This article provides a selection of stories that will help the reader better understand microstock photography and the state of the market for images at microstock prices at the beginning of 2012. Some of the stories in this list were written as much as two years ago, but provide background on the subject.
First thing everyone wants to know about microstock is how much the average person earns licensing images at these prices. This story provides some statistics. The story also deals with the misconception that in order to have high earnings in microstock it is necessary to have a huge number of images in the collections.
Most photographers considering marketing their images as microstock want to know what they can expect in the way of return-per-image (RPI) from their accepted images. The question is impossible to answer because so many variables are involved. However, by extrapolating from the data we have gathered over more than 2 years on 195 of the top selling iStockphoto photographers we get an interesting picture of the range of possibilities.
Our semi-annual analysis of iStockphoto sales has once again produced interesting results. As of January 2, 1012 istockcharts was tracking the sales of 38,163 of the more than 100,000 iStock contributors. More than 90% of the images in the iStock collection belong to this group of contributor. Combined these contributors have had a minimum of 114,875,519+ downloads since each started working with iStock. During 2011 alone a minimum of 18,615,558+ images (and probably about 21.5 million) were licensed for use.
Since Getty Images went went private at the end of 2007 and Alamy stopped providing quarterly figures at the end of 2009 it has become very difficult to estimate the size of the stock photo market worldwide. This article is an update of my previous articles and provides an overview of the amount of revenue being generated in each segment of the business today.
After reading
Stock Photo Market Size In 2011 Tom Zimberoff asked several question that need a more detailed response. This story explains why growing microstock revenue does not mean that a growing number of microstock images are being used.
This story provides estimates of the size of the stock photo market near the end of 2010. Given the paucity of hard data all I can do is estimate based on previous data and a significant number of conversation during the past year with image suppliers and distributors.
The microstock company
Dreamstime has announced that it saw consistent strong growth throughout 2011. Since 2007, Dreamstime’s customer base has grown from 350,000 to the more than 4.2 million customers. With this rapid growth, Dreamstime has positioned itself as a supplier of high quality digital images to the second largest community of registered stock image users. (It is believed that Shutterstock has the largest community of image users.)
First thing everyone wants to know about microstock is how much the average person earns licensing images at these prices. This story provides some statistics. The story also deals with the misconception that in order to have high earnings in microstock it is necessary to have a huge number of images in the collections.
Many who enjoy photography and have had some success at licensing rights to their images dream of quitting their "day job" giving up a regular pay check and taking pictures full time. This story offers a few things to think about that apply both to photographers who hope to do commercial assignments and those who want to license rights to stock images.
In a little over a year the number of images represented by the top four microstock sites has increased by 41%. Fotolia has had a 59% increase. The number of people contributing images to Shutterstock has grown by 37% and now totals 313,393. This wouldn't be bad if demand were growing at the same rate, but it's not. Demand seems to be relatively flat and at iStockphoto seems to be declining. How will these numbers affect everyone who produces stock images? Read more.
After lowering royalty rates for non-exclusive contributors in January, iStockphoto introduced a
new strategy in early May that made it possible for non-exclusive contributors to offer a portion of their images at higher prices. Non-exclusive contributors are now allowed to nominate up to 15% of their total portfolios for inclusion in the Photos+ brand.
In 2009 I started to use
http://istockcharts.multimedia.de/ to track about 196 of the top 250 sellers on iStockphoto. While figures for the other 54 of the 250 contributors were available, their names were not. Consequently I left them out of my research. iStock has over 100,000 contributors, but it is believed that well over 90% of the images in the collection and well over 90% of the total downloads belong to the 37,085 contributors whose information is available on iStockcharts.
There are strong indications that iStock's introduction of higher priced brands has resulted in the company licensing fewer images. In addition many of its customers seem to be turning away from iStock and goint to other microstock sites to purchase the images they need. One non-exclusive photographer with many best selling recreation images on both iStock and Shutterstock reports that his images on Shutterstock are now outselling those on iStock by 3 to 1 while a year ago the reverse was true. Other photographers confirm this trend.
iStockphoto has announced the launch of its premium-quality Vetta video collection with clip prices that range from 55 to 150 credits (credit prices vary from $0.99 to $1.54 depending on the size of the credit package purchased). Currently there are over 300,000 video clips on iStock, but only a few thousand of the best are in the Vetta collection. However, it is expected that the Vetta collection will grow rapidly. Approximately 5,000 videographers have contributed clips to iStock.
