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.

Many rights-managed and traditional royalty free production companies are having trouble finding photographers willing to shoot for them. Many of the photographers who were RM and traditional RF stars five to ten years ago have given up shooting stock, or at the very least dramatically cut the number of images they produce annually and the amount they are willing to spend on models and production costs.

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?.

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.

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.

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.

There are a number of stories on this site that will aid you in determining what to charge for a stock photo usage. Below is a list of story titles and the number of credits required to read the entire story. Click on the detailed description link and it will take you to a short description of what is included in the full story. Click on the Story link and it will take you directly to the story and deduct the appropriate number of credits from your account.

As buyer budgetary pressures and competition continue to drive prices downward, stock image production companies and solo practitioners are increasingly looking to maximize their earnings by cutting out the middleman.

U.K. stock-image company Alamy has announced a 24/7 news feed service in May. The service launched in beta, with a full product release coming later in the year.

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.

If you license rights to your photos for textbook use then here are a few articles you should read.

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.

In a letter to its contributors, Corbis has disclosed it will be seeking liquidation of the Sygma business entity in France. The company acquired Sygma in 1999 and has had numerous well-publicized legal and management issues with the former agency’s photographers, staff and assets.

Alamy will no longer make financial information publicly available. Since Getty Images went private, the U.K. company's quarterly numbers have represented the only reliable sales data in the industry.

What is top-quality photography for a major advertising campaign worth? Evidently, art buyers at Campbell-Ewald, one of the largest advertising agencies in the U.S., think $2,500 for “all advertising” and “all print” rights is fair and reasonable, as evidenced by a recent negotiation for the use of one of Hans Halberstadt’s photos.

Is it time to institute a system of floor prices for the use of rights-managed images for editorial purposes? Is there any price so low—$50, $30 or $20—that the image creator would prefer not to make the sale? This article explores this issue and suggests a strategy that could benefit rights managed photographers and agencies alike.

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.

As methods of supplying educational information to students change and schools adopt more and more electronic tools and techniques, photographers not only need to revise their image production strategies, but also to examine the way they will charge for their services in the future.

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.

In the next few years, there will be two major trends in the education business: There will be less demand for books as a teaching resource. Electronic “learning objects” will be used to a much greater degree in classroom and online instruction. Photographers who agree that these changes will occur, and who supply images to those producing materials for educational use, should begin to restructure their businesses and produce content that will be in demand by this new educational delivery system.

Sometimes there is a silver lining when your stock agency gets acquired or you get kicked out of the agency. For example, clients that previously licensed Stock Connection imagery through Jupiterimages now have to re-license them directly, because Getty Images has phased out some content.

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.

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.

The Obama administration, through the offices of  the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (USIPEC), Victoria Espinel, has recently requested input from interested parties as to how piracy and copyright infringement is affecting the U.S. economy. A key issue is the degree of unauthorized use. Getty Images says they identify approximately 42,000 unauthorized uses a year and Corbis says they identify about 70,000. PicScout, whose Image Tracker line of business searches the web for unauthorized photo use, says that in 2009 more than 80% of the images they located on the web on commercial sites were either used without a license, or beyond the terms authorized by the license. In addition, there were many unauthorized print uses, but for the most part there is no good way to track that volume at this time.

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.

Rick Becker-Leckrone, CEO of Blend Images, is interviewed about his background, the success of Blend Images, and the state of the stock photo industry.

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.

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.

Alamy salesfor the 2009 were $22,864,000, down 27% from 2008. Fourth quarter sales were down less than 2% compared to the third quarter of 2009 and were down 14% compared to the fourth quarter 2008. British pound and Euro sales were up slightly compared to the third quarter of  2009, but U.S. dollar sales were down 12% compared to Q3 2009 and 22% compared to Q4 2008.

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.” This story provides a step by step process as to how I arrived at that figure.

“RM, RF or Micro” received some interesting comments. Indeed, 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. Stock photography is like a lottery. In the lottery, there are different games with different levels of risk. In games where you can earn the most for your investment, the odds against winning are huge. When the chances of earning something are better, the potential for big winnings is usually not that great. No matter which game you play, there is no guarantee you will earn more than you invest. A few players will hit the jackpot. Many of today’s photographers would have a better chance of profiting if they were to invest in lottery tickets rather than producing images for licensing as stock.

