One Year of picNiche-ing

One year ago today, picNiche.com went live, and was announced by Lee to the community.

Since then there have been just over 60,000 searches, and I’m delighted to say, that the number of viable niches found per week continues to rise; Which I’m pretty sure shows that people are becoming better and better at identifying in-demand markets for their stock photography. I’m very glad to be a small part of that cycle

During the year I’ve tweaked the site a little, improved it’s appearance and in April released the picNiche toolbars, which have been well received by the whole international microstock community. I’ve heard some great feedback, and have been advised of some problems, which have helped to get (almost) everything in full working order.

From your feedback, there are many more improvements in the pipeline, and I’m feverishly working on the next generation of tools for stock-image producers, both photographers and illustrators alike.

Thanks

In the meantime, I’d like to celebrate the completion of my first year as a microstock photographer (and self-employed IT contractor) by thanking everyone who has helped me along the way:

• Firstly to Lee at Microstock Diaries for his help not only with testing, but also with announcing the new picNiche tools as they’ve come along and helping me understand the needs of the community.
• Rahul at Lookstat for his feedback on picNiche toolbars prior to launch.
• Fotolia.com for allowing the use of their excellent api in support of the continuing improvement of contributors portfolios with relevant work.
• All the other agencies, who help make eeking out a modest income from my (albeit underdeveloped) portfolio via Microstock.
• And last but by no means least… Everyone who has sent feedback, new websites/blogs, bug reports, and suggestions (and even bits of code), along with recommending picNiche to others which allows the site to continue to improve

A special extra thank you goes out to my understanding and patient better half for putting up with my long coding sessions and inane programming rants and chitchats

Future

I hope I’ve helped everyone a little over the last year, and can continue to do so for more to come.

It’s looking like picNiche has a long way to go, and a hard road to get there, but with some of the exciting improvements coming in future, I’m hoping we can all work together to get everyone producing awesome, market relevant work for the future of stock-images