None this month but last month was great - several in the $20 range and one for $80+ and these are just pictures no video

Quote from: blvdone on August 17, 2022, 16:05

Quote from: Zero Talent on August 17, 2022, 10:35

Occasional high-priced sale made today:

Is it for video or photo?
You have some talent for sure.

Video, and ... nope, no talent:

https://www.microstockgroup.com/general-stock-discussion/how-much-has-your-best-selling-image-made-you/msg578844/#msg578844

OK, you insist on having no talent, but nobody believes you!!!  lol

I do. Hard work beats talent (if talent doesn't work hard)

Exactly! Work and acquired knowledge (through work) is the answer.
I am not blessed with talent, I'm no artist, I'm an engineer. Everything I do in this field comes from research, analysis and self-learning, not from luck, not from talent.

I have "Zero Talent". 

Btw, here is another sale that qualifies for "occasional high-priced sale", that just happened today on SS:

Quote from: Zero Talent on August 18, 2022, 10:46

Quote from: Roscoe on August 18, 2022, 09:49

I do. Hard work beats talent (if talent doesn't work hard)

Exactly! Work and acquired knowledge (through work) is the answer.
I am not blessed with talent, I'm no artist, I'm an engineer. Everything I do in this field comes from research, analysis and self-learning, not from luck, not from talent.

I have "Zero Talent". 

Btw, here is another sale that qualifies for "occasional high-priced sale", that just happened today on SS:

Now I am getting depressed with your high sales. Go away!

Can't speak in Zero Talent's name but I think what he's trying to say: anyone can do it if you really want to.
At least, that's what I get out of it.

Rule of thumb is that it takes 10.000 hours of proper practice and education to master a certain discipline.
I know there are exceptions and certain factors in a discipline that require other characteristics (e.g. physical) too, but 10.000 hours of proper practice will really beat out a lot, if not most, of more talented competition. Hard work often goes hand in hand with consistency, reliability and adaptability while talent without hard work is strongly dependent on the right conditions, luck in other words, to thrive.

Whether it's worth it to dedicate all that time to microstock is another question of course and for most of us the answer will be hell no. On the other hand, you really don't need that 10.000 hours for microstock. Most of us already know how to handle a camera and getting a decent looking shots out of it. If you are willing to invest time in reverse engineering success stories, you can probably go a long way in microstock. So we can all create our micro success stories and decide for our own how far we want to go with that. Find the right balance between liking what you do, invest some time in things you don't necessarily like but need to grow, and the returns (which can be financially or emotionally, pleasure) you get out of it.

So far my philosophical meandering take on the topic.

 Hard work beats talent (if talent doesn't work hard)

From my personal experience, with microstock, sheer luck beats talent and hard work. Might not have been the case when the selection of images was more limited, but now with millions of images for competition, it's mostly a matter of luck to have the right image at the right time displayed somewhere.

This one sold for around $100:
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/orange-industrial-transportable-dumpster-container-1668704380

I  still have some images where I put lots of work into where I seem to have been able to produce something that is in high demand and the images sold hundreds of times. But even "hundreds of times" can, in worse case scenario, still mean like $50 only. For me it's rarely the images that are in high demand and sell in large quantities that bring in the money. It's the ocassional high amount sales that make the difference between a good month and a bad month on Shutterstock and these, at least for me, are often really random. I really can't attribute having earned $100 from a very random photo of a very random industrial dumpster, that took me literally 3 seconds to take, 0 seconds to post-process and under 10 seconds to keyword to "hard work" or "talent". Anyone who follows the minimum image quality standards of Shutterstock could have made, uploaded and sold an image like this. All it needed was luck.

Quote from: Roscoe on August 18, 2022, 09:49

 Hard work beats talent (if talent doesn't work hard)

From my personal experience, with microstock, sheer luck beats talent and hard work. Might not have been the case when the selection of images was more limited, but now with millions of images for competition, it's mostly a matter of luck to have the right image at the right time displayed somewhere.

