A number I recently heard someone throw out as the amount a photographer can expect to make on a picture in a major stock photography company’s collection is, $10.
via Greg Ceo Blog.
A number I recently heard someone throw out as the amount a photographer can expect to make on a picture in a major stock photography company’s collection is, $10.
via Greg Ceo Blog.
12 Comments
Fortunately, photographers don’t necessarily have to rely on stock agencies to market and license their work.
More and more photographers are operating their own stock website, as a way to build a brand, control pricing, and prevent agency fees from eating the proceeds.
This is the reason why PhotoDeck has been created (www.photodeck.com).
@J-F Maion,
If $10. is your (30-40%) share on an image, what will the ROI (return on investment) be for creating, marketing and licensing that image and running a business?
The ‘economy of scale’ competing with large corporations is a loosing proposition. You might do better as a waiter.
@Bob,
know any good waiter jobs?
There are those of us out there–at smaller stock agencies–who try their best not to let good images sell for ridiculously low prices. Sometimes, all it takes is reminding clients that an image can be really special and deserves to be valued.
Bob, comparing direct sales vs working through a big agency:
– you keep 100% of the selling price instead of 30-40% (minus the cost of the platform, but that is fairly minor if you sell more than a handful of images per year)
– you are responsible of the marketing of your images, but Google is a very effective help (over 10.000 visitors a day via Search Engines for a single photographer’s website is certainly not unheard of),
– and most importantly, you get to build a relationship with the buyers -> more effective marketing (push) and products/images that sell better deriving from the feedback you get (pull).
– You also get to build your brand and your online visibility, and for instance your assignment work can benefit from that;
– you can publish as many images as you wish – more than with big agencies.
@J-F Maion,
Most importantly, the individual stock image business also gets to compete with the the market (prices) in general. See my note about ROI/economy of scale.
Let’s say you do sell more than a handful of images in a year. What is a handful? 10 images?
10 images @ $30. each – minus the CDB….. whoppee, we are broke!
As far as nurturing your assignment work through a stock presence/brand, it’s a myth. It didn’t work well during the hay days of stock, I don’t see why it will work well now.
The basic concept here is how much time, energy, resources are you going to put into this endeavor for what in return? In most cases the return is *fail*, compared to other opportunities.
However this might be a great product to sell to all the newbs chasing the carrot on a stick.
I have to agree with Greg CEO. I recently listened to a symposium on travel/stock photo and one speaker said that if you work hard you could land $20k for an image a couple times a year.
I haven’t seen that happen as of late. Personally I thought they were blowing smoke up my *$s. I asked who they we selling to, or working with several times and they wouldn’t answer.
If you sell for less than a couple hundred you are giving money away based on CDB at really cheap rates. It is the other avenues where you will survive.
While it has been much harder than I ever imagined to build a viable stock photography business that does not use distribution channels for our rights-managed images – in the end, we are gaining traction. Because we have exclusive RM images and we give 50% of the GROSS license fee to the photographer, the average royalty for the contributor is much higher than it would be elsewhere. Of course, we are still a small agency and we do not have the exposure, contracts, or clout of Getty or Corbis – but we try harder! We have also had some success doing assignment shoots which has been lucrative for our photographers.
[…] in this industry, microstock’s effect, etc, etc, etc. Check out an enlightening discussion at A Photo Editor on this subject. I’ll keep you posted on my […]
One site that is attempting to help photographers out by offering higher comissions (70%+) and a minimum photo sales price ($50) is FocalPop, http://www.focalpop.com.
It’s a new site that reverses the current stock photography model:
First buyers submit a request for the photo they need, deadline, and price they’ll pay. Any photographer can sign up to be notified of these requests and submit photos if they see one of interest. The buyer selects the winner(s) and pays them via FocalPop.
I’m glad you excerpted this. Now I will ignore all your previous posts PRing up the stock photo sites.
@Andy,
I never PR’d any stock agency. I reproduced my list so other PE’s and AB’s could use it if they had to.
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