Stock
The industry needs a new pricing model. The models we have include rights-managed, royalty-free, subscription, microstock and rights-ready, which is about to become extinct. What is needed is use-based pricing, or UBP.
Stock photography producers and sellers have lost sight of how to value their images. It is time for all sellers to reevaluate their pricing strategies.
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.
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.
The following is a list of the 50 iStockphoto contributors with the most career downloads and thus the highest earning as of the end of 2008. Non-microstock photographers may use this list, and the links provided, to learn a little more about microstock’s potential.
The question for stock photographers is how to maximize revenue. Is RM better then RF? Is traditional RF better then Microstock and what about Subscriptions? This article provides some thinking on this subject.
The first thing a photographer must consider when pondering microstock exclusivity is why any distributor needs exclusive representation of a royalty-free image—which, but its very nature, is a non-exclusive product.
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.
Some photo subjects are in high demand, others aren't. But, shooting just the concepts that are in hightest demand may be a losing proposition because everyone else is shooting the same thing. This chart list some keywords or tags that are frequently requested. The chart was generated by searching iStockphoto for certain words. It shows the total number of downloads of the best selling image in each category as of the above date. It also lists the total images in the collection with the particular keyword or tag. The list is in ascending order by download.
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.
Traditional stock photographers are often stymied by microstock's acceptance and upload requirements, which are very different from those of traditional agencies. The Yuri Arcurs Distribution Network may offer some of the elite and very productive traditional people-and-lifestyle shooters a way of breaking into the microstock market.
Corbis predicts still-image sales will decline only slightly by 2012. However, this is no reason to be sanguine, as the same total will be divided differently among various industry segments. In addition, this analysis was completed during the summer, prior to the more recent economic disruption.
Selling Stock's self-employed photographer income survey accounts for close to $33 million in revenues generated by 238 respondents from 19 countries.
Many believe the marketplace has an oversupply of images. This raises several concerns for image producers.
Photographers still ask me, “Is the Hellman & Friedman’s acquisition of Getty Images good or bad (for photographers)?” As far as I can see whether or not Getty is owned by H&F doesn’t make a whole lot of difference for photographers.
This story deals with a number of things that need to be considered when negotiating. It includes a discussion of how to deal with multiple of a single image in multiple publications, or many insertions in a single publication. There is a discussion of buyouts, discounting where there are multiple images licensed in a single sale, reuse and revision and minimum price. Finally there is a checklist of things to consider when negotiating.
This article defines the six most common methods for licensing stock images. They are: RM, RR, MRR, RF, Subscription and Microstock.
For photographers there are basically three ways to get photos where customers can see them. The first is setting up a searchable site. This can be costly and tends not to work well unless the photographer has a broad niche image collection, and a solid base of customers. Being recognized as a leading light in the niche helps.
Whenever you get a request for a buyout of an images the first thing to do is clarify what the clients means by “buyout”. More often than not, when the client uses gthe term “buyout” their definition is very different from the photographer's.
This story provides a schedule that is useful when establishing a price for editorial usage in newspapers. Prices should be based on the size of usage on the page and the circulation of the publication. While these prices are reasonable, many struggling publications refuse to pay these rates.
This article discusses pricing strategies and provides suggested prices for licensing images for Trade Show and Powerpoint uses.
This article provides information on prices non-publications advertising uses such as: billboards, point-of-purchase banners or murals, electronic displays, transit and airline posters, bus kiosks, transit and taxi cards.
This article provides prices for use of images on Educational and Retail Posters. For more information about educational uses see Stock Photo Prices - Textbooks, JHP2067
This article provides strategies and prices for licensing images for calendar and greeting card uses.