10 Tips for Making Money from Stock Illustration

I've been contributing to istock for a while now.  I go through stages of putting stuff on there and not putting anything on for a while.  I've made some observations on how to keep a passive income trickling in from stock vector illustration :

1.  Keep Contributing

I've noticed that when I upload more, I get more downloads.  if I haven't put anything on for a while, my downloads drop off.  Keeping a steady trickle of work going on there seems to keep the downloads coming.

2.  Think Boring

The work that you like doing probably wont make the most money.  Think about where your images will be used and play to that audience.

3.  Think of a Niche

If you can find a topic that hasn't been covered much, then get in there and exploit it before everyone does.  My most popular file is this retro robot illustration, when I first put it on there, I was getting loads of downloads off it.  At the time, there weren't many similar files on there.  Now there's loads, and most of them are better so I'm not getting so many hits on it these days.  It's made me over $1600 so far though so I'm very happy with that file.

4.  Strength in numbers

If the quality of your work is good enough to consistently get accepted, then keep piling stuff on there.  The more work you have on in a variety of styles, the more chance you have of getting downloads.

5.  Cross Promote

Make sets of similar styled and themed images and link them to each other.  Make light boxes of bodies of similar images.  People often want a bunch of similar looking images for a campaign and will download a whole light box of images.

6.  Try different things

I will often try different styles just to experiment and to get some practice.  Sometimes they go down well and sometimes they don't, but it helps you stand out if you are trying new things.  You may come across something that turns out to be really popular.

7.  Take your time

If an image takes you minutes to make, then it will probable be easy for any graphic designer to make.  If someone can copy something and save the money then they probably will.  If you've made a detailed, precise illustration, then people will download it because it's too much of a hassle to do it themselves.  This circuit board illustration has made a nice profit, it was easy to do but it took a while.

8.  If it's no good, don't upload it

If you've taken your time making an illustration and it just isn't working out, just delete it.  There's no point putting it on and getting rejected, it brings down your approval rate (which you will been to become an exclusive contributor).  Just start a new image and learn from your mistakes.

9.  Be thick skinned

You will get plenty of rejections.  Don't worry about it.  It doesn't mean that your work isn't good, it means that it isn't suitable for stock.  Illustrations for clients and illustrations for stock are very different.

10.  Keep at it

Unless you get lucky, it takes a long time to build a portfolio that earns a decent income.  Then just when you are getting somewhere, your downloads will drop from 10 a day to 1 every 2 weeks and you won't have a clue why.  The earnings from stock illustration are very temperamental.

Book Layout Design

Here's a layout design for a book about Istanbul.  I also did the illustration of the maiden's tower lighthouse.  This work was done in illustrator with the intention of taking it into indesign to put the book together.

Parrot Character design

Here's a character I designed for some religious thingumabob in Brazil.  The brief requested an indigenous animal and the logo of the event.

Baby Illustration

Here's a little illustration I made about fetuses and babies.  It was for a promotional book mark.  I started with the line work and added a layer of digital watercolor underneath.  It makes a change for me to do some children's book illustration.  I liked it though.

Girl with tortoise cartoon

Here's a cartoon I made recently.  I started off by doodling in photoshop and this is what came out of it.  I did the line work in illustrator then coloured it in photoshop.

Bubble bobble Illustration

An Illustration I'm working on. It's a bit of a tribute to bubble bobble

candy skulls

Loads o' candy skulls. Well, theres 4 different ones actually.

Illustration of some shoes

Here's a vector illustration of some shoes.  I've done it in a retro, 1950s style.  I think vector illustration lends itself to this style with flat blocks of color.

Here's another little scene I made a while ago. Drawn in Illustrator and grunged up in photoshop.

Welcome to the flyingtiger.co.uk design & illustration blog

I will be uploading some various pieces of my design and illustration work to here.

Here is the first.