“It is true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.” – Napoleon Hill
Although Napoleon Hill wasn’t talking about microstock, his advice remains relevant. If you focus on helping image buyers succeed, you’ll make more money in microstock.
One way you can do this is by studying how images are used in ads. A recently launched site, Moat.com, let’s you do just that. (Moat also intends to provide engagement analytics, but you’ll have to wait, and pay for that service.)
I searched for some major advertisers on Moat and found a range of ads that are worth examining.
From right to left, we have Netflix, Pfizer, Aetna, and Lifelock. Netflix is demonstrating their service, while the others are selling peace of mind.
Some Observations:
- Images are horizontal, and subjects are off-center in 3 out of 4 ads to leave room for copy.
- Models are looking directly at the camera in 2 out of 3 of the ‘peace of mind’ ads. Eye contact does suggest trust, so this makes sense.
- Netflix’s models are pointing at the ad, and the ad is directly above the ‘Click Here’ button. (This makes sense since we read from left to right in English.)
- Models in portrait style shots are looking at the camera, but their shoulders are at an angle. (I don’t know if this is significant, but I think it’s interesting.)
This isn’t a statistical analysis, but I think studying how buyers pair images with concepts will tune you in to their needs. In turn, this will help you plan your shoots and produce more salable images.
Other Examples:
To save you time, here are links to some of the brands I searched for:
NB: Product retailers use their own products, but I think it’s still instructive. Service providers seem to use more stock imagery.
The chart below shows the Top 10 Leisure Activities in the USA based on number of female participants in 2009.
The chart below shows the Top 10 Leisure Activities in the USA based on the % of participants that are women. This data will help you ensure your shoots are realistic.
The actual number of participants for the above activities are shown below to help you prioritize your efforts. For example, gymnastics and roller-blading appeal to a much smaller segment of the population than walking, working out the gym, or yoga.
Source: National Sporting Goods Association
Points to Note:
- Yoga is close to 80% female, growing, and ranked #11 in terms of total participants. When casting yoga shoots, you should keep this mix in mind.
- I was surprised that walking is 60% female in terms of participation. I normally think of this as a couples concept but the data would suggest women walking together would be a worthwhile concept.
Last year, I posted about the Top 10 Leisure Activities to help with lifestyle shoot planning for the summer. To help with this year’s shoots, I charted updated data from 2001-2009 for the top activities based on 2009 participation numbers.
Source: National Sporting Goods Association – 10 Year Participation Report
Points to Note:
- The Top 5 fastest growing over this period were: Workout at Club, Weight Lifting, Running/Jogging, Exercising w/ Equipment, and Hiking.
- Although Yoga didn’t make the cut (15.7 million participants), it was one of the fastest growing in the last year. Also, 79.4% of yoga participants were female.
I was playing around earlier today with Google Insights for Search and stumbled onto the search history from 2004 for weight loss. The results are striking. There are 4 times as many searches in that category in January as there are in December and this difference has held from 2004.
If you look at the Image Search results for the same category, the results are identical.
The takeaway is clear. Get your ‘weight loss’ related images online before that January spike. Although it’s not microstock specific, Google Insights is incredibly valuable for learning about what people are searching for and that can only be beneficial to deciding what to shoot and when to shoot it.
While I haven’t yet looked at microstock sales to see when those images spike (to find out what the typical lead time is) delivering that sort of information to contributors was one of the core ideas behind LookStat.
