Stock
One of the biggest hurdles traditional RF and Microstock sellers face when confronted with the idea of switching from an RF pricing structure to a use-based one is how to explain such a switch to customers who've been told one price fits all and not to worry about usage.
Alamy has launched a program called Limited Use that makes it possible for those selling images as RM and traditional RF to make the same images available to some customers for nominal fees - without risking loss of revenue at the higher end of the market.
I believe the gross worldwide revenue generated from the licensing of stock imagery, both still photos and illustrations, is about $1.8 billion annually. This article focuses on licensing rights to stock imagery. The figures include wire service imagery made available through subscriptions and all other subscription products.
Microstock sellers insist that simple pricing is a key to their success, but many of the current strategies bely that notion.
On a company basis, the best year-to-year percentage of growth overall came from Alamy with 18%, even though Getty Images had a respectable 10% growth overall on a much higher gross revenue. And, of course, one division of Getty, iStockphoto, had an amazing 124% growth. But we need to look closer at the actual numbers.
RM and traditional RF photographers complain about declining incomes and the difficulty in getting information from the companies that represent their work. Traditional distributors might do well to adopt a number of ideas popularized by microstock, to improve relationships between photographers and distributors.
Photographers regularly ask why the royalty paid on RF sales is only 20% of the net received by their agent, when the agent pays 40% to 65% on RM sales that are made in the same manner. Royalty percentages have little to do with reality, and nothing to do with the cost of production.
Traditional stock photography sellers constantly struggle to improve their collections and search. Diverse collections are added to the offering to increase customer choice. Then portals revert to tighter editing, limiting the number of images returned on each search. When portals use this strategy, the rejected images often turn up on other portals and customers often buy the rejected images.
In the last few years, the stock photo industry has experienced significant consolidation. The chart below lists 34 existing companies that have acquired a total of 197 agencies. In general, fewer large companies are controlling the industry as middle-sized and small companies disappear.
Moodboardunlimited's "You Set The Price" strategy is intriguing. The tremendous advantage is that the company will never lose a customer due to price, and the offer should attract new customers. However, there are at least three significant disadvantages.
The information world is moving rapidly toward more customized and targeted communications, which will dramatically affect how photographers market and promote images.
Companies offering stock images for sale need to continually provide customers with new material and a greater "depth of choice." But as growth in number of images exceeds growth in revenue, RPI automatically falls. The problem is that older images in the count have less chance of selling and that skews the averages.
In the very near future, RM photographers and traditional RF photographers will need to take a hard look at the whole issue of volume relative to price.
Microstock sites seem ideal for book publishers -- until one looks closer at the license agreements. Repeat usage prices soar.
For 25 years Ron Chapple has been one of the world's leading stock photographers, always on the cutting edge of the next trend. In the 1990s he was the top seller of RM imagery for FPG, a major stock photo agency of that period. After Getty Images purchased FPG, Ron established Thinkstock, an RF production company. In 2004 he sold Thinkstock to Jupitermedia for more than $4 million. While still producing RM and traditional RF, he recently became an aggressive producer of microstock.
Many professional photographers claim no one could make a living selling images for $1.00 to $2.00, but there are always exceptions. At 28, Yuri Arcus is the world's top selling microstock photographer and has a good chance of reaching his aspiration of earning $1 million from stock photography before he is 30.
Getty Images reported revenue for Q2 2007 of $218 million, up from $204.8 million in Q2 2006 and $212.6 million in Q1 2007. Net income for the quarter was $33.7 million, with earnings per diluted share of $0.56. This compared to $23.2 million or $0.37 per share in the second quarter of 2006, but was down from $38 million or $0.63 per share in Q1 2007.
On a recent trip to China I interviewed a number of photographers and stock agents. This story provides a perspective on where the stock photo industry in China is today and offers some predictions for the future.
This is a brief history of stock photography examining how it started and how it got to where it is today. I have tried to chronicle the key events and changes that have taken place in the last 80 years, in hopes that understanding the past will enable us to avoid repeating some of the same mistakes in the future.
Jupiterimages has acquired all the shares of Workbook Inc. from Alexis Scott giving it control of workbookstock.com. Simultaneously, Alexis Scott purchased back from Jupiterimages the print directories, Workbook.com and all the other products that help generate assignments for photographers and illustrators.
Fifty-five photographers with a gross 2005 income of $8,490,187 responded to our survey. This was up 9.7% from 2004 and 78% of this income was from stock. 30% of the revenue was from Getty and almost 15% from Corbis
Getty Images, Inc. has announced that it will acquire Photonica West from the Tokyo-based Amana Group for $51 million in cash. Photonica produces and distributes two of the world's leading collections of cutting edge, high-end rights-managed imagery.
Corbis has announced that they have acquired Zefa Visual Media Group and that the combined revenues of the two companies is in excess of $200 million. That should break down to around $43 million for Zefa and $160 million for Corbis in 2004.
Corbis is probably doing more than any other stock photo seller to track infringements, and collect from those who infringe. Dave Green, Corbis Senior Corporate Counsel, explains how they do it and the benefits, not only in additional revenue, but in educating customers.
The stock photo industry is rapidly moving to the point where there are more photo subjects you can’t use for commercial purposes than those you can.