Staying educated and social is a must for improving your skills and increasing artwork sales. In this post we highlight the most interesting microstock blogs you can find on the internet that will help with that. All blogs in this review are in English and some microstock top-bloggers from Germany, Spain and Ukraine didn’t get into the list. With that said, let’s get to the blogs themselves.
Brutally Honest Microstock
One of the most interesting contributor blogs written by Alex Rotenberg. You can find ideas for your artworks, detailed statistics and microstock websites reviews. Alex blogs quite regularly about areas related to photography and video. Also he publishes monthly earnings reports which is quite transparent (or brutally honest, if you will). Some time ago he wrote a useful book for newcomers to microstock which got positive reviews in community.
If you want to read some post to get a feeling of the blog, we can recommend September 2020 in review or tips on book cover photography.
Backyard silver
One of the oldest microstock blogs created by a guru Steve Heap and actively supported even now. You will find discussions related mostly to stock photography and footage. Steve also publishes monthly earnings and quarterly earnings reviews. Besides earnings he also explores content niches, interesting techniques (like green screen) and provides valuable insights from his experiments and analytics. Backyard Silver contains a premium membership area that also regularly gets new content that is not available publicly.
To get a feeling of the blog, we can recommend How to maximize your earnings blogpost or Travel or Studio stock photos.
Creative Income
Creative Income is a brand new blog and website that was founded to accompany the course at Udemy that author of the website created. It is focused more on the video side of the microstock life. Despite being new it contains some interesting information that can be useful for fellow contributors. They blog quite regularly and also host free/paid trainings for contributors.
Currently you can mostly read about their content ideas and footage stock comparisons.
Blog of Ingus Kruklitis
Ingus is a photographer and microstock contributor from Latvia featuring more than 25,000 artworks selling on Shutterstock. His blog is one of the fresher ones and therefore is not so huge. Which is also a good reason to check it out. Ingus blogs mostly about technical side of contributor life: earnings amounts and structures, adventures with shooting photos using drones, photo keywording.
Check out this post about drones vs birds to get a feeling of how he writes.
Nicole Glass’ Youtube channel
Nicole is a video blogger who covers first-hand experience in microstock industry through the lens of her video camera (and video editor). She has over 25k subscribers on Youtube as of 2020 and many of her videos have hundreds of thousands of views. Solid reason to check her out. You can take a look at her video at what sells on Shutterstock to get a feeling of her channel.
Chill Bill Dill blog
Bill talks about his experience with microstocks, passive income and travel. He’s doing photography and selling it on various microstock platforms. The tone of blog is direct, clear and honest, which is much appreciated these days. You can take a look at his detailed guide to selling stock photos to get a feeling of the content.
Jamo Images
Jarmo blogs regularly about his microstock experience. He’s doing aerial and landscape photography in Finland, where he’s from. His blog is not the largest in terms of content, but it’s easy and enjoyable to read.
Check out his post about video income and illustrations income.
Beyond here
Beyond here is a good personal blog led by Craig Dingle. Craig is Australian sports photographer who is also quite active microstock blogger. He blogs frequently and covers his personal experience with shooting various sports events, microstock business and interviews with local photographers.
Few posts to give you an impression: What to do in quiet times for your photography business and Lessons from pricing this photography job all wrong.
Luisa Fumi’s Blog
Luisa is a microstock contributor and a web master from Italy. You can read the blog both in English and Italian (if you can). She blogs about her microstock experiences and even about building personal stock image website. She explores interesting techniques (like watercolor filters for photos) and photography niches like flea markets.
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