Recently on LindedIn Jacintha van Beveren observed that “The old photography business model is gone,” and asked if the road to survival and future success is through “creativity and flexibility or stubborn protection?” In my opinion neither “more creativity nor stubborn protection” will work. Read this story to gain some insights as to why the old ideas no longer work and what might work in the future.

When I published “Top Pros Stop Shooting” in my other newsletter Selling-Stock received an unusual number of comments from industry leaders. Most of those who commented had some disagreement with the positions I took in the article. Since PhotoLicensingOptions readers will have missed seeing these comments, I have printed them here along with an editorial response.

If you have decided you want to enter the microstock world you can’t get better advice than that given by Ellen Boughn in her new book Microstock Money Shots. She doesn’t promise that it’s easy, or that you’ll get rich quick, but if you follow her advice it will save you a lot of the frustration that comes from learning the hard way by trial and error.

Two-year-old Pixmac is banking on its “rapid checkout and download” without the necessity for customers to engage in a complex registration process to help the company expand its customer base in North America.

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?.

Though unit sales are declining for many iStockphoto sellers, many of the same people are also seeing significant revenue increases. Here’s how.

Last November Tom Grill wrote on the subject of volume relative to price and said this rather obvious formula is indicative of the reason behind the plight facing contributors to stock photo industry today as it transitions from a high-priced print usage system to a high-volume digital system of economics. Stated simply, it means that a stock photographer today needs to adapt image output to mass marketing at lower prices – something easier said than done. A stock shooter makes the same amount of return from making 50 sales at $200 apiece as making 200 sales at $50 apiece. This begs the question: Is this equation in marketing transition actually occurring? Like it or not, the industry is changing dramatically, and the winners will be those who can adapt to the new paradigm.

As little as five years ago, approximately 98% of all stock photo revenue came from print uses. There was little or no Internet and small business uses. Today about 20% of industry revenue comes from Internet and small business uses. The needs of these new customers were hardly addressed five years ago, as all traditional sellers focused on the high end of the market. Consequently, when someone wanted an image for these purposes they either took the picture themselves, or copied something off another Internet site and paid nothing for its use. In the last five years the demand for images that will be used electronically has grown dramatically.

Veer has relaunched its Web site, billing the new treatment as uncomplicated. While Veer still carries traditionally priced stills, it is certainly catering to the no-hassle customer segment with simplified licensing and prices that span the gamut—starting at $1.

Looking for some vacation reading material? Here are some suggestions. If you want to know how successful stock photographers do it, here are links to a series of interviews done over the last couple years. There are lots of different strategies. Some of these photographers are among the world’s most successful. Other’s like Todd Klassy and Holger Mette are relatively new to the business, and have adopted unconventional strategies that may be the wave of the future.

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 top 198 iStock contributors currently have a combined total of 567,324 images, or about 5.2% of the total collection. In the past six months the collection of this group has grown by an average of more than 10% per contributor with a total of 52,449 images added. Images belonging to these contributors represent 29% of total downloads in the last 14 months.

On Thursday, July 1, Toronto-based Mastefile acquired Norwegian microstock Crestock. Both companies announced the deal late on Friday, without disclosing financial details.

Barton recently took a look at the use of a microstock photo in Web sites ranging from a German consulting firm to a keyword-spamming plastic surgery domain. The photographer describes the photo as a “perfect-people perfect-world lowest-common-denominator cookie-cutter pile-them-high sell-them-cheap image” and asks: “Why would a reputable company want to be associated with those words?” There are numerous answers, and most are so mind-bogglingly simple as to make anyone wonder why stock-industry insiders are still having this meaningless debate.

Don’t tell Cathy Yeulet that you can’t make money in microstock. She operates Monkey Business Images, one of the most successful microstock production companies. However, unlike many microstockers, she is not new to stock photography. For many years, Yeulet operated a successful rights-managed business in Oxfordshire, U.K. When traditional royalty-free first began to take off, she created the BananaStock brand, which she sold to Jupiterimages in 2005 for approximately $19 million in cash. She started uploading images to iStockphoto in March of 2008.

If you are in the stock imagery business and want to stay current with worldwide industry trends the annual CEPIC Congress is a must event to attend. Held every year in early June - this year in Dublin, Ireland at the brand new Aviva Stadium - it was an opportunity to meet and greet industry leaders and exchange ideas. Traditionally CEPIC has been an organization focused on the needs of those who license rights to traditional customers, mostly larger commercial organizations. This year one day was devoted to a New Media Conference (microstock). This event was very well attended by traditional sellers, many still wary of microstock and not ready to embrace it fully, but also accepting that the $400 million a year business is a major force in the industry and here to stay.  

