Are more and more of your customers asking for RF licensed because they must have the flexibility to use the image in any way that develops and for an unlimited period of time?
Hans Halberstadt of
MilitaryStockPhoto used to dismiss inquiries for RF licenses out of hand, but in recent years has found that many of his ad agency customers insist on the flexibility of an RF licenses.
Halberstadt said, “The thing that has killed RM is its multiple hoops of fire for customers to jump through, plus the risks of getting something wrong.” In addition, he has found that the old RM rates for one-year, unlimited use won’t work anymore. He feels that today’s market is more in the range of $5,000 for such uses.
Not long ago he got a call from an ad agency that wanted to use one of his images for a Not For Profit university project. The agency had to have all the flexibility of an RF license, but they also hoped for a discount. Halberstadt decided to create a “premium RF menu.” He quoted $3,500 for the RF license. They jumped at it!
That taught him that RF does not need to mean give-away prices. So he decided to develop the idea a little further.
He set up two websites for his military material. His
Photodeck site has traditional RM pricing based on fotoQuote. On his
Photoshelter site ALL the images are offered as RF with only two pricing choices: 500p web size for $550 and full size files for $5,545.
“This year virtually NO images have been licensed using the RM model. Nearly everything has been licensed through our one-year, anything goes RF model. This has really been a success for us. One reason is that once a client has started using large numbers of our images in many places, they are stuck in a "tar-baby" and cannot easily quit at the end of the year. They have to renew or suddenly loose their image library,” Halberstadt explained.
A big part of MilitaryStockPhotos success is due to the fact that the company offers a well edited collection of high quality imagery, with a distinctive style, in a subject category that is not overly saturated with competitive images. I’m not sure that Yuri Arcurs whose work certainly meets the criteria of well edited, high quality and distinctive style could consistently license his people and lifestyle images at these price points. His subject matter is in a very saturated segment of the market.
Nevertheless, shooters who produce high quality work in a subject area that is not oversaturated might want to consider this licensing option.
Halberstadt also pointed out, “We tried a test of low-ball RF fees using the traditional model and our number of sales did NOT increase. The lesson for me was that the market was not being driven by cost as much as complexity of the transaction.”
“This is a new conversion for us. It is the result of an ad agency contacting me about one of our premium images that had been exclusively RM. They said their customer could not do an RM license, only RF. So I gave the image to them with an RF label but RM price...and they gleefully jumped on it and paid promptly,” he added.