HTBphotos‘ White Clouds in Blue Sky image is a best seller from John and Katharina Notarianni’s portfolio of stock photos featured exclusively on Dreamstime.
What makes a stock photo image popular? Here are some tips:
Images need plenty of “negative space” for the end user to add text, logos or other images.
Variations of the same shot, or a cropped photo, like the one above, may even sell better than the more detailed original photo.
Taking time to photoshop the original shot to increase dots per inch to represent print quality (300 dpi) and offering various resolutions from low to high quality also gives the end user choices for web or print use without extra work on their part.
Zoom in to “actual pixels” to scan for imperfections that can be easily fixed with photoshop, like dust or spots. Even the smallest issue may keep a buyer from buying the image, particularly if they plan to use it on a billboard where the image is blown up to maximum size.
Tagging the image with key words like blue sky, white clouds make it easy to find. Search engines like Google and Bing are more likely to bring up your image when tagged with key words.