Stock
I launched Selling Stock in 1990 with the goal of helping professional photographer understand the stock photography business and the opportunities it offered. For a couple decades many photographers earned significant additional revenue from the licensing of stock images. A large number earned their entire living by producing photos on speculation and licensing them as stock.
The chart below allows you to easily track the growth trends of Shutterstock quarter-by-quarter over the last 11-years and see the number of images in the collection, number of downloads and the gross quarterly revenue at the end of each quarter. You can also see the average revenue-per-download and revenue-per-image-in-the-collection trends.
Shutterstock has reported Q4 2020 revenue of
$180.9 million up 9% compared to $166.4 million in Q4 2019 and up from $165.2 million the previous quarter. Revenue per download was
$3.91 per-image compared to $3.44 in Q4 2019 and $3.79 the previous quarter. The average revenue per download for all of 2020 was $3.68 compared with $3.43 for all of 2019.
A
Getty Images photographer asked if I could explain how Getty calculates its Premium Access (PA) deals where prices for image use vary widely? He pointed out that on his most recent statement he had a number of PA sales for $0.11 and one for $286.00. The vast majority of PA sales (roughly 60% of all sales) are near the low end, but there are also occasional extreme outliers.
ustomers need a better way to quickly review a selection of images than most stock photo sites offer. They don’t need more images. They need to be able to review the best images quickly. Twenty-five years ago this was possible by reviewing the images that had been placed in tightly edited major agency print catalogs. Now that editing is gone. The current marketing goal seems to be to throw as many images as possible at customers and force them to spend their time doing the editing. Historical trends indicate that most customers have found the mages used by other customers to be most useful for their purposes as well. Most customers are not looking for an image that has never been used.
I define Professional Photographers as individuals who are earning a significant portion of the money they need to support themselves and live comfortably from licensing use to the images they produce. The number of such individuals is disappearing rapidly. All indications are that the number will continue to decline.
I've been on hiatus for about a month. My wife and I have just sold the home where we've lived for 42 years and moved into a condo apartment about one-third the size of our former residence. Making such a move, only about five miles from where we formerly lived, and getting rid of a huge amount of the stuff that we've collected over the years has been a challenge.
I just read a story on
Passive Income. The writer suggests that
stock photography is one way to earn passive income and says it “is income you earn from things you would normally do in your spare time, or when you’re not working at a salaried job.”
Active Income, on the other hand is the salary you get from the work you do by investing time and effort directly in return for money; if you don’t work, you don’t earn. Whether you are a teacher, a builder, a banker, a software developer, an athlete, an actor, or a doctor, you have to work to earn a living.” The time you spend working is tied to the income you receive.
In 2019 among the most successful creative industry events in New York were
footageMarketplace and
imageMarketplace. This year these two events have been combined and renamed
creativeMarketplace New York 2020. The event will be returning on April 1, 2020 to the Midtown Loft at 267 Fifth Avenue (29th St & 5th Av.) in New York City and will be open from 9:30am to 7:00pm.
One of many reasons for the decline of stock photography as a profession is that it has become almost impossible for photographers to get a clear understanding of the various types of imagery, and the relative degree of demand, that users want and need. Once that was not the case, but now there is a total disconnect between image creators and image users.
The
Everett Collection now represents the Photo Link Collection! A finely edited portfolio focusing on New York City celebrities during the 1970’s to 2000’s. Highlights include behind the scenes shots and life behind the velvet ropes inside Studio 54.
Shutterstock has reported Q3 2019 revenue of
$159.1 million up 5% compared to Q3 2018 and down slightly from $161.7 million the previous quarter. Revenue per download averaged
$3.40 per image, which was the same in Q3 2018. Total image and video downloads for Q3 were
46.3 million, up from 43.9 million a year earlier, and down from 46.6 million in Q2 2019. At the end of the quarter Shutterstock had over 297 million images and 16 million video clips, or
313 million pieces of content in its collection.
