iStock Exclusive or Multi-Agency Non-Exclusive?

Posted on 3/21/2018 by Jim Pickerell | Printable Version | Comments (2)

I’ve been asked by an iStock exclusive contributor with more than 10,000 images in the collection if he should go non-exclusive and put his images with multiple agencies. This contributor has been regularly adding new images, but his gross revenue has been steadily declining month by month.

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Comments

Tibor Bognar Posted Mar 24, 2018
For me it's as simple as "Don't put all your eggs in one basket". Fortunes of agencies go up and down (unfortunately more often down) and if you are tied to one all your income may suddenly disappear. Corbis photographers have experienced a sudden dramatic drop of income when they found themselves at Getty. If I was manufacturing widgets I'd like them to be available in many stores, not just one! Many agencies insist on exclusivity, but when images are selling for a few dollars this can not be justified with any rational argument.

CHARLES MANN Posted Mar 24, 2018
There is a problem with your "Solution", if the contributor is "Exclusive" with iStock they CANNOT by contract sell any of their images via another RF agency, they could do RM. So they can't really "test the waters". And it does not look like iStock/Getty will be going to "Image Exclusivity" anytime soon.

Another thing that I have read from other contributors that have dropped the crown is that some files do better at some agencies, so the buyers might not be exactly the same across all agencies. So what you shoot might play a role in this as well.

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