Fotolia's three 2009 top sellers gathered around 10,000 downloads combined. While the photographers’ earnings are not overly impressive, the images themselves offer an interesting perspective into buyer needs.

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.

A few days ago we talked about oversupply of imagery, that that is not a problem if there is a huge and growing demand. Some people argue that because so many images are being used on the Internet there must also be a huge and unlimited future demand. We don't think so and this story will outline many of the reasons to believe that the demand for still, generic imagery is declining and why it will continue to decline. Even if you don't believe this to be true there are facts outlined in this story that you ought to consider.

A comprehensive comparison of the various sizing and pricing strategies between the top 6 microstock photography sites.

What’s the competition look like in terms of number of images available online? A year ago ImageShack, had 20 billion image and Facebook about 15 billion. In February 2010 it was reported that over 2.5 billion photos were being added to Facebook each month. News Corp’s PhotoBucket currently has more than 8.2 billion photos and Yahoo’s Flickr is in fourth place with over 3.4 billion. But are these numbers really important? What really counts are the number of images on Professional sites that have good keywording, trustworthy model releases and where some editing has been supplied. This story supplies the number of images that fall into this category.

A Russian photographer asks what subjects he should shoot for microstock in order to maximize his earnings. With hard work, he feels he can duplicate the results achieved by Yuri Arcurs, particularly because shooting in Russia can be much cheaper than Arcurs' Denmark location. Yet there are flaws to that logic.

This story provides links to a five part series of articles designed to help photographers understand the major trends impacting the industry in 2010 and help them plan for the future. We outline some of the issues to consider, new business models to explore and things to focus on in order to have a profitable business. Following the first five stories are links to some additional articles on the business of stock photography that may be of interest.

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.

This is a list of 14 articles that will provide microstock photographers, or those considering contributing to microstock sites, some useful background and insights into the industry.

This article by Ellen Boughn raises the question of whether there is a need for specialized niche microstock collections, argues the case for them and points to Vivozoom and Microstock Israel as indications that we may see more of them. Jim Pickerell presents counter arguments as to why the success of such sites is unlikely.

Jim Pickerell has a long history in stock photography as a stock shooter, an agency owner, and an industry analyst. In this wide-ranging interview he shares his experience and insight on the future of stock photography.

Only a couple years a researcher for a major book publisher told me they would never use microstock for a textbook because of the difficulty of “securing rights.” That puzzled me because I knew that virtually all microstock images had solid releases. Because they are such sticklers for releases they often don’t accept some of the more candid editorial images that many book publishers tend to favor.

For those who think that the use of photography in book publishing and for educational purposes will remain the same in this years ahead this story provides some numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau to consider. Significant changes can be expected in the near future.

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.

One of the key things to understand about stock photography is why some customers are willing to pay more than others to use an image. Most photographers want to believe customers will pay more when the image is of “better quality”, or more technically perfect. They want to believe that when they increase production values, build better sets, use better looking models, use people who look more “real” and when they generally spend more to produce an image customers will pay more to use it. They want to believe that if an image is shot from a helicopter, or if they had to travel around the world to get it that it should command a higher price. They want to charge more for niche subject matter.

If stock photography as a profession is going to survive we’re going to have to find a way to develop a two-tier pricing system. One tier would be for commercial use of images and the other for personal and small use. Microstock sellers have proved in the last few years that there is a huge group of customers out there who use images for personal and very small business uses. They will pay something to use images, just not very much. The problem with microstock is not that they sell images to these customers, it is that they sell image files to large commercial users for the same low prices they charge those with small budgets.

What an image is worth to a customer depends entirely on the customer’s intended use. The size of the file delivered has very little to do with how an image might be used, or the value the customer will receive from using it. Granted, there are limits as to how a very small file can be used. But, there are many ways with widely varying values that a medium sized file can be used. The biggest problem with royalty-free licensing, and particularly microstock pricing, is not that it prices certain uses very low, but that the system of pricing by file size has tried to ignore use in an effort to achieve simplicity.

There is a persistent idea among many image creators that a photographer somehow devalues his work if he ever licenses it for low prices. There are several things to think about in this regard.To begin with, if you are going to license your work as right-managed (RM) “based on use” and if you are going to allow a stock agency to license your work then the images will always be licensed at multiple different price points. And the stock agencies will not establish a floor price below which they will not license your image for some small use. Read this story for more things to think about.