This one sold for around $100:
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/orange-industrial-transportable-dumpster-container-1668704380

I  still have some images where I put lots of work into where I seem to have been able to produce something that is in high demand and the images sold hundreds of times. But even "hundreds of times" can, in worse case scenario, still mean like $50 only. For me it's rarely the images that are in high demand and sell in large quantities that bring in the money. It's the ocassional high amount sales that make the difference between a good month and a bad month on Shutterstock and these, at least for me, are often really random. I really can't attribute having earned $100 from a very random photo of a very random industrial dumpster, that took me literally 3 seconds to take, 0 seconds to post-process and under 10 seconds to keyword to "hard work" or "talent". Anyone who follows the minimum image quality standards of Shutterstock could have made, uploaded and sold an image like this. All it needed was luck.

I agree with you, luck is probably quite a big factor in the game nowadays.
But don't you think that hard work increases your chances in having that luck?

Hard work can be producing a lot of content, which increases your chances on having more occasional big sales of rather random shots like you had, or having an unintentional best-seller of a rather generic subject.
 
Hard work can be producing higher quality images, which also increases your chances of getting images actually sold on a very regular basis.

Or hard work can be analyzing the market trends and gaps in the database and start shooting that.

Or combining all of that together.

Whether the hard work is worth the returns is of course a completely different story

Quote from: Firn on August 19, 2022, 06:15

Quote from: Roscoe on August 18, 2022, 09:49

 Hard work beats talent (if talent doesn't work hard)

From my personal experience, with microstock, sheer luck beats talent and hard work. Might not have been the case when the selection of images was more limited, but now with millions of images for competition, it's mostly a matter of luck to have the right image at the right time displayed somewhere.

This one sold for around $100:
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/orange-industrial-transportable-dumpster-container-1668704380

I  still have some images where I put lots of work into where I seem to have been able to produce something that is in high demand and the images sold hundreds of times. But even "hundreds of times" can, in worse case scenario, still mean like $50 only. For me it's rarely the images that are in high demand and sell in large quantities that bring in the money. It's the ocassional high amount sales that make the difference between a good month and a bad month on Shutterstock and these, at least for me, are often really random. I really can't attribute having earned $100 from a very random photo of a very random industrial dumpster, that took me literally 3 seconds to take, 0 seconds to post-process and under 10 seconds to keyword to "hard work" or "talent". Anyone who follows the minimum image quality standards of Shutterstock could have made, uploaded and sold an image like this. All it needed was luck.

I agree with you, luck is probably quite a big factor in the game nowadays.
But don't you think that hard work increases your chances in having that luck?

Hard work can be producing a lot of content, which increases your chances on having more occasional big sales of rather random shots like you had, or having an unintentional best-seller of a rather generic subject.
 
Hard work can be producing higher quality images, which also increases your chances of getting images actually sold on a very regular basis.

Or hard work can be analyzing the market trends and gaps in the database and start shooting that.

Or combining all of that together.

Whether the hard work is worth the returns is of course a completely different story

Yes, of course hard work, and also talent, plays a role. I don't doubt that. As said, there are images where I invested a large amount of work and time and some of them sell regularly - And across all agencies, counting together the sum, of course they also bring in a decent amount of money over time. But when I just sell my "regular" sellers within a month, my income is my "regular" income as well. Because of the time and effort I put into my photos that "regular" income might be much better than someone else's income, who just snaps a few photos without any real effort. But it's the big sales that make a difference between my average "regular" monthly earnings and a really great month. These big sales have a much bigger impact on my earnings and these are almost always really random photos that do not sell regularly at all, that's why I attribute them to the luck factor.

I am not sure I am getting across what I am trying to say so well. I am convinced that spending time and effort, not only into taking photos and videos, but also into doing research to determine what could sell well and also talent pays off and plays a role in microstock and helps you have a decent income.
 But this is a thread about high price photo and video sales and, at least for me, very specifically these sales rarely seem to be the ones connected to effort and work, but more to luck.

Quote from: Roscoe on August 19, 2022, 08:40

Quote from: Firn on August 19, 2022, 06:15

Quote from: Roscoe on August 18, 2022, 09:49

 Hard work beats talent (if talent doesn't work hard)

From my personal experience, with microstock, sheer luck beats talent and hard work. Might not have been the case when the selection of images was more limited, but now with millions of images for competition, it's mostly a matter of luck to have the right image at the right time displayed somewhere.

