Quantity – Quality – Quantity
It’s been my experience that iStock contributors go through a certain cycle in terms of their upload patterns. I know that this cycle is certainly how my development has progressed, and maybe your experience has been the same. I call it the Quanity-Quality-Quantity cycle.
At first, a lot of contributors kick off their iStock careers with quantity uploads. Maybe it’s because they have a huge catalog of waiting images, or maybe it springs from their enthusiasm for this new thing they’ve found. Either way, it happens that newcomers will often upload a ton of shots in their early days. This often leads to a spate of rejections. Photographers quickly learn that photography is not the same as stock photography, and more importantly, stock photography is not the same as iStock photography.
These initial rejections tend to lead to a learning period. In this next phase, the contributor discovers that his backlog of waiting images may not make great iStock submissions. Or he learns how best to use his camera, lighting equipment, and editing software to avoid the common pitfalls of compression artifacts, exposure problems, and lighting design problems. This period of learning leads to quality uploads (fewer rejections), and often that quality comes with a lower quantity of uploads per week. Higher acceptance rate, no doubt, but fewer images processed.
Once the contributor feels confident in the quality of his work, he often starts to ramp up his submission numbers. Depending on the salability of the images he’s submitted so far, this second quantity phase may actually coincide with a canister change, meaning a higher upload allowance. Contributors at this phase may feel like the “real money” will come in when their portfolio reaches some critical mass level – 100 uploads, 250 uploads, 500 uploads, what have you.
The cycle continues – uploading in quantity usually happens before the contributor makes a new quality leap. When the new quality leap happens, the quantity often trails off slightly (or greatly), as the contributor learns his way around new techniques, new equipment, or his own changing aesthetics. At the higher levels, there becomes very little distinction between quality and quantity, and the contributor reaches an equilibrium point where he can simultaneously try new things, keep his acceptance rate up, and keep his volume of submissions high.
One of the smartest things a new contributor can do, in my mind, is break out of the cycle. Start slow and build the portfolio smartly rather than quickly. At the time of this writing, I have fewer than 500 uploads in my portfolio. I’m not a major player, of course, and don’t have the download volume of some of the top dogs; however I’ve seen many portfolios much larger than mine with far fewer downloads. I think it’s because those contributors spent too long in Quantity mode, and not long enough in Quality mode.