Pricing
How low can prices go? Is the volume of images used more important than earning money when an image is used? Must we accept whatever the customer is willing to pay, or is it possible, at some point to say NO? If there is such a point where is it? Most photographer will agree there is some point where the people representing our images should say NO, but there is big disagreement on where that point should be.
After reading my
previous story investors in stock photo companies as well as image buyers may ask, “Why should we care if professional photographers stop producing stock images?”
A Korean subscriber recently asked the following questions. “I notice you say that many photographers are unable to earn enough money and end up leaving the market. Is there any specific number that you can prove? How many photographers/contributors were there in the past and now?
A videographer wrote recently complaining that two of his video clips had been sold by Getty Images to Viacom for a broadcast show on Comedy Central. This show also appears on the web. These two sales were made through a Premium Access deal and netted the videographer a whopping $8.46 for the two sales.
Dreamstime has made changes to its Extended License policy allowing users to produce unlimited copies of purchased media. Previously, customers purchased extended licenses for print or web usage of an image and were restricted by limits on the number of copies they could reproduce, for example for t-shirts, on-demand printed items, or e-cards.
If you’re a photographer who licenses your work as RM because you believe that’s the way to earn the most money (or a reasonable fee) when your pictures are used, it’s time to take a look at Offset. Many photographers are so opposed to microstock and subscription that they refuse to consider anything connected in any way with Shutterstock. If it is a Shutterstock initiative then it must be bad.
Getty Images has introduced Ultra Pack pricing which effectively lowers prices on all premium creative Royalty-Free images, Editorial images and Videos by between 8% and 31%. The only images not affected by this price reduction are RM.
Pond5 is in the process of creating a collection of video clips that can be offered through low priced subscriptions. Contributors have the option of nominating their low-selling files for inclusion in the collection and will receive a minimum monthly royalties of $0.50 per item for every clip in the collection, regardless of downloads and usage.
Ever since Getty Images invented Premium Access (PA) licensing image creators have been upset that their images were being licensed to some users for ridiculously low prices. Often images licensed in this manner are ones that have been extremely costly to produce. For at least one contributor Rights Managed PA sales now represent 66% of total sales at an average price of $12.00 and over half the sales are for $4.35 or less.
What should we expect next from Adobe? The following is pure speculation. I have no inside information that the following is part of Adobe’s plan, but it seems logical to me that they will move in this direction in the near future. If they do it could benefit many image creators and possibly negatively affect some.
Shutterstock has provided investors with some very interesting information about their Enterprise pricing strategy and how it differs from their normal E-commerce pricing. You can find the “E-commerce vs. Enterprise Case Study” by going go to this link (
http://investor.shutterstock.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=251362&p=irol-presentations). Then open the pdf under “Investor Presentation” that was uploaded on 11/18/15. The chart explaining the Case Study is on page 25 of this 37 page pdf.
Users report that Getty’s standard editorial license offers the following: “
Worldwide editorial use for 15 years (may not be used for commercial purposes or print covers). Unlimited seats. No limits on impressions and print runs.” This is essentially a Royalty Free license for images that are being offered as Rights Managed. Unlike most RF, the price charged is not fixed and based on the file size delivered. The price may be negotiable depending on the customer. But once the image is delivered, the customer can use the image in multiple ways over a period of 15 years as long as the use is editorial in nature and not for some commercial purpose, or for the cover of a printed product.
Many stock agencies are consolidating and downsizing, but not
Tandem Stock. Founded in 2010, they have been growing at an average rate of 45% per year. Specializing in Outdoor photography, they currently have a tightly edited collection of 115,000 images from 930 contributors. They have discovered that the needs of their clients are extremely specific and they specialize in supplying images that cater to those needs.
Photographers with a goal of maximizing earnings from the images they produce, and who continue to insist that in order to realize that goal their work must be licensed as Rights Managed (RM), may need to consider the new realities of the stock photo business.
Recently, I received some second hand information about a major editorial agency in Europe that licensed about 70,000 in 2007. The number of images licensed was up to about 400,000 in 2014. Sounds great. But, here’s the rest of the story. The average price paid for each use in 2007 was about $167.00. The average price for each use in 2014 was a little over $12.00. Consequently, in spite of the almost 6 times growth in the number of images used in 2014 compared to 2007 the total revenue generated in 2014 was less than half that generated in 2007.
Scoopshot has launched a new initiative that every professional photographer interested in working on assignment ought to consider. Their “
Everyone’s Private Photographer” initiative makes it easy for customers to input a location, anywhere in the world, where they need a photographer and immediately see a 9-image portfolio of each photographer operating in that area who might be able to perform a photo assignment.
Adobe Stock has announced that it is running a promotion from September 1st to September 20th that will discount the cost of images by 50%. For this limited period single images purchased will cost $4.99 instead of $9.99. Normally the royalty percentage might be expected to be calculated on the lower price, but to the huge relief and appreciation of image creators Adobe has announced that “regardless of this discount occurring, your commission will be unaffected and you will continue to generate royalties at the current rate.”
Image users on the
MicrostockGroup website report that Shutterstock has “dropped the price of single On Demand sales from 2 for $29 to $9.99 for each image.”
Previously,
500PX had priced the images in its Marketplace at flat rates of $50 for web resolution, $250 for print resolution, and $750 for products for resale. Now they have introduced a second tier for images their editors deem of lower quality. The flat rate prices for images in this tier, called Core, are $35 for web resolution, $150 for print resolution, and $300 for products for resale. The prices for the first Prime tier will remain the same.
If you’re a videographer and have been discouraged by low prices and low royalties for your work it’s time to check out
Videoblocks. In April at the National Association of Broadcasters conference the company added a new feature when they launched the Marketplace section of their site. Customers must have an annual subscription in order to access Marketplace. When they choose any of the Marketplace clips they pay an additional $49 if it is HD or $199 for 4K.
Subscription licensing is in for some dramatic changes. We know that a significant number of the images subscription customers download are used in the designer’s “creative process,” but never find their way into a deliverable end product. Traditionally, creators of all the images downloaded – whether used in a deliverable product or not – have received an equal royalty share of the revenue paid for the subscriptions.
Dreamstime, has altered its subscription plans to feature a monthly instead of daily quota of downloadable images, and is allowing the carrying over of unused downloads. The company says, “users will now effectively never ‘lose’ image downloads as unused downloads will roll over into the monthly quota amount, making Dreamstime the most convenient and flexible solution in the industry today.”
Tired of giving up 70% to 80% (and often more) of what a customer pays to use your image to a distributor? Consider
Picfair. Unhappy with the prices distributors are charging for your images and want more? Consider
PicFair.
Thanks to
Adobe Stock gross microstock revenue will start to decline. Let me explain why. I estimate that about $143 million of
Shutterstock’s 2014 revenue came from subscription and that there were about 114 million subscription downloads. It all those customers were to switch to Adobe Stock they could probably get all the images they need for $43 million or less
and save $100 million annually. Check out the numbers.
During the
CEPIC Congress in Warsaw a Russian stock photo agent told me that Russian photographers can live and support a family very comfortably on 50,000 roubles a month. At today’s currency exchange that works out to about $886 per month or $10,632 per year.