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 the near future the vast majority of professional photographers will be unable to earn enough from producing stock images to offset their cost of production. There have always been two major problems for stock image producers. (1) Even in the best of circumstances, the photographer has no idea how many customers will want to use the image he/she plans to produce. And (2) the photographer has no idea how many other photographers are simultaneously something very similar, or something that would better fulfill the customer’s need. If you have no idea of the revenue that might be generated from sales how do you manage costs?

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.

Photographer, Art Director and Editor Sarah Golonka shares with us her knowledge and tips on succeeding in stock photography.

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.

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.

Most professional photographers are adamantly opposed to the existence of Creative Commons’ licenses which allow free use of images rather than charging a fee for such uses. However, a widespread use of Creative Commons licenses may actually help establish in the minds of users the very important copyright law principle that "All Rights (are) Reserved” by the creator or copyright holder of any work, and that it is left to the creator to specify who has what rights to make what uses of the work and at what cost.

For much of the past decade textbook publishers have tended to license rights to print a minimum number of copies of the books they published and then proceeded to greatly exceed the authorized press run without informing the content creators. Only recently have photographers become aware of this problem which we discussed in previous articles: Declining Textbook Market For Photographers and Publishers Owe For Past Uses. This articles provides a list of federal court actions for infringement of copyright that have been initiated against the major publishers in the last few years and names the photographer plaintiffs and the publisher defendants.

Should a photographer license his work as royalty-free (RF) for a 20% royalty or rights-managed (RM) for a 40% to 50% royalty? The answer seems simple, but maybe not. In a previous article I pointed out that there is absolutely no justification for a distributor paying only a royalty of only 20% when an images is licensed as RF and 40% when it is licensed as RM. It doesn't cost the distributor any more to license an image as RF than as RM. In fact, if anything, because negotiating time is involved in making some RM sales it may actually cost the distributor more to license rights to an RM image than to an RF one. Thus, if we were basing the royalty share solely on the relative contributions of the distributor and the creator to the sale, the RF royalty should be higher, not lower, than the royalty for RM.

In January2010, pacaSearch will roll out a major marketing campaign to picture buyers to promote its new pacaSearch software. At a recent demonstration at PictureHouse in New York, Lee Horton, Multimedia Editor of K12 Inc. said, “Learning about the functionality and usefulness of [pacaSearch] put a big smile on my face. As a photo editor and art buyer, I search multiple sites daily. This tool puts more control in my hands. I can keep the results pages in tabs with fewer keystrokes, page toggles and site crashes. The relative percentages, predictive text and term definitions create a tight, clean search environment. With the launch of pacaSearch, I can successfully and accurately find imagery in less time, with less hassle, while having more agency resources at my fingertips. Thank you, PACA.”

On his blog “Thoughts of a Bohemian" Paul Melcher says that Getty Images is now offering publishers “new low prices in exchange for being the sole provider.” Assuming that’s true, it could easily backfire on Getty, and may point to a need for photographers to revise their marketing strategies.

Travel photographer Bill Bachmann is an ardent advocate for basing stock image pricing on usage (the rights-managed model), not on file size (the royalty-free and microstock models). In 2009, Bachmann is on track to earn almost $1 million from licensing his travel and lifestyle images. Over 80% of Bachmann’s income will come from more than 50 agencies that represent his work around the world; the rest is from direct sales. For most of the last 25 years, he has grossed over $1 million in stock sales per year.

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.

Jim Erickson breaks all the stock photography rules and yet is one of the world’s most successful sellers of stock images. Pick any strategy that everyone agrees is the key to success in stock, and Jim Erickson is probably doing the opposite. He sells stock to clients rather than through agencies. Erickson never licenses rights to an image for less than $350, and the average license fee is about $1,800. He produces an annual print catalog and distributes it to only 20,000 top buyers. His gross revenue from stock sales in 2008 was over $2 million and he couples his stock business with an assignment business that grosses an additional $2 million. Read more about how he does it.

