Colin Fearing COM Project C, E June 11, 2021
Colin Fearing - COM2920-3920
Stock Photo Project
Growing my Commercial Stock Image Business
INTRO
Over the past few months, I've been researching, creating, keywording, and submitting stock content made in Blender 3D, to Adobe Stock - as outlined in my project pitch. My goal for this project was to organize my workflow and take a more structured/focused approach to stock submissions, rather than just submitting random content from past projects. Another goal was to find specific niches and keywords with a high demand that I could submit photos for, as it would otherwise be hard to compete with the hundreds of thousands of photos representing less niche concepts like "business".
Here is my timesheet outlining my progress: TIMESHEET. I spent more than 50 hours on the project.
Here are the deliverables I originally promised in my pitch:
1. Links to a gallery of images that were approved - including their number of downloads and earnings (if any!)
2. Links to all denied images - along with a short description of why it wasn’t accepted
3. Total sales figures, (graph, spreadsheet, comparison to previous sales)
4. I will submit AT LEAST: 15 renders, 10 photographs, 10 vectors, 5 videos, and an intermediate report 50% of the way through my progress
5. my TIMESHEET and PROGRESS DOCUMENT (which is this page)
DELIVERABLES
DELIVERING ON DELIVERABLES
Because the proposal was originally written for a 125 hour project instead of the current 50hr project, I've decided to focus primarily on 3D renders (as opposed to also doing photos, illustrations, and videos). I believe 3D renders are the most profitable as per my research so I'm glad I'm focusing on that - I submitted 40+ renders during this project. The spreadsheet of sales is not necessary (more on that at the bottom if this document), and I also decided to group my 'intermediate report' and final document into this one progress page.
CUSTOMER RESEARCH
Before I began creating images, I needed to do some research and understand who buys stock images, what the images are used for, and what buyers generally want out of a stock image.
Who buys stock images?
Considering the buyer and what they want is one of the most important parts to making a successful product, or in this case - stock image. After researching and reading stock contributor help sites and forums, I've found that businesses are one of stock image's main customers. This is because a license is required when someone else's content is used for commercial use, so businesses can't legally take any random image off the internet to use for their advertisements (unlike students, teachers, and others who are using it for non-monetary purposes).
What are stock images generally used for?
Using past images I've uploaded, I reverse-image searched to create an index of all the places my photos were used on the internet. Almost all the uses of my stock images were for advertisements and company sites. There were a lot of articles, business-related help pages, promotional material, and schools promoting their classes - all using my images as backgrounds. There were almost no personal uses of my image, aside from a few LinkedIn profile photos, which are again - business-related.
My takeaway is that focusing on positive/inspirational content fit for promotional purposes is the most important to get images selling.
What do buyers want?
After sifting through popularly selling images, my own experience, and Adobe Stock's recommendations - I've found what is generally wanted in a stock image:
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Well lit/bright (unless the darkness is purposeful to create a mood)
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No grain/sharpening (grainy images or over sharpening makes the image less appealing up close, and these images could be on billboards!)
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Little editing/color correction/contrast (customers prefer the ability to edit the images themselves to suit their needs)
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Space for text (one of the most important parts, customers like to use images as backgrounds for ads or posters)
There are also many other things I need to consider when submitting:
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creating a clear subject/purpose
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representing a feeling/idea (niche)
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feeling authentic (doesn't look like a traditional 'set-up' stock photo)
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high resolution (high pixel count)
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general composition rules like color usage, rule of thirds, use of space/texture, etc..
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not all good photos make good stock photos
It's important to note that buyers want choices, so each topic I explored (paper airplanes, boats, lightbulbs, etc.) has renders from multiple perspectives with slightly different positions of objects.
So after a lot of preliminary research, I began creating my own stock content!
Below are all of the 3D renders I made during this project, organized by their niche (stand out, generative designs, etc.), as well as if they were accepted or rejected and why. Note - these are not all in order, for that see my timesheet linked above!
