Getty Images launched rights-ready pricing in 2006 in order to meet customer demands for "simpler, faster licensing." Now, the company has discovered that "customers also want to maintain their ability to very precisely fine-tune their licensing."
A frequent question from professional stock photographers is: "Will hobbyists take over the market?" Our answer: not even in microstock.
Many think that the stock-image industry should find a way to price images based on the cost of production. But the problem is not in the lack of a link between production cost and image price, but in the whole idea of stock photography as a primary business.
As compared to the list of the top 50 iStockers, iStockcharts offers a more comprehensive list of iStock photographer performance. iStockcharts is updated daily and includes 21,377 shooters of the over 60,000 that have images on iStock.
A consortium that unites Rubberball, Glow Images, Blend Images and some of Blend's partners has become the new owner of the U.S. assets of SuperStock. RGB Ventures intends to continue to operate the company.
One of the world's most productive stock photographers, Jonathan Ross of Seattle's AndersenRoss, shares his strategy for controlling costs, particularly when it comes to microstock shoots.
Many traditional stock photographers question whether it will ever be possible to earn enough money from microstock production to justify the effort. Ron Chapple's experience is instructive.
For traditional photographers interested in learning more about the microstock subjects in demand, much can be learned from the portfolios of best-selling iStockphoto contributors.
This year, should photographers market new images as rights-managed, traditional royalty-free or microstock? It likely will not make a whole lot of difference.
There are countless stories about what best-selling stock photographers earn. However, the earnings of photographers a little farther down the food chain are more germane. It is useful to consider the likely earnings of the 50 most successful contributors to Getty Images' creative collections (rights-managed and royalty-free) and compare these figures with iStockphoto's 50 most successful photographers, paying particular attention to the probable earnings of the 50th photographer on the list.