After publishing my article on a Two-Tier Pricing System I’ve had a series of discussions with several photographers. There seems to be some general misunderstanding as to why I think such a system is in the best interest of all photographers regardless of whether they currently license their work as rights-managed (RM), traditional royalty-free (RF) or Microstock. Two-Tiers is not just another pricing model. The whole purpose is so all images can be made available to all customers at appropriate prices depending on how the customer intends to use the image.

Anyone who has heard the term microstock has probably heard of Yuri Arcurs. He is recognized as the worlds most successful microstock photographer, but is much more than just a photographer. He is a brilliant businessman adept at marketing, self promotion and managing a large staff. He is a production company with a full-time staff of about 30 and another 20 part-timers who work at least 10 hours a week. Included as part of his staff are 4 or 5 other photographers who actively shoot and whose work is marketed under the Yuri Arcurs brand.

Photography has a long way to go. Compared to other digitized creative forms, like music, it is light years behind. And, for once, that could be a good thing. Like the youngest brother of a family, it can learned from it’s elders. For once, it has not yet been touch at full impact by the whole free file sharing tsunami that hit music a while back. Certainly the dams are leaking and breaking, but we are no where near what the music industry has experienced.

Chris Barton, managing director of Photographers Direct has written a humorous article on the multiple use of microstock images that shows five young people—three women and two men—promoting the products and services of a dozen different companies, with copy that would lead the reader to believe that these people were employees of all these companies. Every rights-managed photographer will enjoy this piece.

Chris Barton, Managing Director of Photographers Direct has written a humorous article on the multiple use of microstock images that shows five young people, three women and two men, promoting the products and services of a dozen different companies with copy that would lead the reader to believe that these people were employees of all these companies. Every rights-managed (RM) photographer will enjoy this piece.

I was recently asked: “If you were shooting stock (hey, maybe you are…), would you be shooting for rights-managed,
Personally, I think rights-managed licensing is on the way out. It would be nice if customers were willing to pay to use an image based on the value they receive, or to some degree on the cost of production. But that day seems to be passing. No matter what the subject matter, too many good alternatives are available at much lower prices. Why should customers pay more? Part of the theory behind rights-managed licensing is that customers need exclusive rights to certain images. Some do, but there are entirely too many similar images competing for those occasional exclusive sales.

The photo discussed in this article is an almost perfect stock photo. It's not cutting edge; it's not trendy. It's not hip or cool. wshat it is is a photo that will license again and aagain for years....extending its revenue stream long after its production costs have been recouped. This is a photo with a very long tail.

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.

Getty photographer Carlos Sanchez Pereyra recently asked on LinkedIn what others thought was the “best way to sell Stock.” There is no question that Getty makes more gross sales than any other brand, but when royalties are divided among all the various photographers they represent (and we must consider all the photographers represented by the more than 100 third-party “image partner” brands that sell through the Getty site) Getty may not be the best place for most photographers. This article offers a few things to think about when trying to determine your best way to sell stock.

In looking ahead to 2010 photographers should focus on how they will adapt to the new realities of the photography business. On his blog John Harrington recently argued that microstock has not created new markets for photography, but rather “devastates existing ones.” This plays to the frustration of many professional photographers who have devoted years of education, experience, and capital investment to a trade (dare I say art), where the value of what they produce is suddenly worth a fraction of what it was just a couple years ago. However, there is no denying that microstock has also opened up a market that professional photographers had not addressed previously.

This is an interview with Holger Mette, an Australian photographer who's been traveling the world for two years earning his living from a small portfolio of photos he distributes in the microstock market. We discuss travel, photography and microstock, with example photos and links to his microstock portfolios.

[Source: Microstock Diaries - used with permission. All photos Copyright Holger Mette]

We have done a bad job. A terrible job. If picking a photograph is all about its price and not its quality than we, the photo industry, have made a terrible job at selling our work. Every time an editor, whether  from an ad agency or a magazine decides to use an image because it is cheaper than the others, that means we have all failed to advocate for the real value of photography. We have failed, all of us, Photographers, agents, photo agencies to make the new generation of image buyers see the real value in our images. Thus the current situation.

