Statistics & Surveys
In the fall of 2009, I estimated the size of the worldwide market
for still images and illustrations at about $1.45 billion. In the last
12 months, overall sales have probably remained about the same, with a
few companies seeing sales growth, mostly from taking market share from
those that have gone out of business.
One of the things RM and traditional RF photographers tend to overlook
is average price-per-image-licensed. Photographers worry when their
images are licensed for low prices. They track their average
royalty-per-image-in-file and the trends of their monthly royalty check.
But is a lower royalty check the result of fewer images being licensed,
a lower average price-per-license or both?.
This chart is designed to give the reader an understanding of the number of times images belonging to some of the top microstock photographers at iStockphoto are licensed in a given year and what that can mean in terms of gross revenue.
For several years
I have estimated that the size of worldwide market for still stock images and
illustrations at about $1.8 billion. I’ve also claimed that overall
stock photography has been a no-growth business despite the fact that
some companies and individuals could point to growth. Now, at the end of
2009 I believe gross revenue for the industry is no more than $1.45
billion and it will probably continue to decline. The stories here break out various segments of the market and explain the overall trends.l
Half of the survey respondents reported a greater than 5% drop in revenues between 2008 and 2009, and more than a fifth continue seeing a decline in 2010 compared to 2009.
A 14-month review of data from the leading microstock supports the theory of the fastest-growing industry segment having reached a plateau, with flat unit sales and revenue growth resulting from price increases.
The following material was compiled from
iStockcharts.multimedia.de and shows the sales of 198 of iStockphoto’s top contributors in the 14 months between May 1, 2009 and June 30, 2010. (I’ll use the word “contributor” instead of “photographer” because a significant number or the top sellers are illustrators or graphic designers selling illustration, not photography).
This story provides a list of useful articles that will provide the reader with a good background on the current state of the stock photography business and where it is headed.
In an effort to obtain updated information on revenue trends in the
stock photo industry, we will be conducting a revenue survey at the
2010 CEPIC International Congress and New Media Conference, which that
takes place in Dublin on June 9–13. In a blind survey, we will be
asking representatives of every stock agency and stock image
distributor to answer five brief questions on behalf of their company.
How does demand for images compare to what many agree is an
oversupply?
What does the competition look like in terms of the number of images available online? Everyone knows there are billions of amateur images floating around the Internet, but what is the quantity of unique images currently available in professional collections?
Jim Pickerell is launching a new photographer income survey in an
effort to determine general income trends for photographers in the last
couple of years. We encourage photographers, worldwide, who have had any earnings
whatsoever in the last two years from licensing rights to their images
to answer this brief questionnaire.
This story provides links to some of the stories on this site that may be of interest to someone new to the stock photography business, or someone who might to have a
brief refresher course on some of the things that have been happening in the
last few years. Many of these stories will also give you some idea of developing trends and what the
future might hold.
For those who think that the use of photography in education will remain the same, here are some numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau.
In January we published an analysis
of the units licensed in 2009 by a group of iStockphoto’s most
successful contributors and asked the question “Has Microstock Reached
a Plateau?” The first quarter 2010 results seem to confirm this is the case. As a
baseline, on June 1, 2009 we did a count of the total number of images
licensed in May 2009 by a group of 196 out of the 250 top selling iStock
contributors. (Information on some of the top 250 was not available.)
There were 442,533 images licensed by this group in that month. Average monthly sales were up only 5% by the end of 2009, but they were down 1% to only 3.9% by the end of March 2010. See the full analysis and the implications for the future.
In response to "Stock Photo Lottery," Bill Bachmann said: "I don't know where you get the idea that 1% of images are sold are RM. I think you are pulling that figure out of a hat."
Usage-based pricing is not going away; there will always be some demand for exclusive uses, for which customers will be willing to pay significant amounts of money. The question is how much and whether or not it is wise for most photographers to chase these customers.
In order to find a proxy for which seasonal holidays were important from a stock photography perspective, I decided to look at how many greeting cards were sent. Christmas & Valentine's Day were 1st and 2nd but I was surprised to find Mother's Day in 3rd place. This article goes into more detail about Mother's Day and also surveys stock photography search results associated with the term.
For most of iStockphoto's best-selling photographers, the number of images downloaded per month declined in 2009.
This chart provides information for 198 of the leading contributors to iStockphoto. It shows the total number of downloads each photographer had as of May 1, 2009 and the minimum and maximum number of downloads the photographer had on December 31, 2009. We were unable to report exact figures for the period May through December because iStockphoto changed its reporting policy in June to only supply a greater than number that indicated the downloads were in a certain range. Using this data and interpolating for the first four missing months in the data we were able to make an estimate of the number of downloads each photographer had in 2009.
ZenithOptimedia (Publicis) says that global ad spend for 2009 will be 10.2% lower than 2008, but that in 2010 it is expected to be up 0.9% compared to 2009. Group M (WPP) thinks 2009 spending will only be down about 6.6% from 2008 levels and expects 2010 to be 0.8% above 2009. There is no expectation that ad spending will get back to 2008 levels anytime soon.
Alamy sales for the third quarter of 2009 were flat compared to the second quarter, but were down 30% compared with the third quarter of 2008. U.S. Dollar and Euro sales were up slightly compared to last quarter 2009, but U.K. sales were down about 5%. Sales for the first three quarters of 2009 were down 30% compared to the same period in 2008.
It is time to revise previous estimates of industry revenues based on what has happened in the past year. For several years, we have estimated the size of the worldwide market for still images and illustrations at about $1.8 billion.
"We have reset and won't rebound and re-grow," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on the continued decline of print as an advertising medium during the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.
The average annual earnings of photographers responding to the 2008
Selling Stock self-employed photographer income survey are $110,409, leaving out the top five producers whose earnings are uncharacteristically large. Of this, the average annual stock income was $65,475, which means that 41% of photographers' freelance revenues come from something other than the licensing of rights to stock images.