Customer Reviews

Microstock Money Shots: Turning Downloads into Dollars with Microstock Photography

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I'm familiar with Ellen Boughn so curiosity got the best of me and I bought and read the book. It's a fast read, you can finish it in a day... partially because there is nothing in it that you won't see posted on the microstock sites and the multitude of blogs about microstock.

The blogs and the book have another thing in common too. They are both seeking to profit by convincing photographers to devalue their work. Ellen hopes to sell books by leading you to believe you can make a fortune licensing your work for 25 cents. That's right, a quarter... and one site licenses the work for a mere 14 cents. The blogs by convincing you of the same and then signing up to license your work for less that it costs you to park your car at a meter during a photoshoot and themselves making a referral commission off of any image you license.

One thing quite apparent in reading this is Ellen is VERY AWARE that the advice she is giving is misleading. For example, she mentions that most of the food photos shot for microstock look very unappetizing and that a food stylist with her full compliment of tricks is needed to make the food look good. Then she continues to say that you will not make enough from the image as microstock to cover the cost of the stylist!

This is true. And it is the way of microstock. Convince the photographer that if he only invested more into the shoot he would make a fortune... and knowing full well that he will not. There is a small handful of photographers who do well at microstock this way and they can be counted on the fingers of both hands. However based on some actual payout charts that were once available from iStock, the vast, vast, vast majority of contributors never license enough work in a year to reach the $100 payout threshold. The microstock sites profit from the work and the photographers who created the work get a goose egg. Nothing, zip, zero! As for those who are making big bucks at it, part of that success is that they are held up as poster boys to encourage others to sign up. Also, one has to wonder how much they would be making had they pursued revenue streams that paid what the work is worth!

Ellen sold out AND SHE KNOWS IT. Now she is asking you to do the same so she can profit from selling her own soul. Someone with her years of experience in the industry should be devoting her time to make the industry in which she earns her living a better place, not working to destroy it. And if she was a REAL expert, that is what she would be doing.

Before you buy this book, ask yourself some questions. Let's say you manage to license a photo 100 times on microstock. At a quarter each, that is a whopping total of $25. Doesn't even come close to covering production costs, or even the coffee brought in for the models. Now consider you had recieved what is still an unrealistically low price for your work of just $30 per license... sill way too low but now you are talking $3000 for the same work. Now ask yourself just how it is that someone who is creating an advertising campaign, putting out a magazine, or promoting a national or international product is unable to come up with $30 for a photo?

Is it your job to subsidize their business?

Ellen seems to think so. So much so that I actually had to wonder which of the microstock sites paid Ellen to write it. The book does more to make the lives of the image inspectors and microstock site owners easier than it will do to help you make money.

It is possible to make money at microstock, but the effort and cost involved does not result in a satisfactory return on investment. A photographer who manages to somehow make $25,000 a year on microstock would be making a good $250,000 to $500,000 per year had he put the same effort into landing work that paid fairly.

Save your money, invest it instead on a copy of "Best Business Practices for Photographers" by John Harrington and learn what your work is actually worth and how to get it. Join a professional association and learn how other successful photographers are actually making it work in this business. Ellen is preying on those who have a dream, but have not found the professional resources they need to make their dream a reality. Don't be her next sucker.

Ellen's book was good for a laugh and to see close up a slice of the cancer that is destroying photography. It now lines my bird cage.

Microstock Money Shots does a great job of giving the reader inspiration and direction for shooting, without stifling your own creativity and freedom. Ellen doesn't give you hand holding directions through the microstock process, but instead gives you ideas, thoughts, and inspiration on how to use your own creativity to create sale-able stock.

The book is full of ideas on what to shoot, how to find models, how to make your photos look more professional, and what sells; but again, Ellen smartly conveys her ideas as inspiration as apposed to instructions.

This book could be recommended for both someone just starting out in microstock or someone with years of experience looking for additional sources of inspiration.

Microstock Money Shots is loaded with concise, practical information on shooting photos for stock (and not entirely limited to microstock). I read halfway through this book on the night it arrived. It's a fast read, but so full of info that I'll probably review and reread specifics again later. The chapters are well organized, well written, and well supported with actual stock images. Ellen has a wealth of experience in the business, and she shares it here. Truly a great resource!

Ellen has created a how-to guide that is a great starter for beginners and a fantastic reminder for the experienced. The book's common sense approach makes reading easy, to the point, and is a stepping off point for further discussion on the many blogs and forums associated with the industry.

An excellent guide to the complex world of the microstock industry. Extremely helpful hints on framing photos for commercial use, composition, and popular themes. Useful technical hints on submission errors. Best "how-to" book I've read. Highly recommended with plenty of tips for both professionals and amateurs. An extra plus is that Ellen is a good writer, so it a well-organized, comfortable read. This book is going to travel with me on future shoots.

I was looking forward to this much touted "best guide to the microstock photography" by the famous and knowledgeable author only to be disappointed. Reading the foreword section by Andres Rodriguez (Boughn's friend), made me uneasy - in his brief introduction he keeps mentioning ad nauseam that this is the only book one needs in order to take acceptable microstock photos. Can it be more tacky than that?
However, the book content didn't meet my expectations at all. Those so called "insider secrets" are no secrets, Ellen is not sharing anything special here. No real mention of markets and customers who buy stock photos, except for a very general, vague and available freely online information. Not helpful.
The author is not a photographer herself, just a business woman who makes money on microstock selling/promoting visual content for big bucks to those clients she carefully does not identify - this book probably is there to serve the likes of her first and foremost. It should be sold for 1$ per download in line with the pricing of stock photos. That would be acceptable and fair.
All the other information regarding composition, keywording, choice of subject, etc. is basically a repeat what every single stock site provides for free to the contributors (i.e., Bigstock, Shutterstock, iStock, Fotolia, Dreamstime, etc.) along other free as well and superb photo tutorials online (Harvard University Extension School, Cambridge in Colour, and many more).
I am glad I borrowed this book from the local library before wasting money on the purchase. If anything I would recommend "Taking Stock: Make money in microstock creating photos that sell" (Rob Sylvan) by a microstock photographer with some real experience to share.

For those in the stock photography business...and those thinking about getting in...this book provides great information. The author gives good information, very helpful to those still trying to figure it out.

Microstock Money Shots provides the information that's most difficult to find about how to achieve success in microstock. It's easy to find out how to embed metadata and how to use an FTP client. It's even quite simple to check the most popular files to see what to shoot. But finding out how to shoot it, why it's popular, and what common themes make images popular over a long period of time is much more difficult. That's the core value of what Ellen provides in Microstock Money Shots; the background qualitative knowledge that comes from years of experience working with stock photography. I highly recommend this book for anyone serious about building their microstock revenue.

It covers every aspect, but you can read it fast - some tricks are of immediate use, with instant impact on sales. Then you can dig further and have a second approach. A must for serious amateurs and pros!

Microstock Money Shots is a great, approachable guide to microstock photography. It's entertaining and informative and it will make your microstock efforts more successful. Ellen covers a broad range of topics -- from how to get started to license types -- concisely. Highly recommended.