Macrostock
"Sales of $1 images continued to generate six-figure incomes for the world's top photographers in 2009," begins the Fotolia press release that highlights the company's three top-selling images for last year. Combined, the three Fotolia top sellers gathered around 10,000 downloads, so the photographers' earnings are nowhere near as impressive as Fotolia claims; however, the images themselves offer an interesting perspective into current buyer needs.
Photographs of many products and locations can not be used for any type
of commercial purpose without a release. Blanket releases for images of
these subjects are almost impossible to obtain. It is sometimes
possible to get a release for a very specific, clearly defined use, but
not for an undefined “stock use.” Therefore, if the stock
photographer’s goal is to license rights to the images he or she
produces the photographer may be better advised to avoid wasting time
photographing this subject matter. In some cases such images may be
used for editorial purposes.
For much of the past decade, textbook publishers have licensed rights to print a minimum number of copies of the books they published and proceeded to greatly exceed the authorized press run, without informing the content creators. Only recently have photographers become aware of this problem, which we covered last month. Here is a summary of the settled and pending actions.
Getty photographer Carlos Sanchez Pereyra recently asked on Linkedin what others thought was the "best way to sell stock." There is no question that Getty Images makes more gross sales than any other brand, but it may not be the best place for most photographers.
Should a photographer license his work as royalty-free (RF) for a 20%
royalty or rights-managed (RM) for a 40% to 50% royalty? The answer
seems simple, but maybe not. In a previous article I pointed out that there is absolutely no justification for a
distributor paying only a royalty of only 20% when an images is
licensed as RF and 40% when it is licensed as RM. It doesn't cost the
distributor any more to license an image as RF than as RM. In fact, if
anything, because negotiating time is involved in making some RM sales
it may actually cost the distributor more to license rights to an RM
image than to an RF one. Thus, if we were basing the royalty share
solely on the relative contributions of the distributor and the creator
to the sale, the RF royalty should be higher, not lower, than the
royalty for RM.
In January2010, pacaSearch will roll out a major marketing campaign
to picture buyers to promote its new pacaSearch software. At a recent demonstration at PictureHouse in New
York, Lee Horton, Multimedia Editor of K12 Inc. said, “Learning about
the functionality and usefulness of [pacaSearch] put a big smile on my
face. As a photo editor and art buyer, I search multiple sites daily.
This tool puts more control in my hands. I can keep the results pages
in tabs with fewer keystrokes, page toggles and site crashes. The
relative percentages, predictive text and term definitions create a
tight, clean search environment. With the launch of pacaSearch, I can
successfully and accurately find imagery in less time, with less
hassle, while having more agency resources at my fingertips. Thank you,
PACA.”
Most professional photographers are adamantly opposed to Creative Commons licenses, which are used to allow free uses of images. However, widespread use of Creative Commons licenses may actually help establish in the minds of users the very important copyright law principle that "All Rights [are] Reserved" by the creator or copyright holder of any work, and that it is left to the creator to specify who has what rights to make what uses of the work and at what cost.
Travel photographer Bill Bachmann is an ardent advocate for basing stock image pricing on usage (the rights-managed model), not on file size (the royalty-free and microstock models). In 2009, Bachmann is on track to earn almost $1 million from licensing his travel and lifestyle images.
Is Flickr a place for a professional photographer to display his work and sell images? Todd Klassy thinks so. Though now he is an amateur devoting three hours a week to shooting and another six to post production and studying photography, he intends to quit his job of 17 years and start working as a photographer full-time after the first of the year.
Jim Erickson breaks all the stock photography rules and yet is one of the world's most successful sellers of stock images. Pick any strategy that everyone agrees is the key to success in stock, and Erickson is probably doing the opposite.
In the
previous story
we discussed four major trends in the stock photo industry and listed
eleven other related issues that photographers should consider
carefully as they try to determine the future prospects of their stock
photo business. Below I have discussed each one of these eleven in some
detail.
In most industries the manufacturer sets the price for his products
based on his manufacturing costs. Of course if he sets his price too
high consumers won't buy. Therefore, he certainly has to be sensitive
to consumer demand.
Stock images, creative stills in particular, have a steadily declining value in the eyes of the buyers. If stock is all an individual has to sell, it is beginning to look like that individual should expect to see steadily declining revenue going forward.
A previous article in this "Business Planning for the Future" series noted that future growth in demand for images is a widely debated subject among stock industry professionals. In my view, traditional customers do not seem to have any growth potential, and there are also indications that growth in demand for low-priced imagery might have reached its natural level. Industry veteran Leslie Hughes has offered an alternate point of view.
Traditional stock-photo sellers wonder why there does not seem to be any growth in demand for their product. The 2006 U.S. Census Bureau statistics of U.S. businesses could provide some clues.
As the stock industry changes, traditional stock agencies and distributors are losing ground because they have failed to adopt new technological efficiencies. Granted, constantly keeping up with the latest technological changes can be expensive, and most agencies have already invested huge amounts to get where they are today. But, microstock sellers have introduced a number of strategies that traditional agencies and distributors should be considering – if not rushing to adopt.
Recently I was trying to explain the stock photo business to an investment
analyst and making the point that there comes a time when a
photographer can no longer afford to produce stock images because his
costs are greater than his income. The analyst was under the impression that a “stock
photo” was one that had been produced, and paid for, while the
photographer was on assignment for someone else. Thus the image was
“expense free” to the creator. And, in theory, the only “additional
costs” the photographer might have to make the image available for
secondary licensing would be the cost of packing it up for shipping it
to his stock agency.
How long will it take before traditional prices drop to microstock levels? If Alamy's sales are any indication, microstock sellers might not be cannibalizing traditional sales in terms of number of units licensed, but they certainly are cannibalizing revenue as traditional sellers fight to compete.
In 2006 I examined many of the factors that are impacting on stock photo market and leading to price declines. There were also a number of factors leading to declining sales volumes to traditional customers. These include the general demand for printed products, the tendency to use images multiple times but only pay once, trends in book publishing, postage costs, crowdsourcing of images and various types of guerrilla advertising. Since that time the situation has become worse.
Traditional photographers argue that it is impossible to make money by licensing their images at microstock prices. They say volumes will never make up the difference. Despite that argument, Getty Images is licensing more and more images at Premium Access prices, which are not all that far away from what microstock sellers charge. Getty's volumes are not making up the difference for traditional photographers, but that is because Getty is selling these images to volume customers who used to pay traditional prices---not reaching the new customer base that microstock addresses.
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.
Stock photographers are constantly concerned with what to shoot. Everyone knows that people pictures tend to sell in greater volume than non-people pictures, but people doing what? Which concepts are in greatest demand? Information most helpful to answering such questions comes from microstock sites and is freely available to everyone.
The following are concept words that customers often use to find images. When keywording an image add as many concepts as are appropriate to the keyword list. If after searching the concept list you cannot find any words that that fit your image there is a good chance your images will not be a frequent seller. When planning shoots try to take pictures that will illustrate some of these concepts.
Selling Stock's self-employed photographer income survey accounts for close to $33 million in revenues generated by 238 respondents from 19 countries.
This article defines the six most common methods for licensing stock images. They are: RM, RR, MRR, RF, Subscription and Microstock.