So you took a few nice pictures or maybe even a thousand. Now you have submitted your pictures to the stock photo agencies such as Shutter stock or some other micro stock photo agency. The question on your mind now is what keywords do you use? What keywords are going to attract the audience you want to buy the photo you are selling?
Keywords are crucially important when submitting stock photos to micro stock agencies. They are what let your customers find your pictures. If you don’t use keywords you won’t get people seeing your photos and you won’t make any money.
When looking for keywords you must be more than just simple minded. Having a picture of a flower and using keywords like the words flower and whatever species it is will not yield the most favorable results. Think about how many other photographers are doing this exact same thing! You must be different.
The first step to finding keywords that are right for your stock photography is to look at your stock photo. Look at it and ask yourself the very important question of who is going to by this. Who is this photo best suited for? Is it an advertising photo or an editorial stock photo? The more you know who your photo is targeted for the more you will be able to pick keywords that target this customer.
If your photo is a very dramatic looking photo that states a big meaning then you would want to target people that want photos with lots of impact. These people aren’t going to be searching the words flower. They’re going to be searching for the emotional impact that they are trying to get. Words like happy, sad, depressed, energized are much better than simple keywords of the subject in your photograph.
I personally recommend against submitting keywords that have the name of your subject. It’s not that they won’t yield the results you want but its because of competition. Submitting a photo of a dog with the keyword dog is not going to help you get a sell. You will be competing with the hundreds of other photographs of dogs. Rather, submit keywords that describe how the dog looks and the message you are trying to get at with your photograph.
