OK, so you have thousands of pictures in your archive, all shot for shits and giggles and you want to find a way to make money from them. Here’s a cutting edge idea to turn your hobby into a funexcitingandprofitable new job. Just put them all on line, attach prices and license terms and then work yer SEO butt off until people find the pictures and start sending in the moolah!
I know, I know, you’ve seen this done somewhere already right? OK, you caught me, there is a couple of super secret websites right now where you can buy pictures online for use in magazines and websites. There’s one, called Photoshelter that… oh wait, never mind. Hold on, there’s this other one called Digital Railroad, huge archive, nice interface…. oh, never mind about that one. Lemme see… there’s one called a microstock… oops, the one I was going to tell you about just went under.
The story’s just breaking but, it seems the demise of DRR is nigh. APE is reporting it HERE, Harrington is reporting it HERE and it’s on PDN so, you can pretty much kiss ‘em goodbye.
What technology giveth, it also taketh away. The internet might have made sourcing imagery infinitely easier but, it also made it easier to turn images into a commodity. This means that price and availability for this commodity is now closely linked and, thanks to the internet, the playing field has been leveled. Getty sold and soon to be broken up, Corbis, in my opinion being readied for the showroom floor, Alamy potentially shopping for a buyer. and outfits like DRR and PS going under at a rapid clip. The reality is, the business model is broken. Ever see the images of the week from Getty and iStock? many times, the iStock stuff is better and, wayyy cheaper. You’ve got a company offering the same product at two vastly different price levels and their competitors at all price levels are struggling.
Face it, other than license terms, RF and RM are for the most part the same. And for the vast majority of clients, the only real difference now is price. I don’t know the numbers but, would guess that the micros are experiencing huge quarter over quarter growth and that the larger RM firms are hemorrhaging money. Upstarts like DRR and PS, while good ideas that were in the middle in terms of pricing, were, in my opinion, ahead of their time. My prediction is that the micros will start raising prices and increasing their quality levels, making it harder for amateurs to get much in the pipe, another round of consolidation will ensue wherein Corbis buys one or two micros, Getty buys Flickr and RM becomes cheaper or non existant unless shot exclusively and RF becomes more expensive.
With the economy in turmoil, if you make a significant part of your living from stock photography and are not one of the stock rock stars, you need to call your folks and find out if they’ve redone that room in the basement yet. Unless of course you shoot only for micros and upload to every damn one of them, in that case, you might only be making fifty cents an image but, the volume means you’re golden. Shine on you crazy diamonds.
Tags: stock photography
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Mix all that happy news in with the fact that a lot of magazines who used to pay us for our work refuse to do so anymore (they can get ‘em free from you know where) and it’s really looking rosy for us poor ol’ travel photographers.
Paul,
I try to remain positive with these things. Like I said, if you shoot for the micros, I suspect your boat will rise as they put the macros out of business and then raise their own prices. Combined with the volume, you may eventually make more money than with traditional stock.
Interestingly, I just shot a feature for a Mexican travel mag and their rates were surprisingly good (about four times what the NY Times pays) so, that’s some positive news, also just talked to another photo ed about a job in the Caribbean that pays pretty decent.
Funny but, someone just contacted me yesterday after seeing an image on Flickr and asking if they could license it. I quoted them $69 and they didn’t even bother to reply. Suspect they were waiting for me to reply back with an offer to send a cheque in exchange for a photo credit. hat said, I honestly believe that things are going to evolve for the better, as the micros raise their standards and the amateurs get fed up with the hundreds of hours of keywording.
Cheers.
Hey Dan,
Yeah it’s amazing how sometimes the little guys in out-of-the-way places pay much better and don’t try to grab everything. One of my favourite clients is an Indonesian magazine that gives me a lot of artistic freedom and pays really well for one-time rights.
I’m not a pessimistic guy by nature, in fact my wife says I’m unbearably cheerful!, so I just roll with the punches and see where the industry is heading. It’s an exciting time to be a photographer and, as always, it takes a bit of rat cunning to make a living at this crazy game.
Thanks for the great blog, I thoroughly enjoy it.
I think you’re right, it’s going to be pretty hard for a photographer to survive on stock alone, the dream of passive income will likely become just a dream.
The interesting thing is that the decline of stock is not just about volume, it’s not simply about competition and commoditization of images, and it’s not just about price: it’s that demand has changed also. We’ve seen a big change in the mediums that use images, and an overriding push for “good enough” images for a number of reasons: revenue models for online media, the emphasis on publishing fast (making speed of sale more important than price), and I think, since so many more people see, take and use pictures now, the idea of a “good” image has really changed.
And as you point out, we’re not going back…