Other than Shutterstock’s quarterly reports and occasional bits of information from Getty concerning iStock there is virtually no solid information available regarding the annual gross revenue generated by the microstock companies.
I decided to take a look at the Poll information that can be found on
Microstockgroup.com of 10 of the leading microstock agencies to see if I could draw any reasonable conclusions about the annual revenue of these companies.
The Microstock Poll is updated monthly. Any microstock contributor can participate. It is not a scientific analysis. Typically, the number of responses range from 60 for some of the smaller agencies to 120 for the larger ones. Obviously, this is a vary small percentage of total contributors, but what I am looking for is the relative positioning of the agencies.
I assume that most of the people responding are some of the more successful contributors who have their images with multiple agencies. However, when it comes to iStock most successful contributors tend to be exclusive with iStock.
Analysis Process
One of the first problems is that there seem to be huge swings month to month, particularly with the larger companies. Certainly, when we look at the Shutterstock reported gross revenue doesn’t seem to be anything like these revenue swings. I attribute the swings to the fact that different people complete the survey month-to-month and in many cases the same people don’t consistently report every month. Nevertheless, the relative positioning between companies seems to remain relatively consistent.
Using Microstockgroup’s “Earnings Rating” I prepared the
chart below. Since Shutterstock supplies us with regular numbers, I tried to compare the other brands to Shutterstock. To begin I totaled the Shutterstock and Bigstock Earnings Ratings because they are both included in the gross revenue figure Shutterstock reports.
Unfortunately, Shutterstock doesn’t provide us with a breakdown of how much of their revenue comes from the Bigstock collection compared to that of Shutterstock, but if the experience of these contributors is representative Bigstock would generate about $21 million annually.
| |
Microstock |
Comparative |
|
Estimate of |
Shutterstock |
| |
Poll Results |
Revenue |
|
Relative To |
Other Brands |
| Shutterstock |
77.7 |
|
|
|
|
| Bigstock |
3 |
|
|
|
|
| |
80.7 |
80.7 |
|
120 |
130 |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
$580,000,000 |
$7,187,112 |
|
$4,833,333 |
$4,461,538 |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| AdobeStock |
37.5 |
$269,516,700 |
|
$181,249,987 |
$167,307,675 |
| iStock |
31.1 |
$223,519,183 |
|
$150,316,656 |
$138,753,831 |
| Pond5 |
16.5 |
$118,587,348 |
|
$79,749,994 |
$73,615,377 |
| Alamy |
10.5 |
$75,464,676 |
|
$50,749,996 |
$46,846,149 |
| Deposit Photos |
14.2 |
$102,056,990 |
|
$68,633,328 |
$63,353,839 |
| 123RF |
8.9 |
$63,965,296 |
|
$43,016,663 |
$39,707,688 |
| Dreamstime |
7 |
$50,309,784 |
|
$33,833,331 |
$31,230,766 |
| Canstock |
2.4 |
$17,249,068 |
|
$11,599,999 |
$10,707,691 |
I believe Shutterstock’s revenue in the last 12 months was about $580 million. I divided the 80.7 into the $580 million to get $7,187,112 for a base of 1.
After that I multiplied the Microstock Poll results for each of the other agencies by $7,187,112 to get an estimate of the gross revenue of each.
At first glance te iStock figure doesn’t seem too far off if were talking about the entire microstock segment of Getty’s business that includes both iStock and Thinkstock. But if it is for iStock non-exclusive alone the 31.1 is way too high. Getty has said the gross revenue for this segment of their business is about $220 million.
It appears that both exclusive and non-exclusive contributors were included when they get the 31.1 rating, but when the results of a few exclusive contributors are considered separately they have a 124.4 rating which is much higher than Shutterstock. I believe think that is possible for iStock exclusive contributors to earn more than many Shutterstock contributors due to the much higher base price for their images. But these exclusive contributors lose the advantage that Shutterstock contributors have of being able to put the same images with multiple agencies.
A lot would depend on the proportion of the 105 people who responded to the questionnaire that are non-exclusive and have their images with multiple other agencies compared to the proportion of exclusive contributors.
I also question the Alamy results. It is my understanding that about a year ago Alamy’s gross revenue was in the range of $40 million. It might be somewhat higher now, but nothing like $75 million.
That takes me to AdobeStock. When Adobe acquired Fotolia in 2014, I think gross revenue was about $100 million. My guess is that now it is somewhere between $150 and $200 million, but certainly not $263 million.
Basically, the predicted revenue of all the companies seems very high relative to Shutterstock.
Shutterstock Relative To Everything Else
Could there be any explanation for why Shutterstock’s “Estimated Revenue” is so low relative to all the other brands?
One possible answer is the huge growth in the number of Shutterstock contributors compared to contributor growth at other agencies.
| Year |
Contributors |
Gross Revenue |
Average |
Average |
| |
|
|
Gross Per |
Royalty |
| |
|
|
Contributor |
Received |
| 2015 |
100,000 |
$425,100,000 |
$4,251 |
$1,190.28 |
| 2016 |
190,000 |
$494,300,000 |
$2,602 |
$728.56 |
| 2017 |
250,000 |
$557,100,000 |
$2,228 |
$623.84 |
Given the number of new contributors to the Shutterstock collection in the last couple years, the average contributor may have seen a huge drop in revenue they receive from Shutterstock compared to that they are receiving from other companies.
While Shutterstock is still seeing annual revenue growth that growth has declined significantly in the last few years as they have added more and more images and more and more contributors. In 2012 thru 2014 annual growth was 40% per year. In 2015 it dropped to 30%. In 2016 and 2017 they started a push to dramatically grow their collection in terms of number of images and number of contributors. In 2017 revenue growth had declined to 13% and a significant portion of that resulted from a significant growth in the use of footage, not still images.
If the Poll results for Shutterstock were in the range of 120 to 130 for “Earnings Ratings” then the revenue for the other companies might look much more realistic. All this is speculation on my part, but I believe it is clear that the difference between Shutterstock’s revenue and that of all the other brands listed is much wider than the “Earning Ratings” numbers indicate.