Are Getty’s Top Suppliers Providing What Customers Need?

One of the interesting questions raised by the chart in the previous story and the chart below is the annual revenue each collection might possibly generate. Certain specialized collections may have provided very few images and thus generate much less than the larger collections. However, by using the attached chart brand owners may be able to get a senses of whether their images are selling as well as those of their competitors.

Based on Moody’s recent report of Getty’s gross revenue for the last 12 months, I estimate that Getty’s Creative collection generates about $280 million in revenue annually. That number has been pretty flat in the last few years despite a huge growth in the number of images in the collection. Using this number, the average annual revenue per-image generated for Getty Images from each image in the creative collection is $13.32. At a 20% royalty the average photographer, directly contracted to Getty, or an Agency or Production Company whose images are distributed by Getty, should receive $2.66 per image in the collection, annually.  

For example, there are 3,494,298 images in the EyeEm and EyeEm Premium RF collections. At $13.32 per-image per-year the EyeEm sales should have generated about $46,544,049 for Getty Images and approximately $9,284,833 for EyeEm (at 20%) if their images are used as frequently as those in other collections.



For Caiaimage, with 31,954 RM image, and assuming their gross sales were average, their images should have generated about $424,627 for Getty, and at 20% royalty $84,925 for Caia.

My bet is that Caia’s revenue was much higher than this and EyeEm’s much lower. This is because Caia is producing the kind of images that are in high demand by customers while EyeEm is not.



For the most part EyeEm images have been created by photographers whose primary interest in posting them online has been to show their work to others (mostly photographers), not earn money from their images. Of course, if someone is willing to pay them a little money to use one of their images, that’s an added benefit. They are certainly not going to turn the money away, but it’s not a primary motivation.

Professional photographers, on the other hand, are trying to earn a portion of their living from the images they produce. They spend time trying to understand what customers need and focus on producing the kind of images that customers will pay enough to use to cover costs and realize a profit.

At Getty the number of images added from EyeEm and Moment has grown dramatically in the past two or three years. Many of these images are great and beautiful photographs. However, I believe that, for the most part, they tend to not be the kind of images that are in high demand fy customers for their projects.



I may be wrong in this analysis. Maybe images from EyeEm and Moment are selling as well, or better than those of who I think are among the leading stock image producers such as Caiaimages, Hero Images, Maskot, Tetra, Johner, Science Photo Library and Westend61.

If the amateurs are not producing the images customers are buying, then it may be time for someone to think about what it needed to make it economically viable for professionals to produce such images.

There could be some other problems as well. Images that are not selling may be buried under newer images of equal or lesser quality. If customers never see certain images they won’t buy them. The answer may be to keep re-doing the same images over and over in order to get them to the top of the pile, but somehow that doesn’t seem that productive.

Also, certain types of subject matter will sell much better than others. Consequently, sales revenue from nature, wildlife and scenic collections may not be near as good as those from people, lifestyle and medical collections.

It may also help to improve upon the same themes that have worked before, but it is often difficult to determine what customers will consider an improved version.

The chart below is ordered based on the number of images found when searching each collection on November 9 and 10, 2017. I’ll repeat these search in 6 months or a year to determine trends.

