A woman who earned some decent money as a photographer back in the 1990’s called me recently asking for pricing advice. She was trying to help a young neighbor (just out of high school) understand what he should charge for his photography. This boy loves photography and wants to make it a career. His parents have bought him a lot of good equipment, but his mother is tired of spending money with no prospects of a return on that investment. She wants him to start earning some money from some of the pictures he takes. Here's my advice.
On the
Shutterstock conference call yesterday CEO and Founder Jon Oringer and CFO Steven Berns made some statements about stock photo market size, and growth potential, that need to be examined. When discussing the Editorial market Oringer said, “Today, we believe our editorial business represents less than 1% of what we estimate is a more than $1 billion market opportunity.”
Shutterstock has reported Q2 2017 revenue of $134.0 million. This revenue was up 8% from Q2 2016, and up $3.8 million from Q1 2017. Revenue per download increased 9% from $2.81 in Q2 2016 to $3.05. Revenue per download in Q1 2017 was $2.96. At the end of the quarter there were 144.7 million images in Shuttrstock’s collection and 7.6 million video clips. This was up from 132 million images at the end of Q1 2017 and from 92.1 million a year earlier at the end of Q2 2016.
Adobe Stock offers customers a very useful search feature that Shutterstock, Getty Images and iStock have chosen to ignore. Adobe lets customers search for
“Undiscovered” images. We assume that means image that have never been used, although Adobe doesn’t make that entirely clear.
Kathy Yeulet owns and operates
MonkeyBusinessImages, which she started in 2006 and is one of the most successful microstock production companies . Previous to that she owned and operated Banana Stock, a company that produced and licensed stock images at traditional royalty free prices. With near perfect timing she sold that company in 2004 when the traditional royalty free prices were near their peak. Two years later decided to start producing images for the relatively new microstock market.
As image databases become larger and larger it becomes more and more difficult for customers to quickly find the “right image” for their projects. Increasingly, customers are frustrated by this problem. They want more choice, but they don’t want it to take them longer to find an image they can use.
In reviewing the latest reports from Magna, eMarketer, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and ZenithOptimedia it appears that the global advertising market is expected to generate about $504 billion in 2017, up 3.7% from 2016. The growth in 2016 was +5.9%, but the Olympics and U.S. Elections contributed a lot to that growth. Global advertising growth is expected to re-accelerate to +4.5% in 2018 with the return of even-year events (Football World Cup in Russia, Mid-Term U.S. elections, Winter Olympics in South Korea.)
There is increased demand for real, authentic photos, not set up shots using professional models. Many photographers grabbing these “authentic” photos on holiday, or as they go about their daily lives, ignore some of the legal hassles that can arise as a result of trying to license use to such images.
Adobe’s
Visual Trends predictions for July talks about “Breaking the Rules of Composition to Create Thought-Provoking Images.” Breaking the rules is great for someone trying to create Fine Art, but do such images actually sell? Of course Adobe will be able to point to a few that have sold, but in general is it better to break the rules, or learn the rules and stick to them if you’re trying to produce images customers will to buy?
In a story by Rick Boost published in Campaign Asia-Pacific, a publication providing insights and intelligence into the ideas, work and personalities shaping Asia’s marketing-communications industry, Kumi Shimamoto, Asia vice-president for Getty Images, says that one of the reasons for the company’s position as the largest image supplier in the world is its audience research methods.