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.
More and more photographers are willing to give their images away rather than trying to earn some revenue from their use.
Unsplash is one of many free sources for image. Can photographer who are trying to license rights to their images compete with the availability of free?
One of the major problems faced by the stock photo industry is “too many images.” Customers don’t need more images they need to be able to
find an image that works quickly. To offer some additional search options Adobe has introduced some AI-powered
aesthetic filters that will enable art directors to search more naturally and intuitively.
ImageRights International, the global leader in copyright enforcement services for photo agencies and professional photographers, today announced the acquisition of Australia’s Image Witness, whose rapid scan image search technology fortifies ImageRights’ technology leadership position in the fast-growing copyright enforcement services industry.
Assuming you are taking pictures because you want to earn some money from what you produce, it would be very helpful to have some information about which images among the hundreds of millions out there are actually selling, and how frequently.
What’s in demand?
The ads make it sound easy to get great pictures using a smartphone. Certainly a lot can be done with an iPhone 7, but when watching a spectacular ad look for the little notice at the bottom that says, “Additional equipment and software used.”
It’s time to start thinking about Photo Week in New York, October 22nd through 28th. It all starts with the Digital Media Licensing Association (
DMLA) conference beginning Sunday night through Tuesday. Then on Wednesday the 25th is
Visual Connections. Technically, the
PhotoPlus International Conference + Expo begins on Wednesday the 25th, but the trade show doesn’t really open until Thursday the 26th and runs for three full days through the 28th.
For photographers and videographers who want to see the see the newest equipment and trends as well as learn how to improve their skills, the annual
PhotoPlus International Conference + Expo at the Jacob Javits Center in New York from October 25-28 is a must-attend event.
There is a new website called
TopImageSites that, in theory, will help customers find “The Best Stock Images On The Web.” Ten agencies are listed and the number of “products” available in each agency’s collection are listed in the chart below. Products include: photos, vectors, illustration, videos and audio files. Some of the agencies don’t have audio files and Panthermedia doesn’t have either video or audio.
Stock Performer recently published an article entitled “
Are you uploading enough files to make money from microstock?” The article offers some interesting statistics. However, there are some other issues that need to be considered like, “Is More Automatically Better.”
Justin Brinson of
PicturEngine posted a thoughful comment to last week’s article “
New Stock Image Distribution System Needed.” I’m re-posting his comments here because I want to be sure all my readers have a chance to consider them. I’ll add a few of my own comments below his.
I just received a press release from
Envato Elements that offers “inspiring and ready-to-use photos, templates, fonts and assets” for $29 a month. They say Envato Elements “now includes 200,000 hand picked photos” from its
PhotoDune collection of 9 million photos. (Actually, there are currently 244,085 photos in the Elements collection.)
Shutterstock, Inc. has signed a definitive agreement to acquire
Flashstock Technology, Inc., a Toronto based company that enables the efficient creation of custom visual content through its proprietary platform, for approximately $50 million cash. Flashstock has a fast growing customer base of enterprise marketers seeking on-brand content to feed the ever growing visual demands of multiple marketing channels. By integrating Flashstock into its product offerings, Shutterstock will be able to offer a high-quality custom content product to its 1.7 million customers. The transaction is expected to close in July 2017.
Danita Delimont Stock Photography has launched a
new website design with large photos and roll over pop ups. The site’s new
Galleries section shows tightly edited collections of the best images in 48 of the most popular subject categories they have to offer.
The European Commission, which polices European Union competition rules, has imposed a €2.42 billion euros (
$2.72 Billion) fine on Google for breaching antitrust rules with its online shopping service. The ruling alleges that "Google has abused its market dominance as a search engine by giving an illegal advantage to another Google product, its comparison shopping service." Google was given 90 days to stop or face fines of up to 5 percent of the average daily worldwide turnover of parent company Alphabet.
Photographer’s tell me that
EyeEm has introduced a new model release strategy that is markedly simpler for photographers than the release strategy used by stock agencies and photographers for many years.