Images made in Blender 3D, all models/assets/renders made 100% by me!
3D RENDERS
'Stand Out' is the niche I had the most success with before this project, so most of the 3D renders I made during this project were based around this niche. These images are designed to be inspirational/motivational, representing individuality, uniqueness, leadership, and thinking outside the box. I chose this niche because businesses (who are my prime customers) want to promote themselves by showing how forward thinking and at-the-cutting-edge they are. I used paper boats to represent this niche. For these paper boat renders I focused on simplicity and making sure I had lots of space for text. Note: these pictures are heavily downsized with compression artifacts, this is just to save space here but low resolution is a no-go in the actual uploads. If you want to see the images in high resolution, go to my public Adobe Stock profile and buy them! :)
NICHE 1: STAND OUT - PAPER BOATS
Status: Accepted!
Status: Accepted!
Status: Accepted!
Status: Accepted!
Status: Accepted!
Status: Accepted!
CATEGORIZING
When these images are submitted to Adobe Stock, they need to be categorized and keyworded in order to make sure the customer can search for the image. The keywords are the most important part - it doesn't matter how good the image is if nobody can find it. The goal is to precisely define the image and its contents with buzzwords that would make it more likely your image will be searched and bought. Customers won't buy the image if it doesn't relate to their query, so it's important not to go overboard with keywords that don't relate. Here are the keywords and other identifying information I gave the image below:
File Type: Photos
Category: Graphic Resources
Keyword Language: English
Illustrative Content: No
Recognizable People/Property: No
Title: Stand out origami paper boats following a leader on a light blue background with space for text
KEYWORDS
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leadership, paper boat, success, stand out, different, teamwork, successful, leader, lead, goal, group, strive, teamwork, unique, different, boat, origami, growth, follow, travel, freedom, follow the leader, competition, motivation, space for text, blue, illustration, render, flotilla, simple, 3D render
Note, this image is tagged with 36 total keywords, but the first five are the most important so they are larger.
Each of my images has been tagged with a different but still accurate set of keywords, so at least one of the images has a chance to be seen. Then Adobe Stock automatically shows similar images to give customers more choices. That's one of the reasons why all my images for this category have the same color palette (light blue background and white or orange as the subject) - the customer has already found the image they like, but they may want the objects to be in different positions.
This is still technically in the 'stand out' niche, just with a different subject. But hey, this niche worked really well when I did it with balloons - so maybe planes would work too? Again, these look really similar to the boat renders, which is on purpose - I'm going for a simple concept explored with different objects and camera positions. Adobe Stock doesn't allow the same photo to be submitted multiple times with just color changes, but changing multiple things like positions AND camera angles AND colors each time is fine. There are entire accounts that just submit the same image over and over with different text to give customers the most choice. I actually did an experiment trying to automate the entire process, but I figured I should focus on the basics before trying to automate it.
NICHE 2: STAND OUT - PAPER PLANES
Status: Accepted!
Status: Accepted!
Status: Pending
A pending status means that I've submitted the photo, but it has yet to be accepted or rejected by the Adobe Stock reviewer. The review process usually takes a few days, but can sometimes take weeks. This does not mean the image is any worse, some just take longer to be reviewed.
Status: Accepted!
NICHE 3: NFT'S
While researching different stock niches, a way of selling online content suddenly became popular seemingly overnight. Artists were making thousands or even millions off random art bought as a Non-Fungible-Token (NFT). Why people would spend so much money on a digital image (when you can see it for free) is beyond me, but I decided to get in on the craze by creating a short video that would be put up as an NFT.
