Microstock Demand For Travel Photos

A rights-managed photographer recently told me that travel photographers must continue to market their work as rights-managed because there is not enough customer demand on microstock sites for travel images to enable photographers to cover their costs and make a profit.

He acknowledged that people who shoot model released business and lifestyle photographs might be able to earn enough to profit from licensing their images as microstock, but argued that it won't work for travel photographers.

I decided to search iStockphoto for some popular locations and see how many times the top ten images from each of these locations had been downloaded. I skipped the illustrations and videos that were in the top ten and concentrated on finding the 10 best selling photographs. The number in column 1 is the number of downloads for the most downloaded image and columns 2 through 10 are for the next most downloaded images. In each case the actual number of downloads is greater than the number listed. So for London the best selling photograph has been downloaded more than 7900 times, but less than 8,000 times. To find the average for each location divide the total figure by 10. Here’s what I found.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10		Total
London, UK	7900	6200	3000	2500	2500	2400	2100	2000	1900	1800		32300
Australia	9500	2800	2400	2000	1800	1600	1500	1400	1300	1200		25500
New York	2300	1700	1600	1600	1400	1400	1300	1200	1100	1100		14700
Paris	2200	1900	1500	1300	1300	1300	1300	1200	1100	1000		14100
China	2600	1700	1700	1500	1400	1200	1200	1000	900	900		14100
Los Angeles	1900	1600	1100	1000	1000	1000	900	900	800	800		11000
India	1600	1300	1200	1100	1000	800	800	800	800	700		10100
Washington DC	1100	1000	1000	900	900	900	900	900	800	800		9200
Rome	1300	1300	1100	1000	900	900	900	600	600	600		9200
Tokyo	2900	1300	1200	500	400	400	400	400	400	400		8300
Rio	1400	800	700	700	700	600	500	400	400	400		6600
Singapore	800	700	700	700	500	500	500	300	300	300		5300
Bangkok	1000	700	400	400	400	300	200	200	200	200		4000

Obviously, there are many other images that were licensed many times, but not as many as the number in column 10.
Many of the people who created these images are exclusive with iStock. Currently they are probably earning a royalty of between $5.00 and $8.00 per image licensed. If they are non-exclusive with iStock they will be earning quite a bit less, but the non-exclusives will likely have their images on other microstock sites where they will be generating additional sales.



The major icons of each location were always included in top 10 best sellers. In a few cases there was nothing but major icons. There were some surprises and if you’re planning a photo shoot in any of these locations it is worth taking a look at what has been selling on iStock -- even if you're planning a rights-managed shoot. In a few cases I was surprised by the subjects that made it into the top ten which is another reason for looking at what has been selling before embarking on a shoot.

One of the great advantages that microstock offers is that anyone can tell exactly how well any particular subject has been selling. This creative intelligence is of tremendous value to rights-managed shooter as well as to those who produce images for microstock. In looking at Getty, Corbis, Alamy or the web site of any other traditional distributor there is absolutely no way to tell which images have been licensed or how frequently. The distributors have that information, but they are not sharing it. In the traditional environment it is up to the photographer to guess at what will be the most productive use of his time and effort.