Today, Peter James made comments on my
Facebook page to several of the stories listed there. I can understand his frustration. Here are links to the stories he looked at and the comments he made.
Uberization of Stock Photography – April 26
The implications of the take over of the stock photography business by amateurs and part timers who don't value their own work and give their pictures away.
Is subjects that aren't popular enough to get lots of downloads at 25 cents each won't be Photographed anymore and sent to the peanut paying agencies.
The Photographers that are not out of a job will sell via other own websites while watching the 25 cent agencies destroy themselves in their race to sell images for 1 cent each.
How Low Can Prices Go – April 14
How low can prices go? At the moment the lowest average is 25 cents the Photographers selling their images for 25 cents will happily sell their images for 1 cent.
Why you may ask? Because the Photographers selling their pictures for 25 cents don't value their own images. And they do not realize they are in a race to the bottom and will happily sell their images for 1 cent each.
Anybody with any sense at all knows what the ending will be, and the sooner the Agency leading the race to bottom goes bust the better everything will be.
Does RM Licensing Still Make Sense – Jun 15
Fewer and Fewer customers are buying RM because the Stock industry is in a race to the bottom and Photographers are giving their pictures away.
If somebody is offering similar pictures to RM for 25 cents why would they buy RM?
RF Limitations July 20
Correct we are opposed to RF for that reason, a Holiday firm producing Brochures can purchase one image and use that image forever across all its brochures.
If they purchased an RM image that would have to pay a fee every time they used it. RF is a terrible license for photographers.?
Decision Time for RM Photographers August 8
RF is an absolutely terrible license for Photographers but great for customers. Lots of Photographers selling pictures as RM have read (How Stock Photography eat itself). And they don't want to part of that, and don't want to join in with the race to the very bottom where all pictures will sell for 1 cent.
My Thoughts
Yes, it would be better for photographers if they could be paid a separate fee for each unique use of an image (RM) rather than a single payment that allows unlimited future use of the image (RF). But for the most part, and for most images, the time when the RM licensing model worked has passed. For most subjects there are just too many good images available as RF.
Customers are not limited to RM licensing in order to find great images. If a customer sees an RM and RF image side by side, and in the customer’s opinion the RM image is better, more than likely they will buy the RF image, not only because it is cheaper but because there are less restrictions on use of the image. They have less to worry about if later they decide they do want to make an additional use of the image. By any calculations you want to use 97% or more of the images licensed today are RF and less than 3% are RM.
Yes, RF images are being sold for $0.25, but the sad fact is that RM images are sometimes being sold, by some of the major agencies, for less than RF or Microstock prices. Microstock prices actually tend to be going up while traditional RF, and particularly RM prices tend to be falling dramatically.
James is right that if a holiday travel firm purchases an RM image for use in a brochure they would normally have to pay an additional fee each time they use the image in a new brochure. But the reality is that customers have a lots of choices. First, they can just go get a different RF image. Today, there is hardly any RM image that is so unique and outstanding in its ability to sell travel to a particular location that it cannot easily be replaced with something else. Secondly, the customer can simply go to the RM seller and negotiate rights to make all the possible future uses they can think of for a one-time price. This happens all the time.
Agencies Destroying Themselves
Yes, agencies selling at low prices may destroy themselves. But Shutterstock seems to be doing just fine. Gross revenue this year will be around $500 million. (That doesn’t mean that all the photographers contributing to Shutterstock, or even a significant percentage of them, are doing fine. The average Shutterstock photographer earns about $1,200 a year and has about 700 images in the collection.)
For the most part the agencies that seem to be “going bust” are those that have focused on trying to continue to sell their images as RM. The ones with an RF offering tend to be doing better. I’m not sure how this is going to make it better for those who want to continue to sell their images as RM.
Own Websites
As agencies offering only RM licensing disappear photographers that want to continue licensing their images based on usage may “sell via other own websites.” But, I haven’t heard of many photographers without years of experience, a major reputation, and years of building a client base that make many stock sales via their own website today.
The big problem is in making customers aware that your site exists, particularly if most of what you shoot is people, lifestyle, recreation, children, travel, scenic, etc. There is so much of this material available on the major, inexpensive sites that it is hardly worth anyone’s trouble to seek out different, privately operated sites that may have very fine images that are more expensive.
The marketing of a personal web site can be a very expensive proposition. You have to build a client list, and it often requires direct mail to get a new customer’s attention. You can also spend money on Google Adwords to try to draw customers to your site. And how many high priced sales will all that generate?
Finally, photographers who want to continue to earn money from the images they produce may have to accept lower prices and hope that they make up some of the difference in volume. Realistically, much more work will be involved in selling images than was the case a few years ago. And, the gross revenue generated will probably be much lower.