Your RU-vid channel is genuine and awesome. I’ve done stock for a while, just for fun really, but my biggest thrill was in 2019 when I sold a photo for $8 and one for $18. My thinking is always that my photos won’t earn anything just sitting in my photo library.
:) Thanks! That's actually the best way to put it. If you're going to have photo's, why not just store them on a stock site and at least make money from them? It's kind of like having a portfolio online of your work and instead of paying for a website, they pay you occassionally. lol. It's crazy, cos most of the time they're really small prices - I've often said how disproportionate the joy is for even a 10c sale. I can't imagine how happy I'd be to get an $18 sale! 😂
Amazing video. Love your "it's a total duh! moment!". Some serious great advice in this video. Definitely hear some things I plan to implement into m own journey. Keep up the dope content! #YupYup
I have lots of "duh" moments. lol. Some days I consider myself intelligent, and other times I wonder how I missed something that now seems so obvious! lol
Well, I think that there's short term gain when you're trading time for money - like doing one off gigs. And then there's marathons like stock photography - where you invest your time up front and you get pay back later. BUT, the people I've seen online who are successful at it, treat it like a job. Some are making 6 figures out of it, but they have a 10 year portfolio. And I keep seeing it repeated, that it's only about 10% of that portfolio that's actually making the money. The other 90% is just there to basically point to the 10%. At this point, I'm going off other creators I'm watching, cos I've only ever made a few dollars. But I also get that you need to have a large portfolio to make larger money. I think the only exception would be if you got something REALLY timely - like during "the big sick" a few years ago, people that were making content related to that did quite well I think. And also some strategy - paying attention to what people are talking about, and then making content specifically for that. For instance, if you enjoy doing health related photography, maybe there's a new diet fad everyone's raving about - so if you make content on that, it's going to sell better for example. So there's definitely strategy to it - but it's possible. It's just up to you if you want to put the time and effort into it. Like working out - you've got to be strategic and consistent to see results. There's always people succeeding in area's and those failing. It's up to you if you're willing to dip your toes in to try. :)
This could be my story! Same reason I never made the step forward. And guess what, I started around the same time as you did with stockphotography, maybe a few months earlier, and it's slowly getting somewhere. 🙂 And yesterday I uploaded my first Ai image, just to try it out and see if it's something to do on the side together with photography. And I'm working on uploading video's too. But what you did is a great idea, taking photo's while doing the daily tasks. Why didn't I think of that, duh... 🙈 Love seeing you video's each month from the other side of the world. 😉
I'm pretty sure my story is lots of people's stories. There's always so many complicated reasons why we don't take steps forward - and the hardest part is when you go "I'm a fairly intelligent person, WHY can't I figure this out?" And truthfully I've found the only answer is cos I'm afraid to take that step forward. As soon as I take that step forward, I end up figuring something else out - that I never would have, had I not actually DONE it myself. That's quite simply what all the "experts" have over the rest of us I've come to believe - they simply take steps that we're afraid to. I'd love to see your portfolio - can you send me the link? It's so cool to see what others are doing! I'm also trying to get into video at the moment - I'd love to get good at video too - but one step at a time. lol. And AI fascinates me. My other half and my kids are creating a game and are using AI to help solidify some of the idea's. They already had half the game designed, but questions around landscape idea's and stuff - it's AMAZING what AI can do. What program are you using?
Keep up the good work. Stock photography is also a numbers game. More photos means more downloads. I started in 2018, I think with a few sales in 2 years. Now I have an average sale of 60 photos per month, spread over 6 stock sites. I've got around 1300 photo's.
this guilt that you discuss here is extremely real! tricky to balance that much-needed free time when you've got years & years of media that needs attention (along with ALLLL the adulting we have to do lol). glad to hear this discussed, it's not an overly-talked about point!