In early March
Selling-Stock reported that many of iStockphoto's most experienced videographers were very upset with the proposed royalty share for iStock new Vetta collection. At least 25 of the most productive contributors with a combined total of about 45,000 clips decided not to participate in Vetta. Most concluded they were likely to earn more if their clips were licensed at the lower Exclusive prices because they would continue to receive a higher royalty rate. It is also expected that clips available at the lower Exclusive prices will sell more frequently than those at the higher Vetta prices. Illustrators who produce Vector art were faced with the same problem.
The following material was compiled from
iStockcharts.multimedia.de and shows the sales of 198 of iStockphoto’s top contributors in the 14 months between May 1, 2009 and June 30, 2010. (I’ll use the word “contributor” instead of “photographer” because a significant number or the top sellers are illustrators or graphic designers selling illustration, not photography).
This chart is designed to give the reader an understanding of the number of times images belonging to some of the top microstock photographers at iStockphoto are licensed in a given year and what that can mean in terms of gross revenue.
iStockphoto has introduced its new round of price increases for 2011. For those in the macro world (RM and traditional RF) who like to argue that it is impossible to make money selling images on a microstock site it may be time to take another look at what iStock is doing.
2011 may be the year when the stock photo industry returns to the idea of exclusive representation -- specifically, being exclusive with a microstock agency. For many year the widely held belief has been that the way to maximize returns was to get your images represented by many distributors. Now, iStockphoto’s has developed an exclusive strategy that may bring about a change in this way of thinking. While there are several downsides for image producers to the iStock strategy, the upsides may more that compensate for the difficulties.
iStockphoto has been working on a way to use language and country data to deliver more locally relevant results since last year. On Monday, the Getty Images-owned microstock leader delivered on this promise. The company also launched a new editorial product offering.
I asked iStockphoto’s COO Kelly Thompson for clarification about why they chose to base the “redeemed credits” on the number of credits downloaded rather than the value of the credits?
A 14-month review of data from the leading microstock supports the theory of the fastest-growing industry segment having reached a plateau, with flat unit sales and revenue growth resulting from price increases. The top 198 iStock contributors currently have a combined total of 567,324 images, or about 5.2% of the total collection. In the past six months the collection of this group has grown by an average of more than 10% per contributor with a total of 52,449 images added. Images belonging to these contributors represent 29% of total downloads in the last 14 months.
In January we published an analysis of the units licensed in 2009 by a group of iStockphoto’s most successful contributors and asked the question "Has Microstock Reached a Plateau?" The first quarter 2010 results seem to confirm this is the case. As a baseline, on June 1, 2009 we did a count of the total number of images licensed in May 2009 by a group of 196 out of the 250 top selling iStock contributors. (Information on some of the top 250 was not available.) There were 442,533 images licensed by this group in that month. Average monthly sales were up only 5% by the end of 2009, but they were down 1% to only 3.9% by the end of March 2010. See the full analysis and the implications for the future.
This chart provides information for 198 of the leading contributors to iStockphoto. It shows the total number of downloads each photographer had as of May 1, 2009 and the minimum and maximum number of downloads the photographer had on December 31, 2009. We were unable to report exact figures for the period May through December because iStockphoto changed its reporting policy in June to only supply a greater than number that indicated the downloads were in a certain range. Using this data and interpolating for the first four missing months in the data we were able to make an estimate of the number of downloads each photographer had in 2009.
iStockphoto is celebrating completion of its fifth year in the stock video business.
Reduced advertising budgets and the explosive demand for online video content have allowed the stock video industry to evolve at a highly accelerated pace. iStockphoto’s video library contains nearly 400,000 files from more than 6,500 videographers. These videographers are adding roughly 2,500 files per week.