Most photographers wanting to sell stock photos never really get around to it, but the more time you put into identifying your markets and researching them, the more saleable your work will be. There's no big secret there: the best marketers in any field are those who identify a market, research it and create a product that their new customers simply have to have.
The good news is it’s quite straightforward to apply that approach to your stock photography. The other bonus is that when you make this thought proces a habit your work volume will increase significantly as well!
It's a simple three-step process that you can start now and keep adding to for years to come. Get yourself a ring folder so you can add extra pages for new Subject/Buyer combinations as required. Don't let the simplicity of this process fool you; this is very powerful. This is how it works:
1. Make a list of your main subjects … aim for 10 or more for now. You will add to this constantly, so for now just write down a few of the main subjects you like to shoot, those you shoot well and those you'd really like to shoot more often.
Write each of these on a fresh page. If you are using a ring binder, make these the divider pages so you can insert additional pages between them.
2. Now make a list of Photo Buuyer Types under each of those ‘Subjects’. These are the kinds of buyers who might be interested in photos of that material. Write these under the 'Subject' heading and be as detailed as possible.
3. Now set up a Buyer-Type Profile page for each of those Subject-Buyer combinations. You need to find specific published examples of that specific buyer type using an image of that subject. You need to find published examples and really study the image to work out what was about each image that the buyer just had to have.
You can make a note of any technical details of interest, but your main focus should be on the content and composition. You are researching your market, so some study of the competition is useful, but the real value here is in understanding what your potential customers are spending their money on.
In every published photo there will usually be one or two 'elements' that the buyer simply had to have.
Even when the photo is a fairly 'bland' portrait; human, animal or object, there'll usually be some specific trait or feature that caused the photo buyer to select that particular image.
Other times it won't be a physical element, but something less tangible: a mood or emotion or other message. They're the ones you need to study until you see not just the message, but how the photographer used the physical elements of the image to convey it?
Has the photographer used props to add to the story? Are there subtle messages in play? How do all the elements fit together? How has the photographer used emotion or mood?
Until you start to recognise these kinds of elements in other images, it will be pure chance whether you capture them in your own work. However, once you do start to look for these elements in other images, you'll start to see them in your own photo opportunities, and then you can start include them in your own work.
Once you're doing that regularly, I'd almost guarantee you'll find yourself shooting stock photos that sell. You'll also find you're shooting a lot more prolifically as well!
Over time you might end up with notes on dozens of potential buyers for any subject you like to photograph, so when you're faced with the opportunity to shoot a specific subject, you'll have an huge list of what buyer-types might be interested in this subject, and you'll have.
Instead of getting one or two ‘photographer’ shots you could easily walk away with dozens of highly marketable stock images, each custom shot for a different specific market.
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