Hi Everyone,
Has anyone sold their images through stock agencies???
Any recommendations??? I have been goggleing, but most of the time
BigStockPhoto, istock, or Shutterstock is coming up.
These are huge sites with approx. 45,000 participants and rather hard to get in. Is there anything else "out there" which are legit
and perhaps on a smaller scale. Any advise is greatly appreciated.
Judith
Posted by David Prichard on February 10, 2009 at 8:42 PM
Judith,
I just got a royalty check in, $5.98 for half a page, textbook. The realities of stock currently. Not to say they all go this cheap but that is the market these days.
Bear in mind there are stock agencies that now consider a photographer as an income source now, not just the images. I believe it is Getty that is charging some shooters $50 to submit an image. When you consider the rule of thumb is a return on $1.00 a year per image, how do you make money?
To make money at stock you have to shoot and submit a lot of work and keep it current, i.e. changing skylines, fashions etc.
Not that I want to discourage you, but consider many commercial buyers are now using such sites as Flickr for image searches. The photo editor for the local paper makes about what I do in stock on his Flickr account. Some here make some stock income via their own website also cutting out the agency fee. Perhaps they would share their experience with you.
Posted by Don Grall on February 11, 2009 at 4:17 AM
Stock can be ok if you have a lot of photos on file. Lifestyle and business style photos sell the best, with nature and wildlife style photos at the bottom. Most traditional stock agencies also require exclusivity on the images of yours they keep on file. That means you can't send them out to other agencies (nor image similars for that mattter). You can market them to clients but in some cases you will have to notify the stock agency if you sell a license to a client for long term use to avoid potential conflicts. If you're the type of person who doesn't enjoy the process of marketing and selling, then stock agencies are a good solution.
The Flickr model for selling photos has hurt the pricing structure to a degree, but the large number of photos on a site like that can actually repel a photo buyer who has limited time to find the right image for their project.
Posted by James Hersey on February 11, 2009 at 8:36 AM
My only advice is do hat you are doing CHECK THEM OUT. I know the prices have been low but you still need to protect your images. I was burned with one of the very first all digital agencies. They would scan the images and had on of the early web search sites. The problem was they were not very good at paying and they let some images out on the royalty free market. I did get it corrected and have had good dealings with some agencies in the past. Remember if your images are released on the clip-art or royalty free market you won't be able to market them or get a good price in most other markets.
Register me as a contrarian about stock agencies, Judith. The big ones just seem like rip-offs, functioning as bottomliess pits you consign your best images to and usually get back very little for their "marketing" efforts. I'll come to the alternate approach in a minute, but the few folks I know who do well with stock agencies have focused on very carefully selected small ones. They feel the smaller ones are more "hungry" for sales and have a better sales record on a per-image-submitted basis. More important, the smaller ones put out monthly, even weekly or daily "want lists" of images they have markets for, but don't have in their files. These want lists become virtual shooting assignments for the successful stock shooters, and the quicker they can shoot and submit for the list, the more likely they have a sale. The photographer I know best who follows this practice averages about $100 of these "assignment" sales for every $1 of sales from the agency stock files.
The alternate approach is doing your own sales and marketing, functioning as your own stock house. Success requires a lot of work, and very few make it. They have excellent web sites and are dedicated marketers. Ron Niebrugge is one of the best examples I know of here at NPN. We're fairly passive about our own stock sales, taking them as they come through established clients in our more diverse photo business. See my NPN staff profile at the top of the page for a description of our business. Stock only makes up about 20% of our total sales, though we have decided to push that. As a business model, we make more from people hiring us to take photos than the photos would ever make as magazine covers "true" nature photographers covet and fight for. The best accounts I can give for avoiding the "dollar stock" or royalty free route such as Flickr all come from unsolicited approaches we've had from magazines and other photo buyers who couldn't get the images they needed anywhere else. We get full fee rather than sharing it with a stock agency, and we usually earn more in a single sale than most folks earn in years of listings with royalty free sites. We might have fewer stock sales numerically, but we make orders of magnitude more money.
Shake the chaff out of all that, and the more unique your photography subjects, the more likely you'll sell. And the more you stand out so people can find you, the more likey you'll sell. And the more you shoot for sale rather than for art, the more you will sell. And finally, the more work you are willing to do yourself rather than hand over to an agency, the more you will take home at the end of the day.
