Getty Images Photographer’s Choice contributors have been asking if they can participate in the recent Flickr Collection Call for Artists. Getty is allowing this, as long as the contributor has a payee name that is different from his or her current account. This can be accomplished as simply as adding “Inc.” or “LLC” to the contributor name name.
Flickr contributors save the $50 upload charge applicable to Photographer’s Choice, but Getty says that the majority of regular Photographer’s Choice contributors no longer pay placement fees as a result of “Sell One Get One Free” offers—contributors who sell one image are allowed to submit another one free.
Compared to Photographer’s Choice, Flickr Collection images get better placement in the gettyimages.com search-return order. In a search for “people,” which all Getty brands should have plenty of, there were 13 Flickr Collection images and 7 Photographer’s Choice images came up among the first 100 results. Among the first 300 results, there were a total of 21 Flickr and 11 Photographer’s Choice images. The pattern appears to repeat itself every 300 images thereafter, so long as a given brand has images with the keyword. Clearly, if the subject is unique and many brands do not have any images of that type, then the images of those brands with a larger selection will move up in the search-return order.
An advantage of going the Photographer’s Choice route is that it is an unedited collection and everything a contributor submits is accepted. On the other hand, having an image accepted through the Flickr Collection first achieves the search-return order advantage and gives the photographer the benefit of an editor’s decision. If the image is not accepted into the collection and the photographer still wants it on gettyimages.com, it cans still be offered through Photographer’s Choice.
Most Flickr images are accepted into the royalty-free collection, where the photographer gets a 20% royalty. A few are placed into the rights-managed Flickr Select, where the photographer gets 30%, but the photographer has no choice as to whether the image is offered as royalty-free or rights-managed. With Photographer’s Choice submissions, the photographer has the option of choosing the license type and receives, on average, about 35% of rights-managed sales.
If photographers carefully keyword their Flickr images, there is a chance of making direct sales to those customers who search for images using Google, Yahoo! or Flickr itself. In this case, the photographer would retain 100% of any fee negotiated rather than the 20% Getty pays. Some photographers are having good success in making direct sales through Flickr.
Getty insists that “Photographer’s Choice remains one of the strongest performing collections and is the best collection for photographers to license their choice of images.” But given this new opportunity, it makes a lot more sense for Getty Images photographers considering submitting images to Photographer’s Choice to closely examine the Flickr Collection opportunity.