Cut Your Own Throat For Only 20 Cents!
Thursday, 23. November 2006, 14:33:36
It’s an irresistible offer, isn’t it?
Yet photographers around the world are flocking to do it. Not only do they get the chance to cut their own throats, they can cut their colleagues’ throats at the same time! Yay!
What’s this all about? Microstock photography. The ability to sell pictures on the internet has spawned a rash of dubious stock photo sites who offer (generally crappy) images to designers for a dollar a shot. There are dozens of these sites, with thousands of images available.
And at a dollar a shot, designers inevitably buy. They’d be stupid not to, even if the image only barely meets their requirements.
What does the photographer get? 20 cents, and the glory of knowing that their uncredited photograph will be flogged anonymously through every back alley in the world.
What will the designer expect to pay for the next purchase? Probably 95 cents. So the participating photographer, and all his colleagues, will get even less.
Yet the promise of scalability is what makes these poor suicidal photographers drool. Here’s one overheated imagination:
The math is fine, but I can spot two flaws in the reasoning.
Firstly, it is possible to get an offer of 50 cents per picture from some of these microstock agencies. Possible, but very rare. You are much more likely to get 20 cents, if anything.
Secondly, the line ‘why not sell it for fifty cents 200 times?’ Unarguable logic. With over 100 million photographs now for sale on line, what are the chances of the same lumpen royalty free stock photo being purchased once, let alone ten times? And 200 times? Hello? Their naïvety makes me weep.
So you put up ten photographs. If you have astounding luck, five of them sell. You make one dollar. You won’t get paid until you’ve made $30 worth of sales, or more — it’s really not worth writing a cheque for a dollar. So what if no more sell? You won’t see one thin dime. Eventually you’ll lose interest and drift away. But the agency still has your photographs, anonymous and uncredited by now, so they will be able to drive the price of a photograph down still further.
And now the designers won’t want to pay more than 75 cents per picture. And good, competent photographers who deserve a fair price for their work find the value of their labours demeaned and diminished.
The worm will turn, because it always does, but for the moment I cannot decide who are the real villains in this piece: the designers, for blindly wanting to drive down prices to the exclusion of all other parameters; the microstock agencies, for greedily fuelling the market; or the photographers, who by supplying adequate photographs are colluding and collaborating in their own downfall.
What is far more obvious is that the participating photographers are the big losers. The mentality of the lemming holds sway.
Price is one thing. Value is another.
Yet photographers around the world are flocking to do it. Not only do they get the chance to cut their own throats, they can cut their colleagues’ throats at the same time! Yay!
What’s this all about? Microstock photography. The ability to sell pictures on the internet has spawned a rash of dubious stock photo sites who offer (generally crappy) images to designers for a dollar a shot. There are dozens of these sites, with thousands of images available.
And at a dollar a shot, designers inevitably buy. They’d be stupid not to, even if the image only barely meets their requirements.
What does the photographer get? 20 cents, and the glory of knowing that their uncredited photograph will be flogged anonymously through every back alley in the world.
What will the designer expect to pay for the next purchase? Probably 95 cents. So the participating photographer, and all his colleagues, will get even less.
Yet the promise of scalability is what makes these poor suicidal photographers drool. Here’s one overheated imagination:
The concept for photographers is this: instead of selling one image at $80-$120 once, why not sell it for fifty cents 200 times? In the long run, the profit margin can even be much larger than simply selling it at a larger, fixed price. Can you really make any money off of selling images for fifty cents each? Well, if you make just five dollars a day (Sell 10 images on one site, or multiple sites) you will be raking in an extra $150 a month.
The math is fine, but I can spot two flaws in the reasoning.
Firstly, it is possible to get an offer of 50 cents per picture from some of these microstock agencies. Possible, but very rare. You are much more likely to get 20 cents, if anything.
Secondly, the line ‘why not sell it for fifty cents 200 times?’ Unarguable logic. With over 100 million photographs now for sale on line, what are the chances of the same lumpen royalty free stock photo being purchased once, let alone ten times? And 200 times? Hello? Their naïvety makes me weep.
So you put up ten photographs. If you have astounding luck, five of them sell. You make one dollar. You won’t get paid until you’ve made $30 worth of sales, or more — it’s really not worth writing a cheque for a dollar. So what if no more sell? You won’t see one thin dime. Eventually you’ll lose interest and drift away. But the agency still has your photographs, anonymous and uncredited by now, so they will be able to drive the price of a photograph down still further.
And now the designers won’t want to pay more than 75 cents per picture. And good, competent photographers who deserve a fair price for their work find the value of their labours demeaned and diminished.
The worm will turn, because it always does, but for the moment I cannot decide who are the real villains in this piece: the designers, for blindly wanting to drive down prices to the exclusion of all other parameters; the microstock agencies, for greedily fuelling the market; or the photographers, who by supplying adequate photographs are colluding and collaborating in their own downfall.
What is far more obvious is that the participating photographers are the big losers. The mentality of the lemming holds sway.
Price is one thing. Value is another.
WIDGETIZE
fotag # 23. November 2006, 17:26
Could not agree more-but then how about the flip side? A stock agency that takes 20% of the sale-the photographer sets and negotiates the price! Also, no monthly fee!
fotoLibrarian # 24. November 2006, 10:21
There's a piece of software that helps photographers set and negotiate the price. It costs the same as the annual sub to fotoLibra, and you have to update it every year.
An agent stores the images, finds the buyer, negotiates the price, delivers the product, handles the paperwork, chases the money (always the hardest part), pays the taxes, keeps the books and remits to the photographer. THAT's a stock agency. What you're describing is a portal.
A book publisher does this and remits on average 6% of net sales receipts to the author. That's about 3% return for considerably more work than a photographer will put in to taking one photograph, so the rewards (such as they are) can only come from multiple sales. A book may sell 200 or 200,000 copies. A photograph will not.
Your 'flip side' is comparing a car boot sale to a shop.