My actual NFT
NFT's are bought with cryptocurrency, and in order to upload content to be bought a 'gas' fee needed to be paid - so my dad helped set up a crypto account with some Etherium (ETH) in it. However, by then - the craze kind of faded away - all the people who wanted to 'own' random images on the internet had already spent all their money. NFT's still exist but now they're more focused on trading cards or sports clips as opposed to general art. I never put up my video up for sale, but I did find there was still a market for NFT related images on Adobe Stock. News articles are constantly posting info on NFT's, so I instead decided I would focus on creating stock images about NFT's - instead of actual NFT's. Note, actual NFT's tend to be more artistic and weird compared to sanitized stock photos, that's why this video is dreamy and different from my other renders.
Click HERE to see in higher quality!
Another reason I decided to focus on Adobe Stock NFT content instead of actual NFT's is because of the amount of pre-existing content. As soon as NFT's became publicized, everyone was selling them - yet, at the time there were only 300 results on Adobe Stock for NFT related images, compared to the 300,000 there were for crypto/bitcoin. It was a niche I could capitalize on, so I created some renders for it!
Status: Accepted!
Status: Accepted!
Status: Accepted!
Status: Accepted!
WHY RENDERS?
This is a stock PHOTO project, so why am I only creating renders?
I am only creating renders because a more complex skill set is required to make them. There are millions of people who could snap a few decent photos and upload them to a stock site, which has caused a massive market over-saturation. There are so many nice pictures of sunsets and flowers that it's almost impossible to stand out. However, creating renders requires a lot more knowledge/skill/time than photography - because it requires competency in 3d programs, modeling, rendering, editing, and many other skills. Photos can also be taken by almost anyone, while rendering requires a powerful computer and sometimes expensive software that many cannot afford. All this means I'm up against less competition, making my images stand out more in a sea of photos and raising the likelihood mine will be bought.
Up until now, I've been focusing on ultra-specific niches in order to get my images seen in the sea of content. So because renders in general are in greater demand, I've also created a few with miscellaneous themes. Some relate to my theme of 'stand out', but most of them are based on current trends and Adobe Stock's recommendations of what's popular. I know this is going against my original plan of "keeping everything structured and organized" - but most of that part is actually in the keywording, not the images themselves. These images are still 'structured' because I put a lot of thought and time into their keywords, titles, & categorizations in order to increase the chance of success. The images I uploaded before this project often used Adobe Stock's recommended keywords, which sometimes don't relate to the image as well as hand adding them like I did this time.
GENERAL RENDERS
Status: Accepted!
Status: Accepted!
Status: Accepted!
Status: Pending
Status: Pending
Status: Accepted!
Status: Pending
This image is pending because I submitted it late, not because of an issue with the image itself - I hope!
Status: Pending
For the above image, I tried to go for a more photo-realistic render, unlike most of my renders where objects are perfectly aligned, smooth, and lit. I used displacement, cloud, and city night light maps from NASA and other sources to make this image more realistic. It's important to note that you absolutely cannot use other's content in your stock photos - that would be plagiarism and would cause legal repercussions by selling other's work without permission. That is why every single previous render and even the models I've used in those renders were made 100% by me.
This is another reason why I've been focusing on renders instead of photos. It's a whole lot easier to submit to stock when everything was made yourself. As soon as other people get involved (ie, with portrait/model/architecture photography) release & consent forms need to be signed. Even almost unrecognizable structures need the owner's consent in order to be put up as stock - like THIS photo I took out a Japanese window that was declined, as it was submitted without a property release form.
But back to the Earth render, I've decided to submit it even though it uses textures from other people. This is because the textures are used within the image, which has added lighting, warping, and decent changes. The textures aren't the entire image itself. Using someone else's paint to finish your woodworking project is fine, but presenting the paint itself as yours is not. I believe this is the same for textures, and heck - I made the Earth, might as well make the whole solar system!
Status: Pending
Even though I submitted these planet renders, there were some renders I created but did not upload. This was not because they used others' work, but just because I wasn't happy with the outcome.
RENDERS I DIDN'T SUBMIT
These are images I made but didn't submit, mostly because I wasn't happy with the result or I felt they wouldn't work as useable stock photos.
