John T. Fowler posted the following on the Stockphoto listserve.
Stupidity is sometimes defined as doing the same thing over and over and hoping for a different result.
For the first eight years of this decade I did the same thing over and over and enjoyed satisfying stock sales results with a gently but steadily rising curve.
Last year I did the same thing and saw stock sales decline by 30%.
This year I did the same thing and saw stock sales decline by 50% from the average of those first eight years. (It's a good thing I don't have to rely completely on stock sales to stay alive.)
But it's obvious that, for the next decade, I've got to figure out how to become unstupid. Working on that - social networking. Other ideas gratefully welcomed.
My response:
John, thanks for sharing. Your situation is not unique. Many of the RM photographers I talk to are experiencing similar declines – or worse. It is a natural human tendency to want to continue doing what has worked well in the past. But, times change, new business models are developed and old businesses that used to be lucrative fade away.
In many businesses it is easy to spot when a new technology or technique begins to take over. Unfortunately, for stock photographers, given the typical long lead time between production and sale it often takes a long time to recognize that dramatic changes have occurred.
Microstock is taking over. The quality has improved dramatically. The volume is growing at an unbelievable pace. The number of image suppliers is growing astronomically, resulting in greatly reduced odds that the images of any seller will be chosen for use. Search on microstock sites is more efficient than on traditional sites. More customers are able to find more of what they need, more quickly at much lower prices.
The decline is sales has very little to do with the problems in the economy. Sales are unlikely to improve significantly when the economy improves.
Let me share a little of my personal experience in producing and selling stock. Back in the early 90s I was approaching age 60, and had built a significant collection of RM stock images that at their peak were generating $170,000 a year in royalties. I expected my stock images to provide revenue for me in my retirement. I plowed every extra dollar I had into producing more and better images to build that collection.
Then Royalty Free was invented. I didn’t like it. I didn’t participate in that market, but some of the early RF adopters have done very well over the years. After a few years of competing with RF I did have the sense to recognize that the long range value of my image collection was declining, and that I needed to invest my time and extra dollars in a totally different line of business. Today, at age 74, when I could use a little extra money for retirement, my RM stock photo collection is essentially worthless. Some will say that if I had worked harder at what had brought me success initially I could have triumphed despite the odds. I don’t think so.
The changes are also coming more rapidly. It took traditional RF almost a decade-and-a-half to take over 50% of the market that had existed for RM images at the beginning of the 90s. In less than 5 years microstock has come from virtually nothing to having a market share that today is probably greater than either the RM or traditional RF share of the market. And microstock’s share continues to grow while the market share the others are able to command continues to decline. But before you decide that microstock is the answer, recognize that the gross revenue generated by microstock is being divided among a much larger group of suppliers than ever participated in licensing images at RM or traditional RF price levels.
If stock photography is more than an avocation, it may be time to develop a totally new business strategy. What are your thoughts? What are your new strategies?