A
Getty Images photographer reports that he gets a lot of sales to a Scottsdale, Arizona company called
Design Pickle that offers full design services to businesses. Getty licenses these photo uses for
$0.17. The photographer gets a
$0.03 royalty for his work.
Design Pickle says it “helps businesses highlight their unique value to their customers, through our affordable, reliable, and easy to use graphic design service. Allowing them to turn their creative vision into visual realities while saving time, money, and stress!”
All Design Pickle plans include a professional designer, unlimited requests, revisions and users — all backed by an extended 30-day, 100% money-back guarantee. They offer a basic monthly service for $399 per month and a Pro Service for $995 per month. In their marketing they make the point that
all stock photos used during the month are Free, and included in the basic service fee.
Design Pickle has over 400 full-time staff and has completed more than
498,000 requests. Presumably at least one image was used on each one of these requests and probably several. Design Pickle is 345th on
Inc Magazine’s list of 500 fastest growing companies.
Presumably the designers working for this company are earning a reasonable income, but the people who produce the still imagery used by the company receive virtually nothing. It is great that so many photographers trying to earn a living producing still images are willing to give their work away to help young graphic designers support themselves.
Who knows, the volume of images used by Design Pickle designers may get so high that Getty will be able to cut the cost per image used to $0.10 or $0.05.
What Can Photographers Learn From Illustrators
Photographers might want to take a look at Ana Nicole York’s blog
Nicole Creative where she talks with illustrator Tyler Jacobson about “
What can photographers learn from an award-winning illustrator?”
I didn’t make it through the full hour and 20 minute video, but basically what photographers need to learn is to give up photography and try to get training, and a job, as a graphic designer or illustrator.