Many experienced professional photographers have been watching image prices fall but just cannot bring themselves to license their images for $1. Well, the fact is that microstock prices are no longer $1.
| Table 1. iStockphoto credit pricing |
| Number of credits |
Total cost |
Price per credit |
| 12 |
$18 |
$1.50 |
| 26 |
$38 |
$1.46 |
| 50 |
$70 |
$1.40 |
| 120 |
$165 |
$1.37 |
| 300 |
$370 |
$1.23 |
| 600 |
$680 |
$1.13 |
| 1000 |
$1,050 |
$1.05 |
| 1500 |
$1,500 |
$1.00 |
| 2000 |
$1,900 |
$0.95 |
At iStockphoto, if customers are willing to buy $1,500 worth of credits, and the image file sizes they need are extra small (425 by 282 pixels) for Web uses, they can get them for $1 each. But what else can customers do with a file that small?
Because iStock and other microstock sites operate on a credit system, a customer may only need a small number of credits to cover the cost of a few images. The price per image for most credit packages is more than $1. Despite the fact that a dollar sign appears in front of the credit numbers on the site, in most cases, the customer is paying more than $1 per credit. The customer has the option to buy various numbers of credits, and the more he buys, the cheaper credits become (see Table 1).
| Table 2. iStockphoto pricing by file size |
| File size |
Pixel dimensions |
Price (credits) |
| XSmall |
425 x 282 |
1 |
| Small |
850 x 565 |
3 |
| Medium |
1,700 x 1,129 |
6 |
| Large |
2,719 x 1,808 |
12 |
| XLarge |
4,206 x 2,796 |
18 |
| XXLarge |
4,992 x 3,320 |
22 |
Since the difference in the price per credit among the various iStock packages is pennies, you may ask what the big deal is. It is the number of credits needed to purchase a file size sufficiently large to fulfill a customer’s needs. Table 2 lists six different file sizes and the number of credits required to purchase each one.
If a customer does not want a lot of images and purchases a 50-credit package, the price for a large file is not $12.00, but $16.80. The price for an XXLarge file is $30.80. This is still not much by traditional pricings standards, but it is a long way from what microstock prices were a couple years ago. At these prices, it does not take all that many sales to match what a photographer would earn from a single rights-managed sale, and there are a currently a lot more microstock sales than rights-managed ones.
In addition, traditional prices seem to be declining rapidly, while microstock prices are rising at an equally rapid clip.
The prices for video clips are also worth considering. A small Web-use file sells for 15 credits, while a large Web-use file goes for 25. If the file needed is 720HD, the price is 75 credits, and if the customer needs 1080HD, the price is 90 credits.
Microstock prices may still be too low for some tastes, but at the very least, it may be worth paying some attention to what is happening in this market.