Stock
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.
In light of pricing declines for textbook use and publisher attempts to avoid paying for future electronic uses, some image producers ask: "Why don't all the sellers just say 'no'? Shouldn't the producer be setting product prices?"
If Google were to get involved in image licensing, it would quickly take commanding control of the stock industry--at very little additional cost to the company. And it would not necessarily be a bad thing for creators.
In addition to raising print quantities and extending license durations, textbook publishers are increasingly asking for the rights to publish the same information for the same time period on password-protected Web sites. While publishers intends to charge for those passwords, they expect content producers not to count such uses as part of the circulation.
From a stock photography point of view, the future is bleak for those trying to sell images for textbook use. This segment of the stock photography business is on what appears to be an irreversible downward spiral.
Alamy sales for the third quarter of 2009 were flat compared to the second quarter, but were down 30% compared with the third quarter of 2008. U.S. Dollar and Euro sales were up slightly compared to last quarter 2009, but U.K. sales were down about 5%. Sales for the first three quarters of 2009 were down 30% compared to the same period in 2008.
The story provides a rough estimate of iStockphoto sales and revenue growth since the company was acquired by Getty Images in early 2006. The figures for the years 2006 and 2007 are reasonably accurate because Getty Images was a public company during this period and reporting a great deal of detail about their operations. After the company went private in early 2008 it became more difficult to accurately estimate downloads and revenue.
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.
For most of this year I have been tracking the number of downloads for 117 of the 150 most productive contributors on iStock. (I have been unable to identify the other 33 in the top 150.) Total downloads of the 117 during the last seven months represent about 17% of all iStock contributor downloads. Sixty-five of the 117 contributors have seen a slight decline in average downloads-per-month since March.
This list of the world's major stock agencies is divided into three different groups based on my estimates of the gross revenue generated by each of these companies. Group A lists companies with revenue greater than $20 million Groups B is companies with revenues between $5 and $20 million and Group C has revenues between $1 and $5 million.
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.
It is time to revise previous estimates of industry revenues based on what has happened in the past year. For several years, we have estimated the size of the worldwide market for still images and illustrations at about $1.8 billion.
As prices for stock photo uses drop, the joke has been that pretty soon, publishers will start asking photographers to pay for publication of pictures. That idea may not be as ludicrous as it sounds.
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.
Jim Pickerell's piece on growth in demand focuses on why the current paradigm does not work for solo photographers but misses the fact that growing image uses also offer opportunities. For the stock photo industry, the issue is not lack of demand but rather the lack of Google, Gillette and Apple-like innovation when it comes to developing a business model that takes advantage of the rise in image uses.
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.
If you do not plan to retire before 2015, and the money you earn from stock photography is an important part of your gross income, it is not too early to begin devising a plan for modifying your photography business. In the last few years, there have been radical changes in the business of photography, and it seems likely that we have not seen the last of them. What worked in the past or is working now may not work as well in the near future or later. Given the rapid pace of change, it is inevitable that most people will make dramatic career adjustments in their lifetime.
Alamy sales for the second quarter of 2009 continued their downward trends in each
sales territory, but were flat when converted to dollars based on
exchange rate fluctuations.
The numbers below show the number of downloads for each of 124 of iStockphoto’s 150 top earners in the months of March, April, and May of 2009, based on total download statistics supplied daily by iStockphoto and compiled by
istockcharts.
The advertising model for funding the costs of newspaper and magazine content creation and delivery seems to have outlived its usefulness. Is there an alternative to meeting the needs of advertisers, content creators and consumers?
Market value for most products depends on how they are used---the value the customer receives. The distinguishing factor is often between
renting and
buying a product: from DVDs to photo equipment, renting based on value received is a very common practice, which has been all but eroded in the photo industry with the proliferation of microstock.
In March, iStockphoto chief operating officer Kelly Thompson told
Selling Stock that the company was working on a new search algorithm and a premium image collection. This Wednesday, iStock launched both. Thompson also confirmed that the Getty-owned microstock leader is on track to break another revenue record this year.
Given the rather pessimistic predictions of "Opportunities for Professional Stock Photographers," photographers and stock agents ought to consider several career decisions.
More and more young people aspire to a career in photography. They sell some of their images and believe that, if they work hard, they can be successful. Often, they hope to become full-time stock photographers, so they can shoot what they want, when they want, and eventually achieve fame and fortune. Yet the hard reality is that opportunities for professional stock photographers are in a decline, which will continue in the years ahead.