Photographer's Choice Survey

4

December 12, 2005

I have received several bits of anecdotal information indicating that the average return-per-image of Photographer's Choice images on Gettyimages.com has been dropping. The following survey is designed to give a clearer understanding of the degree to which this might be happening. All responses to this survey will be anonymous.

You can respond to the survey by going to: http://www.pickphoto.com/pcchoicesurvey-form.asp. This is in a non-password protected section of my site so anyone can respond to this survey regardless of whether they are a subscriber. I expect to tally the results in early January and they will be posted in the non-password section of the site also.

I encourage all photographers currently participating on Photographer's Choice, regardless of whether they are Selling Stock subscribers, to complete this survey.

On the survey the question asks for the "revenue earned" and this should be the actual money collected in the calendar years 2004 and 2005.
I realize that some of the sales for which you collected money in early 2004 were actually made in 2003 and some of the money collected in 2005 will have been for sales actually made in 2004.
Ther goal is to determine the money collected in two comparative 12 month periods.)

I realize that there are at least a couple other weaknesses in the method I have chosen to look at this data.

• The figures will vary somewhat depending on the month when the images were actually posted,
  
• 2005 may not be exactly comparable to 2004 because there is still a partial month left in 2005, or because you didn't start receiving money early in the calendar year.

Nevertheless, I believe that, provided there are a significant number of respondents, the figures will provide a general idea of the trend in sales of PC images. They will also be useful in giving photographers a rough idea of the high and low range that photographers might expect to see from PC images.

Finally the figures will offer a useful comparison to the average-per-image return of all RM images on Gettyimages.com. As of November 2005 the average gross returns-per-image for Getty had been trending downward for the previous two years and were:

Since photographers only receives about 35% of the gross revenue the photographer's share of the above figures would be about $271.35 for 2003; $235.74 for 2004 and $144.62 for 2005.