Everyone wants to know the best strategy for marketing their images. The numbers from this year’s income survey show that more people used the rights-managed strategy than any other, and that their average gross revenue was the highest at $56,326. However, image marketers should not be too quick to jump to the conclusion that rights-managed is necessarily the correct approach.
| Stock-licensing revenue by licensing model |
| Licensing model |
Number of survey respondents |
Stock-licensing revenue |
| Gross |
Average |
| Rights-managed |
110 |
$6,195,900 |
$56,326 |
| Rights-ready |
17 |
$404,815 |
$23,813 |
| Royalty-free |
53 |
$1,125,591 |
$21,238 |
| Subscription |
2 |
$17,100 |
$8,550 |
| Microstock |
22 |
$431,705 |
$19,623 |
| Not applicable |
3 |
$9,245 |
$3,082 |
Of the 125 total survey respondents, 110 or 88% earned some of their stock income from rights-managed sales. Somewhat surprisingly, 50 of that 110 also earned some income from royalty-free sales, making it clear that a significant portion of stock producers now view the royalty-free model as an accepted marketing strategy. These 50 shooters earned a total of $3,101,346 from rights-managed and $1,116,075 from royalty-free images. Seven of them earned more from royalty-free than from rights-managed sales. None of those who licensed images as royalty-free used that strategy alone. Three respondents that earned money from traditional royalty-free imagery also had microstock incomes.
The microstock information is among the most interesting. In 2007, there were 19 microstock sellers who earned less than $500,000 each (one earned more); these 19 represented 9% of the total survey respondents. In 2008, the 22 whose images were licensed as microstock represented 18% of the total respondents. In addition, 8 of these 22 photographers also earned revenue from traditional royalty-free sales. One whose gross stock revenue was $131,000 earned 95% of it from microstock and 5% from traditional royalty-free licensing.
One surprise was subscription sales. It has been generally believed that most non-exclusive microstock sellers also license their images through the subscription-based Shutterstock. However, in the Selling Stock survey, only one of 22 photographers who license their images as microstock also earned money from subscription sales.
Also evident is growth in the average earnings of microstock photographers. In 2007, average earnings were $9,971; in 2008, these were $19,623—almost as high as the average earnings of those who license rights to traditional royalty-free images. Of course, we must acknowledge that these numbers come from such a small portion of total microstock contributors that they may not be representative of microstock as a whole.
The rights-ready numbers offer another insight. This model was a Getty Images product that has now been discontinued. It was designed as a simplified rights-managed model, and the initial hope was that it would generate a similar average return per image. The low average return that photographers experienced may explain why Getty dropped it and moved all the rights-ready images back to rights-managed.