In olden days when stock photographers were trying to produce images that might be used as covers or full page inside magazines it was advised that they turn the camera on its side and shoot verticals of as many situations as possible. But times have changed. Are verticals really selling today? Recently Robert Kneschke reported on his
web site that he had reviewed 100 of his best selling images and not a single vertical was among the group.
A reader asked, “Is it known how much money is lost when premier and enterprise customers are able to get high resolution images that they use for sketching, internal presentation or pitches at subscription prices and only pay for the ones they use in print?”? The answer if
NO. Nobody had any idea, or is tracking, of how many images are used in this way compared to how many are actually used in delivered products. But, we do offer some related data of the loss through subscriptions compared to licensing based on use.
A reader wrote recently that he believes
Shutterstock’s efforts to add huge quantities of image to its collection, as I discussed in recent
article, is a “calculated plan” to eventually eliminate the need for photographers. He believes that by “feeding these images into their AI machines they will be able to learn exactly what their customers want.” Then, it is his contention, that Shutterstock will be able to “deliver custom made images (which Shutterstock would create) to clients.” He argues that ”this would just be machine work and there would no longer be a need for image makers or even computer graphic designers.”
Rick Strange, a very successful UK travel photographer with over 45 years experience is closing his
www.worldtravelphotographs.com website after over 4 years of very disappointing sales. Considering the excellent quality of his work, this may be a cautionary tale for any photographer considering trying to market work from a personal website rather than using a stock agency.
On April 1, 2019,
StockFood GmbH will take over the German travel photo agency Look. All employees, including their long-standing customer advisors and photo editors, will join the StockFood team. For decades, Look (
lookphotos.com) has been known as the leading German travel photo agency. From the very beginning, the name "Look" has been synonymous with the group's mission.
Image creators need better information about the kind of content that is selling. Are customers looking at higher priced content? Can creators earn more money if their images are in a collection like Offset where images are licensed for much higher prices? Should creators produce more stills? Should they buy new equipment and start shooting video that sells for higher prices? Shutterstock’s
quarterly reports to investors aren’t very helpful in this regard.
Want to know how much the value of a great photo that is used in advertising has declined? In 2001 Microsoft paid $135,000 to use Chuck O'Rear's image of a green rolling hillside with a pale blue sky to launch a major advertising campaign for Windows XP software. How much do you think Apple is willing to pay for an iPhone photo that will be used heavily in iPhone advertising? Hint: If you're a photographer you won't be surprised, but you also won't be happy!
This long read outlines the step-by-step changes in the marketing of stock images over the the last 30 to 40 years. It makes clear why the production of stock images is no longer a viable business for most photographers and other image creators. At the end of the article, I have outlined some of the changes I believe need to be made in the relationships between image creators and customers in order to return the business to a profitable occupation for those who produce images.
In the last two years I have written a lot about stock photo pricing and its downward slide. If you have time over the holidays you may want to review some of these stories as you plan your strategy for engaging in the stock photo business in 2019.
As fewer and fewer stock photographers earn enough from the licensing of their photos to justify continued production, some suggest that instead of letting stock agencies pay them 20% to 30% of the small gross fees collected to use their images, they should sell their images directly to customers. In this way they would get higher prices and keep 100% of what the customer pays.
Everyone knows that many images are being licensed for very low prices. Many feel that the people paying these low prices are small, start-up businesses that are so poor they can’t justify paying fees high enough to cover the costs of creating the image. It is hoped that if photographers help these businesses succeed in the initial stages, eventually when they are profitable they might be able to pay enough to enable image creators to actually profit from their efforts.
When I first started actively producing stock photography, I did so because I wanted to make money. I had discovered that I could earn additional revenue from images I had previously produced on either an assignment or on speculation. At the time I wasn’t earning enough from assignments alone to fully support the needs of my family. The stock revenue was an important supplement. Assignments weren’t as frequent, or as well paying, as I would have liked. I realized I could use the “in between” time to produce images for my stock collection that one day might be licensed.