get to category 2. ;)
And the BIGGEST lesson I’ve learned in the last 6 months, only hit me about a week ago when I was reading my morning Daily Stoic email: “Where are we choosing to make life harder for ourselves?”.
My first thought was stressing over my stock images. And stressing over the house being a mess. And stressing over not doing enough with my 7 year old. And that I have client work still outstanding. And having all these separate pieces of my life that I’m trying to fit in and feeling like I’m failing at all of them because there just aren’t enough hours in the day.
I think if you’re a parent, you totally get that no matter what you’re doing, you feel guilty for not doing something else. If you’re doing housework, you feel guilty for not spending that time with the kids. Spending time with the kids just watching a movie? Yea, but I’m not getting the dishes done and the beds need stripping and remaking cos it’s been WAY to long since you did it last… or you’re at burnout and just need a night to watch Vampire Diaries and chill and forget your responsibilities - you feel guilty for taking the time to yourself when there’s SO much else that needs to be done.
And this is a SUPER IMPORTANT FACTOR when you’ve got kids and one of the reasons I started this channel - I wanted to find SUSTAINABLE ways to… do it all.
So where am I choosing to make life harder for myself? By trying to separate it all out. That was the WHOLE point at the beginning of the year - how can I integrate my whole life so it all fits in?
So here’s the new secret: I just do the things I need to, and I photograph them creatively while I’m going.
Super simple dumb, right. Like “duh”.
I baked with my 7 year old last week. And after we’d made the cookies, I realised I should have had my camera out the whole time. So I thought - how can I photograph these in 5 different ways? I got 17 photos out of that for something I was already doing, AND that was only half of the process.
Stock photography is about creating images that reflect what people want to talk about. And HOW MANY lifestyle blogs are there in the world? How many blogs are there about parenting? What are they looking up?
In this busy world: “Parents spending time with their kids”.
In a world where kids are stuck to their devices? The opposite: “Kids baking”. “Skills kids should have”.
Or like yesterday when I shot the girls laying on their beds just reading and playing with their toys: “kids being kids”. “Non-tech time”. I set these scenarios up while I was cleaning up.
Obviously these aren’t great keywords, but you get the drift: these are the things people are writing about.
And I pushed that one step further - I knew I needed to clean our top floor - which is our joint bedroom space - so I thought “what are all the photos I could get up here while I’m cleaning up this space?
This became my new thought pattern: “why not get photos of the beds looking all nice and tidy?” I just got the girls new matching duvet covers, so it looks aesthetically pleasing. I could get the girls to come up and lay on the beds reading and that gives me content for non-tech time. I could get shots of the plain background just to load up as “background” images.
And then I took this integration thing a step further - what could I share on instagram stories as I’m going through this, cos I’m super crap at keeping up with any kind of social media too.
I also wanted to get some photos of my 17 year old son and 7 year old daughter putting together the new bookshelf we got (falling under the Sibling Time kind of context, or unschooling), but by the time I’d finished cleaning, cleaning out all the drawers of old clothes that didn’t fit, sorting lunch, etc - it was dark and I just wanted it done.
So instead of looking through all the current trend reports - many of which I don’t have access to do right now - there are all these super popular evergreen topics. Kids, life, coffee, work, creator economy, technology… and I’ve got access to all of that.
So ask yourself - what am I doing TODAY? Am I doing the dishes? Could I photograph it in an interesting way? Could I get photos of bubbles in the sink? y’know it sounds super dumb, but I just looked it up and there’s photos there. Because somewhere in the world there will be some Mum blogging about having to do the chores and they’ll be looking up a sink full of bubbles or a messy bench.
The lesson here is that we overlook the mundane everyday life looking for something that’s trending that we may not even really have access to in our lives - so it makes the barrier to entry WAY harder than it has to be.
So my next 6 months are going to look like me photographing our lives in creative ways. And - keep in mind, we also decided as a family that we had a “no direct face” rule for stock photography because you never know what they’re going to be used for. So I do have to get a little creative because I’m mainly seeing the kids from behind or side on, or just a portion of them. I see a lot of stock photography including kids faces, so I think it’s a really personal question of if you want your kids likeness out there in the stock landscape.
Anyway - going back to our dishes theme: The dishes piled up. The kids doing the dishes. Siblings working together. The little one starting to help and standing on a box just to reach the sink. Bubbles in our black sink with maybe our white dishes in there so it’s still a visually interesting image. Top down, side on, wide shot, close up, video horizontal, video portrait. Video wide, video closeup.
Who knows, in 6 months maybe I’ll be crushin’ it in the kitchen sink category.
The big lesson here - where are you making things harder than they have to be?
SALES + INCOME
Only one sale in June - a dollar on Adobe.
So my totals so far for the first 6 months: $1.57 on Adobe, $4.41 on Shutterstock, and 17 cents on Deposit Photos. Still no sales on Alamy or Pond5.
Bringing us to a grand total of 225 photos uploaded and $6.15 in sales over 5 platforms.
But I know that I can’t judge it until I’ve got at least 1000 images and I’m uploading on a regular basis - and it’s been patchy at best this year.
COMING UP
Over the second half of 2024 I’m going to keep doing these monthly stock reports and what I’m learning along the way, but I’m also going to be moving this channel into talking about other income streams I’m testing out as well, so we can keep learning together.
My hope is that by watching someone go from the ground up, testing, failing, succeeding (hopefully), and sharing it all - it’ll inspire someone else to take a step forward. Especially those of us who haven’t wanted to put a foot wrong, so we don’t put a foot forward at all. I hope that my journey allows someone else's journey.
I say this everytime: There’s always room in the stock photography landscape for more contributors - so take that step.
