I'm still very new at this whole stock photo industry so I'm trying to learn as much as possible. I've only been at Dreamstime since the end of October and have learned a lot from the message boards, blogs, and other photographer's portfolios. Anxiously waiting to get enough sales for my first pay cheque. Yeah!

The difficult part of stock photography is determining what will sell. At the beginning what I did was to look at the most popular photographers and get an idea what is selling for them. And I do encourage the newcomers to do so. However, generally these photographer's portfolios are HUGE so it's overwhelming to look through their portfolios. And since these photographers also have a large portfolios, the exposure percentage is also high. Exposure means sales. Newbies like me don't have that luxury. Which means even if you produce the same or even better photo in your own portfolio as one you have seen in the large selling portfolios, this does not guaranty it will sell as well; if any. So I figured for newbies to start selling now before the portfolio gets large enough is to produce the "right" type of stock.

As I read through message boards, I run into contributers that have a very small portfolios but actually have very good return on sales. I figure my next step is to learn from these photographers and determine how they have done so well with such a small portfolio exposure. What I have done is compiled a list of photographers that have done exactly this. Below is photographers that have a portfolio size hovering around 250's or less (most of who are less than 100) who have around 3 or more downloads per upload. Which is amazing. Remember since the downloads per uploads is high, it also means that many photos probably have higher levels which means more return per sale. I've listed each photographer by their top selling photo. I hope the newbies will find this post useful. Happy shooting and good luck on your sales! PS: Sorry about the formatting of the photos. Can't figure out how to lined them up properly. :S