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.

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.

A previous article in this “Business Planning for the Future” series noted that future growth in demand for images is a widely debated subject among stock industry professionals. In my view, traditional customers do not seem to have any growth potential, and there are also indications that growth in demand for low-priced imagery might have reached its natural level. Industry veteran Leslie Hughes—formerly of The Image Bank and Corbis, currently the principal of has offered an alternate point of view.

In most industries the manufacturer sets the price for his products based on his manufacturing costs. Of course if he sets his price too high consumers won't buy. Therefore, he certainly has to be sensitive to consumer demand.

In the last few years, the stock photo industry has experienced significant consolidation. The chart below lists 34 existing companies that have acquired a total of 197 agencies. In general, fewer large companies are controlling the industry as middle-sized and small companies disappear.

Traditional stock-photo sellers wonder why there does not seem to be any growth in demand for their product. The 2006 U.S. Census Bureau statistics of U.S. businesses could provide some clues.

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.

Recently I was trying to explain the stock photo business to an investment analyst and making the point that there comes a time when a photographer can no longer afford to produce stock images because his costs are greater than his income. The analyst was under the impression that a “stock photo” was one that had been produced, and paid for, while the photographer was on assignment for someone else. Thus the image was “expense free” to the creator. And, in theory, the only “additional costs” the photographer might have to make the image available for secondary licensing would be the cost of packing it up for shipping it to his stock agency.

As the stock industry changes, traditional stock agencies and distributors are losing ground because they have failed to adopt new technological efficiencies. Granted, constantly keeping up with the latest technological changes can be expensive, and most agencies have already invested huge amounts to get where they are today. But, microstock sellers have introduced a number of strategies that traditional agencies and distributors should be considering – if not rushing to adopt.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This story provides information on 2007 photographer income. The survey was conducted the summer of 2008. We received responses from 238 photographers from around the world. Gross income reported was $33,741,722, and 60% ($20,284,081) came from stock sales.

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?

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.

Whenever you get a request for a buyout of an images the first thing to do is clarify what the clients means by “buyout”. More often than not, when the client uses gthe term “buyout” their definition is very different from the photographer's.

Pricing rights-managed web uses has become very difficult in the last few years due to the availability of microstock at extremely low prices. Currently, web uses represent a far bigger share of the market than print uses and the proportional web share seems likely to continue to grow as the print declines.

Newspaper advertising rates are based on how broadly the ad is used, not whether the publication is characterized as National, Regional or Local. National publications tend to be toward smaller circulations. Based on this theory, ads in National publications will tend to be priced higher than those in Regional or Trade publications. This story provides suggested prices.

This story provides a schedule that is useful when establishing a price for editorial usage. Prices should be based on the size of usage on the page and the circulation of the publication.

Magazines and newspapers published by a corporation, institution or fraternal organization are know as house organs. When house organ distributed to member of an organization other than employees they are considered external, as the members are essentially their customers. The term "Internal House Organ" is used to refer to those publications that are distributed to employees only. It is important to clarify who the audience is in order to set the price. This story provides charts with prices based on the size of usage and the circulation.

This article provides information on how to price stock photo usages for corporate annual and quarterly reports.

This article provides information on how to price stock photo usages for all types of brochures, catalogs, direct mail pieces, single sheet flyers and promo cards.

This article provides information on how to price stock photo usages for advertising in National, Regional or Local magazines.

The business of licensing rights for textbook and educational use has been changing dramatically in the last year or so. Photographers and distributors need to make some major adjustments in the ways they calculate prices for uses compared to what they were doing a few years ago. This article outlines some new pricing strategies and explores some of the options. Those who continue to use the old strategies are leaving huge amounts of money on the table.

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.

RF prices vary widely depending on the brand. The following are some of the prices charged for usage by various brands on Getty's site.

Selling-Stock has launched a photographer survey designed to provide useful data for all those who license rights to their images.

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.

Corbis is probably doing more than any other stock photo seller to track infringements, and collect from those who infringe. Dave Green, Corbis Senior Corporate Counsel, explains how they do it and the benefits, not only in additional revenue, but in educating customers.