Mike’s stock photos may be purchased at: Dreamstime Shutterstock iStock
What is stock photography?
There are three stock photography selling models:
1. Rights managed and protected rights stock photography
2. Regular royalty free stock photography.
3. Micro-payment, royalty free stock photography
Each method or model has its advantages and disadvantages in selling stock photography. I’ve sold images under all three models, and I’m here to give you my experience and advice. I’ll give you many options, but I’ll also point you to a couple of online marketplaces where you can start selling your stock photography today, and it won’t cost you any fees to join.
Exclusive or Non-Exclusive? Besides the three selling models listed above, there are two schools of thought in marketing your images: should I market my images exclusively through just one agency, or should I sell my images through as many markets as possible? If you’re just starting out, or even in the middle of your career, I’d join as many agencies as I could. This will help educate you to what sells, and which agency is better at selling certain image types. One of the quickest ways to learn what sells, is through the new “micro-payment” selling model, and Shutterstock is the best of these agencies in my opinion. Once your career matures, you may want to consider going exclusive with one agency, or at least image-exclusive with several agencies. GettyImages.com and Masterfile.com are recommendations for the regular rights-managed and royalty-free selling models. iStockphoto has an exclusivity program for those interested in the micro-payment selling model. While going exclusive limits your number of selling options, these super agencies have a huge network of markets and provide special attention to those photographers willing to sign an exclusive agreement.
What is Rights Managed (RM) stock photography?
Rights Managed Licensing or Traditional Licensing allows the photo buyer to license an image for a specific use, and specific amount of time. Because of it’s more limited distribution, Rights Managed images are frequently preferred for more high profile projects over Royalty Free images which are less regulated.
Fees for RM images are calculated from multiple factors which include the nature of the intended use, the term, geographic distribution, size of reproduction, media type, and the size of the print run or distribution.
Protected rights licensing (exclusivity) may be available for some RM images. Additional fees can grant exclusive rights for the term of the license, geographic locality, specific industry, etc. The more narrowly defined the exclusivity the less the premium charged. The most common RM licensing period is “one-time use.” These RM fees typically range from $75 to about $2,000, with the average fee being about $300 to $500. Protected RM licensing fees can range from $1,000 to tens of thousands.
The RM Advantage: Exclusive, Rights Protected sales can sometimes be huge. While these type of sales can be few and far between, one $30,000 license fee (from which you receive 40% to 60%) can keep a photographer happy for quite a while. There are many stock photo agencies that market RM stock photos. Probably the best agency is Getty Images, but they are also extremely choosey in who they accept.
What is Royalty Free (RF) stock photography?
Royalty Free (RF) images are licensed once and may be used in multiple projects for an unlimited amount of time. Though there are some limits to most RF licensing agreements, the rights granted are usually very broad.
Fees for RF images, are not calculated on how or where they will be used. The SIZE of the image file (hence the size of possible usage) as well as current market forces set the price. RF fees typically range from about $50 to $80 for low-resolution image files (i.e. those for Web use), and about $200 to $300 for medium to high-resolution image files.
The RF Advantage: The potential advantage of the RF sales model is that its simple pricing structure often leads to a significant increase in sales, producing more income for photographers than the RM sales model. While the average RF sale is often lower than the average RM sale, the greater number of RF sales ends up producing a higher overall income for the photographer. (Naturally, this is not always the case, and some unique images should only be marketed under the more controlled Rights Managed and Rights Protected where the highest fees can be obtained for those images.)
There are many stock photo agencies that market RF stock photos. Probably the best agency is Getty Images, but they are also extremely choosey in who they accept.
What is Micro-payment, royalty free stock photography?
Micro-payment, RF images are licensed similarly to regular RF, except that the license fees are much lower. Low-resolution image licenses are often only a $1.00 each, and medium to high-resolution image licenses are often less than $5.00 each. “Subscription” RF stock photo marketing services also fall into the “micro-payment” category. These online stock photo agencies allow their clients to download a limited number of images each day (about 25) for a monthly subscription fee (about $200).
Royalties or commissions to the photographer are also often lower than other sales models. Where many traditional stock photo agencies give the photographer 50% of each sale, the two top-selling micro-payment markets pay only a 20% royalty or commission on each sale. Despite this, many photographers are making more money via this sales model than anything else they’ve ever tried. Why? Read on.
The Micro-payment Advantage: Because micro-payment stock license fees are so attractive, photographers can literally watch their sales add up hour by hour. In some cases, it’s possible to determine a sales marketing trend for a group of images within a matter of a few days or weeks. At that point the photographer can continue to leave the images with the micro-payment agency or remove the images and place them with a regular RF agency in the hopes that the higher fees will produce even more income. NOTE: My own experience has shown that on many image types, the micro-payment agencies actually produced the higher average income, despite their lower fees. My average income per image, per year was about $14 — compared to about one-half that for regular RF images. This means, if you can place about 2,000 good images with the right micro-payment agency, you could expect to earn about $28,000 dollars (US) per year (your experience will vary, depending on your images).
The Best Micro-payment agency? In my experience, Shutterstock produced the most income, and with the best online interface for both submission uploads and the monitoring of statistics. They have paid me on time, every month. I strongly suggest that you do NOT submit the same images to regular royalty free stock photo agencies, as most do not appreciate or allow micro-payment images to be marketed on their sites.
Here is a list of other stock agencies.
If one agency rejects your photos, others might not. Some agencies are also genre or style specific and your style may not suit one agency where as another may welcome you with open arms. Try signing up with all of these agencies to increase you earning potential!
Can Stock Photo
Dreamstime
iStockphoto
Big Stock Photo
Fotolia
In order to get paid, you will need to have a paypal account setup. Once a payment has been sent to your paypal account, you can then have the funds transferred to your bank account or use the money to purchase more photo gear.
