The last day to respond to the
Stock Photo Revenue Trends Survey that we launched last month will be September 17, 2016. For more information about the survey see
here.
The good news, so far, is that 13% of the respondents earn over $80,000 a year from stock sales alone. Seventy percent of this group have over 10,000 images in their stock collections. The other 30% have somewhere between 3,000 and 10,000 images in their collections.
All of these high earners are selling work either as both RM and RF or just Royalty Free. None are attempting to only license photographs as Rights Managed. This may be an indication that the most productive earners can no long rely on high quality, high production value work, priced at a high level to generate the most revenue.
So far, 42% of all respondents to the survey earn less than $10,000 annually from all stock photo sales, from all sources.
Thus far, photographers from 26 countries have responded. 50% of the respondents are from North America with 43% are from Europe and the Middle East. 7% of respondents are from Asia, but so far none from Japan or Korea. Where are all the Japanese and Korean photographers? In addition, we have no responses from the Russian photographers that are responsible for a huge percentage of the stock images being produced today. I would certainly like to see some responses from these under represented areas of the world.
61% of photographers saw a decline in their stock revenue in 2015 compared to what they earned in 2013 and for 44% of this group the decline in that two-year period was greater than 30%. On the other hand, 36% saw a revenue increase, and for 50% of this group the increase was greater than 30%. However, the total revenue generated in 2015 for several of those who saw a big percentage increase was less than $10,000.
Stock Agents
I would ask stock agents to encourage the photographers they represent to respond to this survey as the final data will be useful to everyone – both photographers and agents. You can find a direct link to the 8 question survey
here.