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02/04/2008 08:25:28 AM · #1 |
I have read many of the threads about macrostock vs microstock and why micro is bad for the industry as a whole etc etc etc. The question I ask for those of you who submit to microstock sites is why?
If it's to earn a few bucks extra cash as an amateur then fine.
If (as is possible) you can earn $500-$2000 per month from your many images, then you are obviously taking some great photos, and then selling them for peanuts.
Taking and uploading enough photos to earn enough to live on must take a lot of time and effort, so seeing as you obviously have the talent to take great shots, why not take less, and sell them for a higher price?
I am obviously not a pro photographer, I count beans for a living. But if I had invested the money in good equipment, and time in post-processing that must go into some of these stock shots I would want to charge a lot more for them, especially if they were going to be used by someone like a web designer charging $'000s for their work.
Regardless of how many downloads you might get, you are selling what might have been say 2 hours work, for $0.25, so you are paying yourself $0.12 per hour. And the better you get, the better the "amatuers" get, so you will always be competing on price.
I think microstock is fine. I'm not against it; I just feel that there are obviously some very talented and hardworking people selling microstock that should be charging a lot more for their efforts.
: )
Message edited by author 2008-02-04 08:26:08. |
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02/04/2008 09:03:47 AM · #2 |
Originally posted by rob_smith:
Regardless of how many downloads you might get, you are selling what might have been say 2 hours work, for $0.25, so you are paying yourself $0.12 per hour. |
Considering you say you count beans for a living, your maths is frighteningly flawed. That sum is only correct if you sell an image for $0.25 ONCE. If you sell it 1000 times, then you've earned $120 per hour.
The basic economic theory is that low price == high volume; it's not the only economic model that exists but aside from the "you're ruining MY market" lines I have yet to hear any strong argument that it's an invalid one. |
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02/04/2008 09:59:44 AM · #3 |
Originally posted by ganders:
Originally posted by rob_smith:
Regardless of how many downloads you might get, you are selling what might have been say 2 hours work, for $0.25, so you are paying yourself $0.12 per hour. |
Considering you say you count beans for a living, your maths is frighteningly flawed. That sum is only correct if you sell an image for $0.25 ONCE. If you sell it 1000 times, then you've earned $120 per hour.
The basic economic theory is that low price == high volume; it's not the only economic model that exists but aside from the "you're ruining MY market" lines I have yet to hear any strong argument that it's an invalid one. |
Don't be a drama queen, it's not frighteningly flawed, hence the phrase "Regardless of how many downloads you might get".
What I am saying is that you might have taken hours to get that shot, and then you might only sell it once. It doesn't matter how many times you sell it, someone out there owns 2 hours of your effort for $0.25.
My argument (which still stands) is that someone with the ability to produce something that gets bought thousands of times cheaply, has the ability to sell for a much higher price, albeit less often. |
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02/04/2008 10:09:34 AM · #4 |
Originally posted by rob_smith:
What I am saying is that you might have taken hours to get that shot, and then you might only sell it once. It doesn't matter how many times you sell it, someone out there owns 2 hours of your effort for $0.25. |
I have some shots, that didn't sell more than once or twice (yet), but they didn't take me more than 5 or 10 minutes, because thea are from a series with plenty of shots, or they would have ben taken anyway during a vacation. And very little of my shots has ever been sold for 0.25ยข, the average income per download from all images over all the micros I'm on is around 0.90$.
On the other hand, you could also spend a half day on a shot, offer it to a macro and NEVER sell it. I rather take the (average per year) 20$ I earn from each image on the micros. |
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02/04/2008 10:24:42 AM · #5 |
Originally posted by rob_smith:
Don't be a drama queen, it's not frighteningly flawed, hence the phrase "Regardless of how many downloads you might get". |
I'm not being a drama queen; if you disregard the possibility of multiple downloads then it totally and utterly invalidates your financial analysis. It's meaningless to quote an "earnings per hour" on an item that may be sold many times, whilst assuming it only sells once.
This is basic economics; how can you "count beans for a living" and come up with logic like that?
Originally posted by rob_smith:
It doesn't matter how many times you sell it, someone out there owns 2 hours of your effort for $0.25. |
You can certainly look at it that way; and the 50p I pay for my newspaper means I get many hours of highly qualified journalists time for peanuts. Does that devalue their work?