There are two ways to approach shooting for the stock photo market. The first is to take pictures of whatever you like and hope that someone will want to pay you money for the images you love. The more business like approach is to try to determine what customers want and produce that kind of imagery. One thing that is beneficial in this regard is that the subject matter in demand has not changed. What customers wanted five, ten or twenty years ago is still in demand today. Images need to be updated and current, but in general subject needs remain the same and in relatively the same proportions. In broad terms the images in greatest demand are model released people in business and lifestyle situations, but that statement is so non-specific as to be almost useless. It can also be misleading when the subject matter being considered does not include people because there is some demand for that also.

After great success at producing and selling traditional rights-managed and royalty-free imagery for more than 25 years, Ron Chapple started producing microstock in 2006. He uploaded 5,000 images in February 2007 and aggressively produced images for microstock until early 2008. By September 2008, he had about 15,000 images in his iofoto collection, available on a non-exclusive basis through a number of microstock distributors. In October 2007, Selling Stock did a story outlining his early experience with microstock.

Using the figures from iStockcharts, we tracked monthly sales of 198 the top 250 photographers. This group represents about a quarter of 1% of iStock’s more than 80,000 contributors. Download numbers reported by iStockcharts are exactly the same as the numbers reported on iStock itself for each contributor, but information for approximately 50 of the top 250 is not made available publicly through iStockcharts.

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.

Photographs of many products and locations can not be used for any type of commercial purpose without a release. Blanket releases for images of these subjects are almost impossible to obtain. It is sometimes possible to get a release for a very specific, clearly defined use, but not for an undefined “stock use.” Therefore, if the stock photographer’s goal is to license rights to the images he or she produces the photographer may be better advised to avoid wasting time photographing this subject matter. In some cases such images may be used for editorial purposes.

Is Flickr a place for a professional photographer to display his work and sell images? Todd Klassy thinks so. Right now he is an amateur devoting maybe 3 hours a week to shooting and another 6 in post production and studying photography. After the first of the year he intends to quit his job of 17 years and start working full time as a photographer.

The story provides a rough estimate of iStockphoto sales and revenue growth since the company was acquired by Getty Images in early 2006. The figures for the years 2006 and 2007 are reasonably accurate because Getty Images was a public company during this period and reporting a great deal of detail about their operations. After the company went private in early 2008 it became more difficult to accurately estimate downloads and revenue.

For most of this year I have been tracking the number of downloads for 117 of the 150 most productive contributors on iStock. (I have been unable to identify the other 33 in the top 150.) Total downloads of the 117 during the last seven months represent about 17% of all iStock contributor downloads. Sixty-five of the 117 contributors have seen a slight decline in average downloads-per-month since March.

In the previous story we discussed four major trends in the stock photo industry and listed eleven other related issues that photographers should consider carefully as they try to determine the future prospects of their stock photo business. Below I have discussed each one of these eleven in some detail.

There appear to be a number of photographers who are “looking outward.” For most, that means doing something else other than producing stock pictures. There are other ways photographers might use photographic skills, and it certainly looks like stock has a steadily declining value in the eyes of the buyers. If stock is all an individual has to sell, it is beginning to look like that individual should expect to see steadily declining revenue going forward.

The numbers below show the number of downloads for each of 124 of iStockphoto’s 150 top earners in the months of March, April, and May of 2009, based on total download statistics supplied daily by iStockphoto and compiled by istockcharts.

Many traditional agencies have tried to introduce a midstock price offering in an attempt to defend against microstock’s steady cannibalization of traditional RF sales. However, all are based on the flawed theory that “quality” of an image can be defined, and that the price charged should be less when the image is of lesser quality.

In a recent blog article Lee Torrens said, “I cannot understand how you believe large corporations need to pay more for their photos because they can afford it. What other business services and products do they buy above the market value just because they can? You are talking about price discrimination based on who the customer is, not the quality of the product (in this case, the photo itself and the license.)” In this article I'll explain why I think price discrimination based on the value the customers receives from using the image is legitimate (Usage) and that price discrimination based on file size is inappropriate and has absolutely nothing to do with the "quality of the product".

Those selling images to big business at traditional prices must develop a different strategy for addressing the B2SB (small business) market. The strategy needs to embrace the idea of pricing based on value received. Big businesses that receive greater value from the images they purchase should pay more. Few producers and afford to ignore the 25 million B2SB customers in the U.S. The challenge is determining how best to address these customers.