Posted by Richard Wong on February 12, 2009 at 3:25 AM
The amount of work required to submit enough worthy images is the same regardless of who you submit to so you might as well work with the agencies that license your work for decent fees. There is a lot of companies out there only interested in their own agenda (the ones that you cited) and a lot of misguided photographers out there who buy into their sales pitch so I'd suggest doing some serious homework and consider what you want to accomplish in the long run before doing anything.
Avoid the stock : do you realy want to be paid 1$ for your job ? Have you paid your camera 1$ ??
Two ways to sold your pictures in good conditions!
By your own marketing and works: difficult, very ! But not impossible.Take a long time.
Thru photographic agency ! I m french, i managed my own photographic library, we're NOT RF, we're RM ! Price are différents ! But, price are according with the time link to each picture ! When a photographer open our doors, give us 100 pictures from Antartica, do you really think, he expect only some littles coins for his job ? Of course not ! Agency is the best way to help us to make money with your pictures. Their's not waiting the customers, but their's working both photographers and customers to find together the best pictures.
Avoid the microstock if your have really good pictures and subjects !
Discussion
6 repliesHas anyone sold their images through stock agencies???
Any recommendations??? I have been goggleing, but most of the time
BigStockPhoto, istock, or Shutterstock is coming up.
These are huge sites with approx. 45,000 participants and rather hard to get in. Is there anything else "out there" which are legit
and perhaps on a smaller scale. Any advise is greatly appreciated.
Judith
I just got a royalty check in, $5.98 for half a page, textbook. The realities of stock currently. Not to say they all go this cheap but that is the market these days.
Bear in mind there are stock agencies that now consider a photographer as an income source now, not just the images. I believe it is Getty that is charging some shooters $50 to submit an image. When you consider the rule of thumb is a return on $1.00 a year per image, how do you make money?
To make money at stock you have to shoot and submit a lot of work and keep it current, i.e. changing skylines, fashions etc.
Not that I want to discourage you, but consider many commercial buyers are now using such sites as Flickr for image searches. The photo editor for the local paper makes about what I do in stock on his Flickr account. Some here make some stock income via their own website also cutting out the agency fee. Perhaps they would share their experience with you.
The Flickr model for selling photos has hurt the pricing structure to a degree, but the large number of photos on a site like that can actually repel a photo buyer who has limited time to find the right image for their project.
The alternate approach is doing your own sales and marketing, functioning as your own stock house. Success requires a lot of work, and very few make it. They have excellent web sites and are dedicated marketers. Ron Niebrugge is one of the best examples I know of here at NPN. We're fairly passive about our own stock sales, taking them as they come through established clients in our more diverse photo business. See my NPN staff profile at the top of the page for a description of our business. Stock only makes up about 20% of our total sales, though we have decided to push that. As a business model, we make more from people hiring us to take photos than the photos would ever make as magazine covers "true" nature photographers covet and fight for. The best accounts I can give for avoiding the "dollar stock" or royalty free route such as Flickr all come from unsolicited approaches we've had from magazines and other photo buyers who couldn't get the images they needed anywhere else. We get full fee rather than sharing it with a stock agency, and we usually earn more in a single sale than most folks earn in years of listings with royalty free sites. We might have fewer stock sales numerically, but we make orders of magnitude more money.
Shake the chaff out of all that, and the more unique your photography subjects, the more likely you'll sell. And the more you stand out so people can find you, the more likey you'll sell. And the more you shoot for sale rather than for art, the more you will sell. And finally, the more work you are willing to do yourself rather than hand over to an agency, the more you will take home at the end of the day.
Avoid the stock : do you realy want to be paid 1$ for your job ? Have you paid your camera 1$ ??
Two ways to sold your pictures in good conditions!
By your own marketing and works: difficult, very ! But not impossible.Take a long time.
Thru photographic agency ! I m french, i managed my own photographic library, we're NOT RF, we're RM ! Price are différents ! But, price are according with the time link to each picture ! When a photographer open our doors, give us 100 pictures from Antartica, do you really think, he expect only some littles coins for his job ? Of course not ! Agency is the best way to help us to make money with your pictures. Their's not waiting the customers, but their's working both photographers and customers to find together the best pictures.
Avoid the microstock if your have really good pictures and subjects !
Regards from France
http://www.naturimages.com