Rights Managed	RM	Whole		Royalty Free	RF	Whole
		Owned				Owned
Lonely Planet Images	781,392	X		EyeEm	3,482,166
Corbis Documentary	596,008	X		E+	2,038,528	X
Photolibrary	519,124	X		Moment Open	1,361,997	X
The Image Bank	495,937	X		Moment	1,054,230	X
De Agostini Picture Library	285,676			DigitalVision Vectors	831,786	X
Photographer's Choice	257,390	X		Stockbyte	669,666	X
Corbis	232,292	X		Photodisc	610,017	X
Moment	187,870	X		Corbis	326,489	X
Gallo Images	174,726			Westend61	211,059
AWL Images	142,621			Photographer's Choice RF	201,654	X
National Geographic	137,452			Cultura	193,609
Minden Pictures	115,789			Blend Images	192,242
Perspectives	113,604			DigitalVision	184,845	X
Science Source	97,651			amana images	156,538
age fotostock	96,872			Image Source	118,622
robertharding	96,855			iStock Unreleased	118,529	X
All Canada Photos	89,180			Foap	111,625
amana images	82,651			National Geographic	108,748
Dorling Kindersley	80,252			Fotosearch	98,433
Stone	79,558	X		Tetra images	93,174
hemis.fr	70,284			F1online	93,145
VisitBritain	67,496			Moment Unreleased	93,122	X
LOOK	66,834			imageBROKER	89,481
Taxi	63,040	X		Vetta	86,681	X
Oxford Scientific	62,038			PhotoAlto Agency RF	83,723
First Light	61,170			Collection Mix: Subjects	82,535
Universal Images Group	60,110			Science Photo Library	74,910
National Geographic Magazines	58,086			Design Pics	72,330
Canopy	56,997	X		Juice Images	72,282
Panoramic Images	55,475			Imagenavi	70,147
Photononstop	53,981			Johner Images RF	69,966
imageBROKER	49,406			TongRo Images	61,975
arabianEye	47,601			Foodcollection	60,975
Picture Press	45,845			OJO Images	53,736	X
Hulton Archive	44,690	X		Glowimages	53,200
Historic Map Works	42,074			Alloy	52,110	X
Passage	42,058			Hero Images	49,137
Aurora	40,891			blue jean images	46,302
Contour Style	40,270			View Stock	46,224
Iconica	40,222	X		Moment Mobile	44,842	X
SuperStock	38,906			fStop	44,268
WaterFrame	38,389			Sino Images	42,365
StockFood Creative	36,872			BLOOMimage	39,477
Biosphoto	32,749			Brand X Pictures	37,022	X
Topic Images	31,918			MIXA	36,934
Archive Photos	31,893			RooM	36,344
Visuals Unlimited	31,857			Rubberball Productions	35,324
Glow	30,689			Gallo Images ROOTS RF	34,384
Arcaid Images	29,797			Score by Aflo	34,342
Cultura Exclusive	27,108			Photosindia	34,096
Westend61	25,192			Radius Images	33,712
Stock4B	23,674			Purestock	33,026
Science Faction	21,350			Caiaimage	31,954
Axiom Photographic Agency	19,387			Best View Stock	30,953
WIN-Initiative	19,069			CSA Images	28,609
Photonica	18,638	X		Maskot	28,354
Taxi Japan	16,306	X		Imagemore	27,309
Nature Picture Library	16,168			IndiaPicture	26,839
Ikon Images	13,704			Stocktrek Images	26,582
Moment Select	13,068	X		ONOKY	25,495
Images Bazaar	13,025			Aurora Open	24,651
The LIFE Picture Collection	11,970			AsiaPix	24,148
F1online	11,628			Mint Images RF	24,117
Photonica World	11,569	X		Imagezoo	21,778
Mondadori Portfolio	11,373			UpperCut Images	19,752
China Span	10,179			Dorling Kindersley RF	19,130
Car Culture ® Collection	9,863			Dex Image	16,994
Science Photo Library	9,256			Folio Images	16,233
UpperCut Images	8,249			ABSODELS	15,861
Illustration Works	8,073			Retrofile RF	12,962	X
Asia Images	8,029			STOCK4B-RF	12,650
Yann Arthus-Bertrand	7,850			EyeEm Premium	12,132
Collection Mix: Subjects	7,221			MedicalRF.com	11,901
Nordic Photos	7,035			Publisher Mix	11,080
SambaPhoto	7,021			DisabilityImages	10,961
Folio Images	6,346			Asia Selects	10,508
View Stock	5,665			beyond fotomedia	10,433
CGIBackgrounds	5,336			Redchopsticks	10,351
ABSODELS	4,562			Stockbyte Unreleased	10,144	X
Mint Images	4,420			Ingram Publishing	9,519
Discovery Channel Images	4,386			Imagewerks Japan	9,330
AFP Creative	3,787			Inmagineasia	9,279
Bettmann	3,436	X		MILATAS	9,047
Blend Images	3,329			Ivary	7,231	X
Untitled X-Ray	2,932			Hola Images	6,889
360cities.net	2,786			IZA Stock	6,348
Allsport Concepts	2,584	X		ZZVE Illustrations	6,251
Johner Images	2,459			XiXinXing	5,979
Retrofile	2,363	X		Gulfimages	5,788
Altrendo	2,332			Corbis Unreleased	5,420	X
Popperfoto	2,295			arabianEye	5,251
Da Vinci Codex Atlanticus	2,238			Photononstop	5,245
LatinContent	2,014			UFO RF	4,890
Imagezoo	1,961			ArtBox Images RF	4,572
Riser	1,918	X		Passage Unreleased	4,546
America 24-7	1,847			VStock	4,489
Hola Images	1,741			Fuse	4,268	X
RooM	1,693			ImaZinS	4,132
Nativestock	1,457			OJO+	3,866	X
Art Images	1,154			Luxy	3,688
Fototrove	1,138			Hoxton	3,410
Refinery29	1,010			HEX	3,065
Moment Unreleased	602	X		MITO images	2,385
ImaZinS	579			LatinContent	2,114
Corbis Historical	6	X		Loop Images	1,860
Bloomberg Creative Photos	0			Bloomberg Creative Photos	1,686
Conde Nast Collection	0			GeoNova Maps	1,154
EyeEm RM	0			Evok Images	843
Genuine Japan	0			Snapwi.re	777
NYonAir	0			Pixta	718
Publisher Mix	0			Silkroad images	163
				PictureIndia	121
				Chic Sketch	119
				Conde Nast Lifestyle	0
				iStock	0	X
				iStock Unreleased +	0	X
				Lonely Planet RF	0	X
				Nordic Life	0
				VisitBritain	0