When searching for an image the first thing you should do is to always use as many search terms as possible. The more specific your search is, the better results you will get. Think about the concept you are trying to illustrate, write down all keywords, preferably both of the motive and the concept you want to illustrate. Say you are looking for a business woman to illustrate an article about how contemporary businesswomen are having success, instead of searching only businesswoman - try a search for contemporary businesswoman success.

• Use AND, OR and NOT between search terms to get more specific results (f.ex cat NOT kitten)
• Choose between singular and plural form - both will be searched for (f.ex dog will return the same results as dogs)
• Use double quotes (”) to search for phrases (f.ex “woman running on beach”)
• You can narrow your search further under “Advanced Options” (f.ex search only editorial/creative, horizontal/vertical etc)
•  You can search for a specific image ID by entering that number directly into the search box (f.ex 310131)

If you still don’t get the results you want, here are a few more tips:

• Always double-check for misspellings
• Check that any filters under “Advanced search” are turned off
• Do not start your search with AND, OR or NOT

If you still can’t find the image you are looking for, you can post a request to the photographers in our forum or send us an e-mail.

Happy searching!

Are you wondering how you can stand out as a microstock photographer? I might have a tip for you:

Take pictures of “the darker sides of life”.

For each “domestic violence” image we have we have 2100 images of “beautiful woman”.
For each image illustrating “eating disorder” we have 630 images of “business man”.

Show us drug abuse, a man with a needle in his arm, a male or female prostitute, an upper-class alcoholic or domestic violence. We want images of successful people with problems and less successful people with problems. The bum in the park or the divorcee with too many wine bottles in the trash.

Show us the parents mourning their child - on a beautiful summer day and on a dark grey evening, parents fighting about custody, the scared child or broken homes, the girl being bullied on her way home from school or the father being bullied at the office. Show us the boy with an eating disorder, the female alcoholic, the abusive mother or the frightened man.

Try to take both the classic and the more subtle shots.

Linda

The basics
The key to increase sales of editorial images is to understand the different categories and uses of such images. An editorial photo is a photo accompanying an editorial article. They can’t be used for commercial purposes (though you can argue that a newspaper uses it commercially to sell more papers). Since they can’t be used commercially, editorial photos can depict logos, copyrighted material and people/property without a model/property release. The publication is required to use the image in a fitting context.

A good starting-point is to divide editorial photos into three main categories:

A. News
B. People and places
C. Editorial stock

News
News photography is pretty self-explanatory. This is newsworthy events. These images are extremely time-sensitive - upload them as fast as possible to secure sales. Think about what kind of events that are newsworthy and interesting for publications to write about.

People and Places
This category is basically famous people and famous places. It includes photos of people at events that are or have been newsworthy. A good tip is to try to capture interesting facial expressions at rather boring events. A good shot of a politician expressing a feeling at a convention can be used many times over by a wide range of publications. When photographing places, try to capture famous buildings, streets and landmarks, and - if possible - try to do it with a creative twist. Just don’t overdo it

A good example of a photo of Barack Obama which
has potential for sales over a prolonged period.
Photo: Dersankt / YAY

Photo: JrnGeeraert / YAY
John Mccain with a nice twist and a clear message.

Editorial Stock
Editorial stock is, quite probably, the most ill-defined and undervalued form of editorial photography. These are images the news agencies have a rather limited selection of and the potential for sale is large. They are not nearly as time-sensitive as news-images. Editorial stock includes several sub-categories: Images of logos and brands in different settings and images of people using different (branded) products. Examples could include: Photos of large outdoor signs of multinational companies, photos of people shopping at well-known stores, (overweight) people drinking soda from a specific brand etc.

Photo: kjellesvig / YAY
Typical editorial-stock which exemplifies issues with Google
and privacy issues

What to remember
Think about the following :

A. What kind of images do newspapers/magazines/websites print?
B. What news are recurring? What will be in the news the next months?
C. What people (celebrities or semi-celebrities) might someone need a photo of?

Description and keywords
The description should be more specified on editorial images than on creative stock. The major news agencies write a quite detailed description on every image they distribute. It is, in fact, so detailed that the journalists can get most of the information they need for an article from the metadata in the image. Always include where the photo was taken, the name of the event, names of all people depicted and other relevant information. Try to be as exact as possible. An editorial image with a missing or bad description is basically worthless, since the usage is based on context and if you don’t know the context you can’t use it.

Jan

Today we introduce our referral program!

You’ll get paid €0.1 for every photo your referred photographer sells, including content sold on subscriptions, and we’ll keep paying you for at least the next 5 years.

YAY have received a large amount of feedback on e-mail and in our forum. People are telling us how satisfied they are with our upload process, the payment in euros, the possibility to sell editorial images and the commission! Many great reasons for you to refer YAY Micro to your friends and acquaintances.

You can find our referral program along with banners here. If you have any questions, e-mail us or write a post in our forum.

Have a great weekend!

Linda

The first photographers we have contacted have signed up and started uploading. The feedback we are getting so far is surprisingly good. People love the looks of the site and the openness about who we are. The upload process seems to be working smoothly as well. There are some issues that photographers have commented on and that we are going to change. This includes:

• It’s easy to describe a batch of images in the same series, but if you have many different images the describe page is a bit bewildering.
• The model release registration page will not require as much information as earlier.
• The keyword limit will be set to 50 words. The reason there is a limit is to avoid keyword spamming. We know that 1 picture = 1000 words. But come on

Both the FAQ and the contributor guide will be updated as long as we receive feedback. Please, don’t hesitate to contact us.

Jan:.

Finally, after almost three months of development, we are ready to receive content! Today we will contact a few photographers and ask them to contribute content and test the site. The same photographers will be featured on our front page. We are very pleased with the layout and design of the site so far. The KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle has been followed as far as possible. We have tried to remove everything that might be confusing for both contributors and customers. Even our legal documents are meant to be understood by a layperson.

As the process of gathering and approving content continues for the next couple of months, we will work on the development of the rest of the site. If all goes smooth we will launch the site to customers on June 1st.

We appreciate feedback on the site, so all users are encouraged to contact us on feedback@yaymicro.com or post in the forum.

We are really happy to finally be able to present our site to content providers!

Best regards,
The YAY Team