Microstock Photo of the Day (Friday, September 5, 2008)

Downtown Houston.

Microstock Photo of the Day (Sunday, August 31, 2008)

This is actually a picture of some church in downtown Houston.

Microstock Photo of the Day (Friday, August 29, 2008)

Yesterday afternoon was absolutely beautiful with deep azure skies and fluffy white clouds. But Gustav is headed our way and the rain that was coming in at 45 degrees when I got off work was no joke. It's gonna' be rainy for the rest of the week and therefore I didn't bring my camera to work today.

Microstock Photo of the Day (August 18, 2008)

This building is absolutely awesome: all glass and mirrors. Local architecture is one of Houston's saving graces.

Image of the Day (August 3, 2008)

The George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas.

Shutterstock earnings update for 20080801: 18 downloads. Average for Fridays.
Shutterstock earnings update for 20080802: 5 downloads, 2 CD back-ups. Saturdays are usually slow.
Shutterstock earnings update for 20080802: 6 downloads, 1 CD back-up. Sundays are usually pretty sluggish, too.

Well, things haven't been too bad for August, considering that this is a traditional slow period for the microstock industry. If I maintain this rate of earnings, I should probably see payout at the end of this month as well.

Image of the Day (July 23, 2008)

This is one of my favorite shots of downtown Houston, although it has only garnered me a couple downloads from Shutterstock. The tiny strip of blue is the sky peaking through some taller buildings behind the spired roof.

Image of the Day (July 22, 2008)

I took this from one of the many Houston-area parking lots that I frequent.

Picniche: A Keyword-rating Engine

Wondering why your images aren’t selling so well? Perhaps you’re submitting to an oversaturated category, like “flower.” Or, you aren’t choosing the best keywords for the job.

Enter picNiche.com, designed by Robert Davies and co., which is currently in beta and runs off the Fotolia API (with plans for more microstock agencies to be added later).

A rating less than ten is “bad” and over one hundred is “niche” (or very good).

Basically, you just head over to http://www.picniche.com/index.aspx and enter a keyword.

For instance, “Korea,” which spits out the following data:

Search Term: korea

TotalImages: 1393

TotalViewsIndexed: 12692

TotalDownloadsIndexed: 458

9.11 views per file (inferred).

0.33 downloads per file (inferred).

Our Rating: 3.00

Hmm, this seems to be a pretty oversubscribed keyword, but my Korea shots—such as the palace shot below--have actually done quite well for me on Shutterstock.

What about Houston?

Search Term: houston

TotalImages: 99

TotalViewsIndexed: 2975

TotalDownloadsIndexed: 112

30.05 views per file (inferred).

1.13 downloads per file (inferred).

Our Rating: 34.00

Certainly much better than “Korea.” Shots of Houston certainly have sold better for me on Shutterstock, but then again, that’s because of most of my shots are of Houston.

I’m looking forward to when Robert Davies adds all of the top-tier Microstock APIs to his keyword-rating engine.

View of Houston from Afar

This is about as close to the cliche downtown Houston panoramas that I've been able to get. It's not nearly far enough from the city. I'm wondering what vantage points everyone else is using for those far-off shots that show all of downtown Houston.