This one sold for around $100:
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/orange-industrial-transportable-dumpster-container-1668704380

I  still have some images where I put lots of work into where I seem to have been able to produce something that is in high demand and the images sold hundreds of times. But even "hundreds of times" can, in worse case scenario, still mean like $50 only. For me it's rarely the images that are in high demand and sell in large quantities that bring in the money. It's the ocassional high amount sales that make the difference between a good month and a bad month on Shutterstock and these, at least for me, are often really random. I really can't attribute having earned $100 from a very random photo of a very random industrial dumpster, that took me literally 3 seconds to take, 0 seconds to post-process and under 10 seconds to keyword to "hard work" or "talent". Anyone who follows the minimum image quality standards of Shutterstock could have made, uploaded and sold an image like this. All it needed was luck.

I agree with you, luck is probably quite a big factor in the game nowadays.
But don't you think that hard work increases your chances in having that luck?

Hard work can be producing a lot of content, which increases your chances on having more occasional big sales of rather random shots like you had, or having an unintentional best-seller of a rather generic subject.
 
Hard work can be producing higher quality images, which also increases your chances of getting images actually sold on a very regular basis.

Or hard work can be analyzing the market trends and gaps in the database and start shooting that.

Or combining all of that together.

Whether the hard work is worth the returns is of course a completely different story

Yes, of course hard work, and also talent, plays a role. I don't doubt that. As said, there are images where I invested a large amount of work and time and some of them sell regularly - And across all agencies, counting together the sum, of course they also bring in a decent amount of money over time. But when I just sell my "regular" sellers within a month, my income is my "regular" income as well. Because of the time and effort I put into my photos that "regular" income might be much better than someone else's income, who just snaps a few photos without any real effort. But it's the big sales that make a difference between my average "regular" monthly earnings and a really great month. These big sales have a much bigger impact on my earnings and these are almost always really random photos that do not sell regularly at all, that's why I attribute them to the luck factor.

I am not sure I am getting across what I am trying to say so well. I am convinced that spending time and effort, not only into taking photos and videos, but also into doing research to determine what could sell well and also talent pays off and plays a role in microstock and helps you have a decent income.
 But this is a thread about high price photo and video sales and, at least for me, very specifically these sales rarely seem to be the ones connected to effort and work, but more to luck.

Yes, clear Firn. My post was indeed a more general remark regarding Microstock, not specifically aimed at fishing for high commissions.
So thanks for bringing it back on topic.
 
If I'm not mistaken, a discussion regarding which kind of images and subjects generally generate higher commissions took place in the past.
Can't find it after a quick and dirty search, maybe someone else remembers better than I do.
Anyhow, I don't think there was a clear conclusion regarding which kind of images have a higher chance to get better commissions.
So you might be right: it's a matter of luck and then only way to have a higher chance to win the lottery is obtaining more tickets. 

I do have the gut feeling that my illustrative editorial images are a bit more subject to generating higher RPD's.
But also way lower in volume, and nothing that comes close to double figure commissions.

There's no way to measure "Talent".  So, I say people with the most sales have the most talent.  In that regard, I have almost Zero Talent because I have almost zero sales.

Quote from: Roscoe on August 19, 2022, 11:27

Million dollar question: which parameters trigger a higher probability? 

Too easy to answer "the right mix" of all 😁
That is probably true...
By the way,  great congrats to Zero Talent,  who seems having found the right recipe 👍👍👍

Sorry for quoting myself... But I would like to add something: a good old question...
Quality or quantity?
I mean,  and this is direct question to Zero Talent: could you let us know how many of your works gain high price sales? Percent on all your uploads? That's would be really interesting for me,  as I can't find an answer for myself,  after years of microstock...
I had several good high price sales,  both for images and clips,  but sincerely never understand how much the upload quantity count.
Better one great image,  or ten middle value images,  in your experience?

...
I had several good high price sales,  both for images and clips,  but sincerely never understand how much the upload quantity count.
Better one great image,  or ten middle value images,  in your experience?

i go by volume, since i can never predict what will be the best seller (and i doubt any agency can either!)

s

I had another "occasional" big sale, yesterday.

I must admit that this month, the "occasional" big sales were more frequent than just "occasional".
August is now the best month of the year, for me.
 

I had occasional high price sales yesterday too.  No, I'm not bragging.  2 on demand photo sales that's nearly 30x most photo sales.