This is an illustration I made in Photoshop that I did not submit for a couple of reasons. It's a little too dark, and I'm not super happy with the colors/editing. There's also a bunch of weird sharp spikes on topographic edges at the top and bottom of the image. These are pretty nitpicky reasons, but I can't live with them. However, I do feel like this concept has a lot of potential.
This is an attempt at a stand-out render that I'm not really happy with. It just doesn't fit or make sense, In hindsight, it's not as bad as I thought it was right after I made it - but I'm still not happy with it.
EXPERIMENTAL RENDERS
Under the category of renders I didn't submit, I also made a few that I knew I wasn't going to upload at all before I made them - they were just practices to help me learn new techniques and break away from the 'solid color background and isolated object' type renders.
This Mars image is an experimental combination between photos and renders which I did because I've never done it before! The planet was rendered by me similar to the Earth image, and the plane window was a photo I'd taken on one of my pre-covid trips. The image on the seatback monitor was perspective warped on, which I've never done before! This image was made mostly in Photoshop, as opposed to Blender where renders are almost exclusively done. It was mostly just a practice exercise to make something out of my comfort zone, and I'm happy with the result. However, I'm still not going to submit it, this is one of the cases where a good photo doesn't necessarily mean a good stock photo.
This experimental image was made mostly in Blender, unlike the previous one. I made it mostly to test our Blender's vine feature which procedurally creates drooping plant roots. But instead of creating a forest scene, I decided to make a strange, alien-virus or underwater creature scene for fun. Again, this image was mostly a learning experience - I learned what/how to use subsurface scattering, particle parenting/clumping, vine root simulations, and a few other minor things.
I also experimented with a few things that didn't even make it into rendered form. For example, the fish swarm image below originally used 'boids' to physically simulate particle swarms of fish. I learned how to use a noise modifier to animate shape keys to make the fish wiggle/swim realistically. I've done a lot with particles over the years I've worked in Blender, but I only just learned it was possible to give particles systems objectives (boids). Here's an example I made where two rival squads of fish duke it out in a brutal battle. The two groups of fish have different objectives - the purple fish want to massacre the orange fish, who are trying to escape and group together. This is a total quick-and-dirty example, but I've never done anything like this before! I'm still working out how to get rid of the fish's flickery behavior and stop them from headbutting the walls!
Click HERE to view larger!
Alright, back to renders I'm submitting. I recently did a big project on generative design, AI is really cool! It's definitely the future for design, but there's not much stock content for it - so I made some! An in-depth explanation of generative design, as well as a pitch for my project, can be found HERE (part 1), and my project prototype can be found HERE (part 2).
NICHE 4: GENERATIVE DESIGN
Status: Pending
Status: Pending
Status: Pending
Why are all the generative design images pending - is there something wrong with them?
Nope - I submit the images in batches, and these were in one of the last batches - so they haven't had as much time to be reviewed. After I create my images, I let them sit until I've forgotten about them - then I come back and look at them with fresh eyes. This helps me get in the 'customer mindset ' ie, if I wanted to buy an image like this what would I search?
Status: Pending
KEYWORDING PART 2
One of the reasons why I made multiple similar images representing the same concept was so I could keyword each differently, and see which performs better. For example, one image I keyworded "paper boat on the water", and another similar image "Illustration of leadership concept with orange paper boat leading among white origami boats on blue background". Judging from research on popular stock-photo titles, a specific/detailed title filled with related buzzwords works better, but my most popular stock photos have fairly short titles, like "Stand out concept with glowing balloons".