The chart in this story provides details of the number of image downloads in the last three months of images belonging to 124 of iStockphoto's most productive contributors. Based on the statistics supplied by istockcharts, I have tracked sales for the last three months of the top 150 producers. Of the 150, twenty-six have asked to remain anonymous, so it was only possible to see specific figures for 124 contributors. The combined gross units licensed in March by this group was 431,708. That dropped to 380,934 in April and was 387,500 in May.

The number of images downloaded in May for 124 of iStockphoto’s most productive contributors was essentially flat compared to April. April was down compared to March and only 33 of the 124 licensed rights to more images in May than in March. For details of this analysis see chart. The combined gross units licensed in March by this group was 431,708. That dropped to 380,934 in April and was 387,500 in May.

Traditional photographers argue that Premium Access volumes will never make up the difference for low prices. Despite that argument Getty is licensing more and more of their images at Premium Access prices. The royalties paid for these sales are often lower than those paid by microstock companies and Getty volumes don't seem to be making up the difference.

The Long Tail describes a new way of looking at, and approaching, markets in the Web 2.0 environment. The term was first coined by Chris Anderson in a Wired magazine article in October 2004. It is illustrative of the business strategy of Internet companies like Amazon.com and Netflix which sell a large number of unique items, each in relatively small quantities, to a very large base of customers. This buying pattern creates what is called a "power law distribution curve" or long tail.

The second insight came as I was reading the business section of the Washington Post and noticed that a photo used as part of the lead illustration was credited to iStockphoto. This got me thinking. In the past I’ve seen a lot of photos in the Post credited to Photodisc. Now we may be seeing the beginning of a move from the more pricey Photodisc images to those of iStockphoto.

Recently, I wrote an article comparing the advantages and disadvantages of various marketing strategies. I suggested that in terms of the number of images licensed for commercial uses "rights-managed licenses account for 3% of the total number of annual licenses. Traditional royalty-free images make up 6%; 20% goes to subscription services and 71% to microstock.”

How long will it take before traditional prices drop to microstock levels? If Alamy's sales are any indication microstock sellers may not be cannibalizing traditional sales in terms of number of units licensed but they certainly are cannibalizing revenue as traditional sellers fight to compete.

Leading iStockphoto contributors saw their sales drop in April compared to March 2009 according to our analysis of the numbers available through istockcharts. Numbers are not available for 24 of the 150 with the highest total downloads. Only 10 of the other 126 saw their monthly downloads increase. Total downloads in March for the 126 contributors were 436,410, but in April that number dropped almost 9% to 385,203. To some extent this might be explained by Easter coming in April rather than March and resulting in one less business day in April.

In 2006 I examined many of the factors that are impacting on stock photo market and leading to price declines. There were also a number of factors leading to declining sales volumes to traditional customers. These include the general demand for printed products, the tendency to use images multiple times but only pay once, trends in book publishing, postage costs, crowdsourcing of images and various types of guerrilla advertising. Since that time the situation has become worse.

Traditional photographers argue that it is impossible to make money by licensing their images at microstock prices. They say volumes will never make up the difference. Despite that argument, Getty Images is licensing more and more images at Premium Access prices, which are not all that far away from what microstock sellers charge.

Selling Stock recently analyzed some iStockcharts data in an effort to assess iStockphoto’s revenues during the first two months of 2009 and predict the possible effects of recession on microstock. Though the original analysis suggested a decline in iStock sales, new information about iStockcharts makes this a questionable conclusion.

The industry needs a new pricing model. The models we have include rights-managed, royalty-free, subscription, microstock and rights-ready, which is about to become extinct. What is needed is use-based pricing, or UBP.

This story provides some history on how royalty-free got started and why creators only get 20% of the gross fee paid for royalty-free images.

“Should microstock photographers selling the same stock photos at different prices?” Recently Lee Torrens of Microstock Diaries asked several well known photographers, agents and industry analysts this question. This article gives you my answer. For the answers of the other industry leaders see Toren's story.

Stock photography producers and sellers have lost sight of how to value their images. Customers value images based on what they can afford to pay for the right image for a specific project. An image that isn’t quite right, but will do, may have a lower perceived value for the customer than one that is the perfect solution. A given customer may value a specific image at one price if it is to be used in a PowerPoint presentation and a much higher price when used in a print ad. The customer is the driving force in the transaction, and the value he or she places on the image is much more important than any arbitrary value assigned by the photographer.

Many traditional stock photographers question whether it will ever be possible to earn enough money from microstock production to justify the effort. Ron Chapple’s experience is instructive. For more than two decades, Chapple has been a leader on the cutting edge of each new trend in stock photography.

