Although I wasn't yet able to achieve all of my targets, I am happy with the progress.
Since beginning of October I had 4 photo sessions specifically for stock - i.e. much higher rate that I had ever before. Unfortunately due to personal reasons I wasn't able to organize any sessions in December otherwise the number would have been even higher. For the same reason I wasn't able to produce consistently 100 stock pictures per month - something I definitely need to address. In 2 months I produced around 220 pictures (fully processed and ready to upload).
As I already mentioned in my previous update I am satisfied with the partial outsourcing I made. I only outsourced retouching part, i.e. I am still doing myself RAW processing, white balance, brightness/contrast, masking and keywording. I only outsourced the least creative part and it saves me quite a lot of time. I will certainly continue using that service.
As I mentioned in my plan I didn't waste time processing non-stock photos for stock. Combination of this, plus higher number of stock-oriented photo sessions plus outsourcing resulted significantly increased output. The only reason I stayed below target was personal circumstances that consumed a lot of my time that I could have devoted to photography.
Thus the adjustment of my plan is that I will aim to produce around 150 good stock photos monthly - that will allow me to stay above 100 even when I will need to take some breaks.
I believe I made a good progress with item 5.1 of my original plan - take better photos i.e. to improve various small elements such as model's smile, clean background etc.
Point 5.2 from my original plan is still open. It was about making analysis of what subjects sell well and make sellable photos. The word "analyse" here is related to both evaluation of the market bestsellers and evaluation of my own portfolio and my own bestsellers.
While I keep doing some basic analysis I plan to work seriously on item 5.2 later, after the previous items will be successfully implemented and will become a normal routine.
Click here to see the full post and comments