I did the same for keywords. Is having many keywords (including partially unrelated words/broad topics) better or worse than having a few detailed/specific words? Adobe Stock recommended fewer more topical keywords, but again my most popular images go against this trend as they have the most amount of keywords. That's one of the outcomes of this project - figuring out what the best way to get my images seen. That way I can create a framework that allows me to get more out of any images I submit. Any small increase is huge because these images continue earnings long after I've stopped working on them. That's one of the great things about stock, earnings aren't proportional to time spent - unlike traditional jobs. Images I spent a few minutes on a few years ago are still making me money today! The sooner I get this framework figured out the more time these images can spend in the 'wild' where they could be bought. Currently, I'm earning about 15$ USD every week without having to do anything (money from old renders). That doesn't seem like much, but I've already made more than $1,500 US passively from previously submitted images, which is super cool.
Back to stand-out images - but this time, with lightbulbs! The lightbulb models were entirely created by me, even though they are more complex than most of the models in my previous images. I tried to focus on realistic lighting from different camera perspectives than my usual top-down-flat-blue-lighting approach. These images take a long time to render because glass requires a lot of light calculations to make caustics, reflections, and refractions look realistic!
NICHE 5: STAND OUT - LIGHT BULBS
Status: Accepted!
Status: Accepted!
Status: Rejected!
Reason: Technical Issues
"Unfortunately, during our review we found that it contains one or more technical issues, so we can't accept it into our collection."
Sadly, this image was rejected! I wish Adobe could give a more detailed description as to why the images wasn't accepted (ie: technical issue - Jpg artifacts) or something like that. Instead, I have to guess. Even though I rendered this image with a really high sample rate, I think the issue was the slight noise in the shadowy glass. It could also be one of the foreground bulbs on the left, which kind of looks like it's floating? The metal on the bulbs is also perfectly reflective, causing the screw-lines on one of the bulbs directly to the left of the illuminated one to have a harsh end on the screw lines.
I re-rendered this image with a higher sample count, a slightly brighter /centered light, a slightly frosted metal material, and I ran the image through Lightroom to get rid of noise/banding. The edits are not very noticeable unless the images are switched between quickly, but hopefully it will be enough to get the image accepted. (Update, the image was accepted!)
Interestingly, the above render is a re-make of a similar render I submitted a few years ago, which was rejected (the render below). I remade it because I felt some major improvements could be made in order to get it approved. On the render below, the glass was really noisy, the lighting was way too dark, I used the wrong colorspace (the white part of the images looks oddly grey), and the image just generally lacked quality. It also followed a tutorial pretty closely, so I wanted to keep a similar style but change up the lighting and make the render more presentable. I guess the above image is a testament to the improvements I've made during the past few years.
(I wrote this part before my 'improved' image was rejected, ouch my ego! :)
AN OLD REJECTED RENDER (NOT SUBMITTED THIS TIME)
Status: Accepted!
Status: Accepted!
Because making these images requires a lot of screentime, I usually have the 'nightlight' filter permanently enabled on my screen. The filter removes harsh blue light, and it usually isn't a problem when writing or browsing - but it really throws off the colors of my images! Multiple times I've forgotten to turn it off, honed the colors of my image to be just right, only to turn off the filter and see the colors change! That's possibly why some of the blues in my images seem too vibrant - the blue-light filter removed some of their saturation when making them. In fact, while writing this I realized that I made all of those lightbulb images without turning off the filter. It turns out the filter darkens the images slightly too, and after turning it off I was shocked to see terrible, off-center, blown-out white splotches in the 'glowing' part of the lightbulbs. I've had to re-render/re-submit several of the images. This may be another reason the strewn-lightbulb image was rejected - the reviewer's screen showed a slightly different image than I saw on mine! Below is an example of what the nightlight filter made the image look like on my end. (you may not see a difference depending on your screen's dynamic range).
What the nightlight filter made the image look like
As part of a VVS poster contest, I created a 'What I Can and Can't Control" poster. I just whipped this up quickly and am not submitting it for stock, but it is an example of what stock images could be used for. This is also an example of why making sure the image has 'room for text' is so important. The customer will add things to the image, and you never know what they might put! The background is a modified version of a previous stock render I've made, meaning the whole image was made by me. Interestingly, this poster won an honorable mention & a $25 gift card - pretty good for like an hour of work!