The following is a list of the 50 iStockphoto contributors with the most career downloads and thus the highest earning as of the end of 2008. Non-microstock photographers may use this list, and the links provided, to learn a little more about microstock’s potential.

There are countless stories about what best selling stock photographers earn, but more germane might be the earnings of photographers a little farther down the food chain. Several recent conversations have led me to consider the likely earnings of the 50 most successful contributors to Getty’s Creative collections (rights managed and royalty free) and compare those figures with iStockphoto’s 50 most successful photographers giving particular attention to the probable earnings of the 50th photographer on the list.

Companies that previously specialized in royalty-free licensing are now asking photographers to offer their new production as rights-managed content. Photographers are questioning whether or not this is a wise idea. Photographers worry that customers will not go to RF companies to buy RM–and if they do, they may not be willing to pay RM prices.

Does Microstock hurt Top pros or not. Here's some comments from microstock shooters and from the pros.

The first thing photographers must consider when pondering microstock exclusivity is why a distributor needs exclusive representation of a royalty-free image—which, but its very nature, is a non-exclusive product. Customer know that hundreds of people—maybe even the customer’s direct competitors—may simultaneously use any image the customer purchase. That's what royalty-free is all about. If they want exclusivity they will look for a rights-managed image.

Stock photographers are constantly concerned with what to shoot. Everyone knows that people pictures tend to sell in greater volume than non-people pictures, but people doing what? Which concepts are in greatest demand? Information most helpful to answering such questions comes from microstock sites—not from companies licensing at traditional prices—and is freely available to everyone.

The following are concept words that customers often use to find images. When keywording an image add as many concepts as are appropriate to the keyword list. If after searching the concept list you cannot find any words that that fit your image there is a good chance your images will not be a frequent seller. When planning shoots try to take pictures that will illustrate some of these concepts.

Increasingly RM and traditional RF photographers complain about declining incomes and the difficulty in getting information from the companies that represent their work. Traditional distributors might do well to adopt a number of idea, initially instituted and popularized by microstock, that have led to improved relationships between photographers and distributors.

This article defines the six most common methods for licensing stock images. They are: RM, RR, MRR, RF, Subscription and Microstock.

Photographers regularly ask why the royalty paid on RF sales is only 20% of the net received by their agent when the agent pays 40% to 65% on RM sales that are made in the same manner. It doesn’t seem fair?

Microstock sellers insist that simple pricing is a key to their success, but many of the current strategies aren’t really that simple.

In 2007 I proposed a pricing strategy that combines the rights managed theory of pricing based on usage and the simplicity of microstock and its ability to license rights for very small uses for fees of a few dollars. The system is described in a 12 page booklet. I call the strategy Modified Right Ready.

The rationale for royalty-free licensing used to be to provide the customer with three benefits: a simple, straightforward price that didn’t require negotiation, unlimited use of the purchased image and a low cost. As this marketing concept has matured, all of these ideas have been lost.

One of the biggest hurdles traditional RF and Microstock sellers face when confronted with the idea of switching from an RF pricing structure to a use-based one is how to explain such a switch to customers who’ve been told one price fits all and not to worry about usage.

Traditional stock photography sellers constantly struggle to improve their collections and search. Diverse collections are added to the offering to increase customer choice. Then portals revert to tighter editing, limiting the number of images returned on each search. When portals use this strategy, the rejected images often turn up on other portals and customers often buy the rejected images.

Moodboardunlimited’s “You Set The Price” strategy is intriguing. The tremendous advantage is that the company will never lose a customer due to price, and the offer should attract new customers. However, there are at least three significant disadvantages.

Recently, I asked a Chicago-based picture researcher, who specializes in research for book publishers, if she used microstock, Â since such sites offer extensive image choices for textbooks. She said no, since a big problem was securing rights.

For 25 years Ron Chapple has been one of the world's leading stock photographers, always on the cutting edge of the next trend. In the 1990s he was the top seller of RM imagery for FPG, a major stock photo agency of that period. After Getty Images purchased FPG, Ron established Thinkstock, an RF production company. In 2004 he sold Thinkstock to Jupitermedia for more than $4 million. While still producing RM and traditional RF, he recently became an aggressive producer of microstock.

Many professional photographers claim no one could make a living selling images for $1.00 to $2.00, but there are always exceptions. At 28, Yuri Arcus is the world's top selling microstock photographer and has a good chance of reaching his aspiration of earning $1 million from stock photography before he is 30.