4 Months on Dreamstime: Quantity or Quality
July 20, 2008
User archive
I began my stock photography career here on Dreamstime four months ago from today's date, and over this short period of time I have had 164 pictures accepted and 30 sales, which is descent in my opinion.
However, I have come across a large difference in opinion in whether or not the key to success, in terms of earnings, is having a large portfolio with many pictures available for sale, or by having a small, compact portfolio with only a few, high quality pictures. I seems to me that both ways could be profitable, with neither really having an edge or advantage as both take hard work and determination in order to produce results.
Finally, I would like to thank my dear friend and aspiring model Ms. Heather Martin for all of her hard work and willingness to aid in my stock photography career. I wish her all of the best in her future endeavors and hopefully my photographs have helped her on her way to stardom.
Please visit her website at http://www.myspace.com/heatherannmartin and say hello! Also you can find me at http://www.myspace.com/mattographyforever.
That's all for now my friends, I will have another blog post next month on the 20th. Goodluck and keep on shooting!!!
Photo credits: Matthew Clausen.
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5 Comments
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PublishMattography
Thank you all very much for your helpful suggestions! Stock photography has such a large learning process behind it, and with the help from all of you we can all become better at what we love!
Tracytmlpub
Just a suggestion: If a certain picture has good quality, you may want to consider adding some of your outtakes from that particular shoot. As a designer, I LOVE looking at different angles of the same shot to help my design flow better. Example: You have a picture of a soccer ball and the player's foot... as a designer, I would like to see if you have any other versions of that picture, like at a wider angle, maybe showing more leg, etc. So, if one of your images is selling well because of its good quality, add quantity to your portfolio. Good luck!
Espion
Well off course if you have both quantity and quality you covered all bases.
But if there is only one to choose, I think quantity has the edge, for really one's man meat, another's poison. And I find DT's customers buy some really weird pictures.
So you never know, a poor quality shot - in your view - may just be exactly what someone wanted.
Zqfotography
I would say have a large portfolio here is more possible to earn more :)
Bradcalkins
We seem to be in a similar place - started about the same time, similar numbers. I too wonder whether just blasting photos out beats quality. I figure as a newcomer I don't know enough to target an area yet, so I'm sticking to variety, if not quantity for now (hopefully quality doesn't suffer too much). Time is the third dimension - given the same number of photos, the contributor who has been around the longest seems to do better.