My original render
What I actually submitted (more blown-out)
OTHER CONTENT
Before I learned that this project would be cut down to 50 hours instead of 125hrs and I decided I would only focus on renders - I'd started making illustrations. Here is the one I finished:
Status: Pending
When uploading to Adobe Stock, there is a place where uploaded files just sit until you keyword them and submit them for review. When starting this project, I had like 15 images/renders just sitting there waiting to be keyworded. So during this project, I titled, categorized, keyworded, and submitted them, which helped me practice for when submitting images I made during this project. Most of the images were accepted no problem, but 6 were reviewed and left indefinitely in the 'reminder' category. This means that the images require a release form to be accepted. This would make sense if the images contained faces, other's content, or buildings, but the images I'd submitted were completely original paintings of fictional places (shown below). They were flagged as requiring a "Property Release":
NOT MADE DURING THIS PROJECT - ONLY SUBMITTED
???! Why were these images flagged as requiring a "Property Release" when these are my paintings of fictional places? I'm still not exactly sure, but I think it's because the reviewer thought I'd submitted pictures of somebody else's paintings - which would require a property release.
The lesson learned here is that... ummm, okay I just wanted to show that a few of my images from a while ago were so good the reviewer thought somebody else must have made them.
THE FREE COLLECTION
My stock portfolio was recently selected to be eligible to nominate certain assets into Adobe Stock's 'Free Collection'. This is a collection of photos Adobe Stock is giving away for free to attract people to their stock site, and while my images wouldn't make any sales, they'd likely be downloaded more times. Accepted nominated photos (to a max of 8) will be paid $5 per by Adobe Stock, and will then stay in the free collection for a year. Why exactly Adobe is undermining their business model by giving photos away for free is beyond me, but I'm still partaking in it because the photos I'm nominating haven't been bought much, so I might as well at least get them used. I would absolutely not nominate my best-selling photos, but $5 per is much more than these have ever made. Below is the Adobe Stock contributor page which shows all eligible assets. Note: these assets are not the ones I made during this project, these are years old and still haven't got many sales.
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BLACKBOX
A while back, I submitted a few videos to a video stock site called BlackBox. I didn't get any sales, and I totally forgot about it for more than a year. Then, while working on this stock project - I made $23.08 from a single sale! Adobe stock images usually sell for around 30 cents each, so twenty dollars from one download is amazing! During this project, I've only submitted to Adobe Stock - but this reminded me that there's lots of other platforms to submit my content to (Shutterstock, Getty, BlackBox, etc...)
SALES AND IMAGE USAGE
As of the end of this project, two of the images I've submitted have sold!
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For the 50 hours I worked, I learned a collective... 72 cents (USD). However, I'm actually really happy with this. These images were submitted on June 1st, and were each bought within the first few days - this is rare! My best selling images weren't bought for the first few months or even years, until they suddenly took off. Fast sales signal to Adobe Stock's algorithm that these images are valuable to customers, and hopefully they will get promoted more! Getting 36 cents per sale is also a great sign, because it means I've 'tiered up'. Adobe Stock has different 'ranks' depending on the number of total downloads you get. The higher the tier, the higher percentage of the customer's money you get paid. I used to get 33 cents per download, so getting 36 per means I've elevated somewhat and hopefully those few cents will add up over time!
I would consider this project an absolute success - even If I didn't get large results right away. This is passive income, so the majority of income will be generated when I'm sleeping or have moved on to other things. During this project, I made US $318.14 passively from previous images. Hopefully, the time I spent creating, categorizing, keywording, and submitting images now, will provide benefits far into the future! I also learned a lot of new techniques and things that will make upcoming renders and stock photos even better! I really enjoyed working on this project, it was super fun and I can't wait to continue stalking.. I mean, making stock photos!
HERE is my public Adobe Stock portfolio, with all accepted images during both this project and the previous years.