What Sells?

Posted on 5/26/2017 by Jim Pickerell | Printable Version | Comments (1)

A fundamental flaw with stock photography as a business is that producers have little or no access to the data necessary to understand demand. In most any other business the producer has some idea of what is selling and how much demand there is for the particular product.

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Selling Stock is an on-line newsletter that reports on developing trends in the stock photo industry. It is updated at least twice a month. On-line subscribers receive e-mail notification whenever new stories are posted. Archives containing stories going back to late 1995 are fully available to subscribers.

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Copyright © 2017 Jim Pickerell. The above article may not be copied, reproduced, excerpted or distributed in any manner without written permission from the author. All requests should be submitted to Selling Stock at 10319 Westlake Drive, Suite 162, Bethesda, MD 20817, phone 301-461-7627, e-mail: wvz@fpcubgbf.pbz

Jim Pickerell is founder of www.selling-stock.com, an online newsletter that publishes daily. He is also available for personal telephone consultations on pricing and other matters related to stock photography. He occasionally acts as an expert witness on matters related to stock photography. For his current curriculum vitae go to: http://www.jimpickerell.com/Curriculum-Vitae.aspx.

Comments

Sarah Fix Posted May 26, 2017
The question “what sells?” is very important for stock photographers creating new imagery. Researching the data of top selling images, forecasting trends, and shooting under-served areas of opportunity are secret ingredients for most successful stock photographers.

Technology solutions alone make it difficult for many photographers to achieve this goal. At Blend, we make significant investments in providing experienced editors, sharing data, webinars, and in-person meetings with our contributors because there is often important details overlooked that can make the difference between an image being licensed 25 vs. 225 times.

Sales data alone tells you what has sold but it doesn’t give guidance on shooting content for new markets with limited competition that will have an increased demand going forward. This requires research beyond the technology of mining data. Success for many photographers comes from working with a stock agency with a proven track record of sales, experience, and communication.

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