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Choosing a Stock Photography Niche

The stock photography market is getting more and more competitive. Everyday new photographers sign up with stock sites and pursue this job or career. In order to stay ahead of these new marketers you need to create something that gives you the edge. Not necessarily in the way you take your pictures but in how you are labeling and what kind of buyers your specifically marketing towards.





What is a Niche?

If you are unfamiliar with the term niche I will briefly explain it to you. A niche is described as a subject of a small popularity. This term has been coined on the internet mostly towards web marketing and ecommerce. It is a method of picking subjects that are unsaturated or not taken by many other people. These niche subjects are then easy to find by others because of low supplying quantities. The respective problem with these niche subjects is the lower the supply usually means the lower the demand is, unless you tapped into a very smart niche.

How does a Niche Relate to Stock Photography?

As was explained in the Stock Photography Portfolio niches could be considered a photography theme, it can also just be a way to label your photography. When people search the market place of stock photo sites they enter in keywords relating to the current subject or photos they need. If they enter the word "dog" they will get thousands of photos with different dog breeds, sizes, ages and so on. If they instead enter in a more specific topic (or niche) like "Old English Sheepdog" they will receive much fewer results (depending on how popular that particular dog is, I have yet to receive my copy of "Dog Popularity Monthly"). To sum things up a Niche could be considered as the following: a Photography theme, Photo Keywords, or Photography subject.

Why is a Digital Photography Niche Important?

create the garage door nicheWhen choosing a strong niche that is unsaturated by competition you are choosing to cater to a smaller audience of people. Yet, your photos will be viewed more than if you choose a popular subject. The reason is that when you choose vague words or take vague pictures there will be a big chance that your pictures will be drowned in the sea of other similar pictures. Which is why it's suggested that you use a niche or take digital photos of something more specific.

If you choose a theme that is unpopulated by competitors and has enough of a basis with buyers than you can create dozens of pictures in that specific niche and dominate your market. You wont just have one or two pictures in a small niche, you could have 20 to 100 digital photos capitalizing on your find. This almost guarantees that someone will buy from your subject (if your taking great looking pictures). If you have enough time you can figure out what particular niche makes a good amount of income. It might be a job within itself to find unpopulated niches to exploit but it will be worth the bit of research.

Who knows maybe the garage door niche will really take off.

Good Niche Subjects

Providing you with niche subjects kind of defeats the purpose of what a niche is. If I were to list subjects then tomorrow all those subjects would be taken so it doesn't really help that much. We do suggest learning more about getting a good niche in camera dollars, or just research the internet for information. Just remember that there are millions of ideas and don't think that every idea is already taken. Just do some responsible research and try to think of subjects that would be easy to take pictures of. Read some other articles on this website if you need more help.