Coventry, U.K.-based royalty-free library Agodia Images says its strategy is to keep pricing as simple as possible. To do this, contributing photographers assign each submitted image one of three prices—£4.99, £9.99 or £14.99 ($7.68, $15.37 or $23.06 at current exchange rates)—regardless of file size or usage-specific criteria.
According to Agodia’s founder, photographer Kai Stueckmann, a large image-buyer segment is unwilling to pay above than £50 for high-resolution versions of images. The process is also overly complex for the customer, in Stueckmann’s opinion: “Many of the well-known stock agencies are working with complicated pricing models, long lists of different prices depending on resolution, media, number of copies and other criteria.”
Agodia’s one-price licence covers all possible editorial and commercial uses, including merchandising articles and other resale products. The agency launched with over 300,000 images by over 1,000 photographers, largely from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The company accepts submissions and says it declines about a third of the images. Agodia also maintains a German office.
Though the offering targets the budget-conscious, Stueckmann says: “We do not want to encourage the collapse of prices in the creative sector. We just offer an online service besides the traditional distribution channels (e.g., image publishers, big and often more expensive stock companies, or royalty-free CD-ROMs), where advertising agencies, Web designers, marketing departments or publishers can cover their demand.”