Everything old is new again. Maybe it’s because a new audience is always being born or maybe it’s because some folks fail to learn from history.
Around the year 2000, a Canadian web developer started his own online stock picture agency. Back then, existing stock agencies usually screened prospective photographers and they refused his photos as not being good enough.
His new stock agency accepted everyone and initially gave pictures away for free. But he soon realized that free wasn’t sustainable and he began to charge a few dollars per picture. His stock site was aimed at amateur photographers who were happy to give away their pictures:
The monetary rewards are an added bonus, but I don’t think they’re everything for everyone,” he said. “I think our core group of photographers, our 2000 exclusives” — photographers with portfolios exclusive to iStockphoto — are motivated by the reward of being part of an elite club that engages in creative discussion nonstop.
Sometime after Getty Images bought his stock agency, he said in a magazine interview that he regretted selling pictures for such a low price and admitted it may have hurt photographers.
Then in 2013, after his non-compete clause with Getty expired, he started another stock photo agency. This new stock agency — wait for it — screens photographers to make sure their pictures are good enough. It also claims that it pays the highest commission (50%) to artists.
Everything old is new again.
Or perhaps everything that was once proven to work has to be reproved by those who didn’t learn from history.
In the old days
In the 1970s to 1990s, before the World Wide Web and digital cameras, a stock photo agency was a bricks-and-mortar office with several employees and many filing cabinets filled with medium-format and large-format transparencies. Miniature format wasn’t the norm because 35mm image quality wasn’t always good enough for commercial use.
Photographers who wanted to join a particular agency were often screened for experience and style. Each agency often represented only a limited number of photographers. These photographers usually had different styles and areas of expertise so that they didn’t directly compete with each other.
These stock photo agencies were real agencies. They actively promoted their photographers and their work. They actively marketed to, and worked with, select clients.
Many of these agencies published (i.e., printed) wonderful catalogues of their best images. These catalogs were distributed and even sold to prospective clients. For image resales, a 50-50 split between agency and photographer was the norm since the agency did a lot of footwork on behalf the photographer and the agency had a very high overhead.
The Internet and digital cameras changed everything but not right away.
Online stock agencies
In the mid to late 1990s, many stock agencies still accepted only transparencies but they occasionally may have made film scans to send to customers. They also began to use web sites to promote their image collections.
In 1998, I started with an online stock agency that used only scanned film images and digital camera images. Since everything was online and the agency’s overhead was low, the split was 70-30 in favour of the photographer. On assigned work, the split was 90-10 in favour of the photographer. My lowest editorial stock commission was $250 per photo.
Getty Images began to emerge as the 800-pound gorilla around 2001. To compete with Getty, my agency drastically lowered its fees. My average stock commissions became $60/photo. By 2003, I earned as little as $7.50/photo. At this point, I quit online stock.
Everyone with a camera thought stock agencies were a get-rich-quick scheme and they dumped millions of images online.
. . . recent advancements in editing and processing software present more of a curse than a blessing, allowing photographers to mask technical errors that once would have rendered their digital images unusable.
“Photoshop and other similar programs have allowed people with no photographic skills to compete in the marketplace,” he explained. Technical blemishes can now be airbrushed away with the help of any number of image editing programs.
“That levels the playing field in favor of non-photographers,” said Renault. “And since the prices are so low, it has in all honestly created a market for images that never in a million years would have been accepted at mainstream photo agencies.
By the mid-00s, there were over 1,000 online stock agencies. This type of business was easy and cheap to set up. Everyone wanted in on the supposed gold rush.
Selling stock images today
Over the past four years, I’ve been casually licensing stock images through my web site. Since I’m in charge, I keep 100% of each sale. My lowest sale has been $200/picture and my average sale in 2017 was $520/picture.
The average Shutterstock contributor in 2016 earned US $511 per year.
Which is better: selling 1,000 pictures per year at $5 each (or even 25¢ each) or selling 10 images per year at $500 each?
(Aside: If you upload images to an online stock site, the US government will consider your photos to be legally published. But if you only display your images on your own site then it’s not an act of publication.)
It’s been said before but it’s worth repeating: The only way to make money through an online stock photo agency is to own the stock agency.
I don’t know why photographers bother with microstock sites or even with some non-microstock sites. Amateur photographers might do it because it involves little effort on their part. But why would any professional photographer ignore dollars and chase only pennies?
If you do want to sell stock images, maybe try Photoshelter (I don’t use it but I know photographers who do), find a more specialized agency or do it yourself. Doing it yourself means some marketing effort is required on your part. This is where Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Google come into play.
The more responsibility you take on, the more money you can earn. At least that’s what history has proven. Maybe everything old will be new again.
Interesting topic, thank you.
“What type of photography was it?” – Commercial or Editorial?
I think that commercial photography is very difficult to sell, moving it via Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn or Google.
And for editorial photography, you need somehow to get accreditation, which is difficult through your own photo agency.
But the idea of creating my own photo agency has been around for a long time.
All my resales are editorial pictures used mostly for editorial purposes and occasionally for commercial purposes. For commercial use, model releases are obtained.
For example, I might have a photo of someone speaking at a business conference. That same person might be speaking at another event many months later and that second event might want to use my photo of that person to promote their upcoming event. This is a commercial use.
Corporate sponsors of sports events sometimes want photos for their marketing. For example, last year, a large telecom wanted some generic arena shots from a Toronto Raptors game. The pictures were to be used as backgrounds in a photo booth they were setting up. This is a commercial use.
>>”And for editorial photography, you need somehow to get accreditation, which is difficult through your own photo agency.”
There’s no point going to an event where 50 other photographers will be unless you know you can shoot something very different.
Follow the news and try to anticipate what might be newsworthy or interesting. The future is photos of business and social issues, not celebrities.
Find out what goes on around you. You will be surprised at what happens in and around Toronto.
Toronto is a prominent city in the world and the third largest city in North America. Torontonians like Drake, Margaret Atwood, The Weeknd, Samantha Bee, Guillermo del Toro, etc. are in the news a lot. So many foreign publications want pictures of the city. If Amazon comes to Toronto, the demand for pictures will go up.