Originally posted by rob_smith:
My argument (which still stands) is that someone with the ability to produce something that gets bought thousands of times cheaply, has the ability to sell for a much higher price, albeit less often |
That's an entirely different (and valid) argument; so far I most figures I have seen - coupled with my own personal experience - is that the earnings per image are reasonably comparable in both the micro and macro markets.
As a bean counter, I'm sure you'll understand that the important figure is the bottom line, not the per-sale price. |
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02/04/2008 11:30:48 AM · #6 |
Originally posted by rob_smith:
My argument (which still stands) is that someone with the ability to produce something that gets bought thousands of times cheaply, has the ability to sell for a much higher price, albeit less often |
That's an entirely different (and valid) argument; so far I most figures I have seen - coupled with my own personal experience - is that the earnings per image are reasonably comparable in both the micro and macro markets.
As a bean counter, I'm sure you'll understand that the important figure is the bottom line, not the per-sale price. [/quote]
But if the ability is there, surely it's easier to grow as a photographer and a professional when not submitting to micro sites? |
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02/04/2008 12:23:39 PM · #7 |
Originally posted by rob_smith:
But if the ability is there, surely it's easier to grow as a photographer and a professional when not submitting to micro sites? |
A photographers ability to grow comes from desire. What "sells as stock" regardless if it is micro or macro is more of a limitation in terms of photographic growth than it is a learning tool because you always have to think about what some mythial customer may want. I think your business sense can grow and some technical skills but in the end when you shoot meeting the goals of someone else I dont see how growth could be categoriezed as "easier". Growth may be forced but its likely narowed in terms of focus.
In the end each person needs to decide what it is they seek to get out of a photo or shoot and what their time is worth. If you have a lot of images that are easily duplicated and take little time to create then micro probably isnt a bad choice. After all you can make decent return on little time invensted. If you start to take a lot of time for fancy setups or get some nice 1 in a million shots then I think you would be doing yourself a disservice by selling them as RF (regardless of the agency). If you have some unique, hard to duplicate images sell them as RM so you can benefit from thier uniqueness.
Another thing to consider may simply be the size of some of your captures. Lets say your accepted by alamy where you need to be able to upsize to 48mg files. Youve got a good chunk of images from a shoot but for what ever reason the composition isnt what you would like out of the camera. Cropping them may make them hard to interpolate to meet alamys requirements but they could be of ample size for shutterstock for example.
I guess at that point it may make sense, if you cant sell them on macro to go ahead an use them on micro. The market is evolving, thats for sure, it will be interesting to see what happens over the next 5 years or so. |
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02/04/2008 12:30:10 PM · #8 |
As a photographer, certainly - I think it's far more rewarding to pursue "the art". I find good-selling stock photography a little soul-less. That's going to apply to micro AND macro stock though; if you want to grow as an artist all you can really do is take a lot of pictures and get a lot of feedback - that's what's so useful about DPC (although that only really helps you develop the "DPC" style, which doesn't do so much for me...)
As a professional... well it depends what your motivation is. If I'm in the business of selling photographic images via stock agencies (which I am) then my responsibility to the business is to maximise earnings; it would be foolish of me to discount an entire channel of sales on a dubious theoretical hourly rate, wouldn't it? |
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02/05/2008 04:12:21 PM · #9 |
Originally posted by rob_smith:
I have read many of the threads about macrostock vs microstock and why micro is bad for the industry as a whole etc etc etc. The question I ask for those of you who submit to microstock sites is why?
If it's to earn a few bucks extra cash as an amateur then fine.
If (as is possible) you can earn $500-$2000 per month from your many images, then you are obviously taking some great photos, and then selling them for peanuts.
Taking and uploading enough photos to earn enough to live on must take a lot of time and effort, so seeing as you obviously have the talent to take great shots, why not take less, and sell them for a higher price?
I am obviously not a pro photographer, I count beans for a living. But if I had invested the money in good equipment, and time in post-processing that must go into some of these stock shots I would want to charge a lot more for them, especially if they were going to be used by someone like a web designer charging $'000s for their work.
Regardless of how many downloads you might get, you are selling what might have been say 2 hours work, for $0.25, so you are paying yourself $0.12 per hour. And the better you get, the better the "amatuers" get, so you will always be competing on price.
I think microstock is fine. I'm not against it; I just feel that there are obviously some very talented and hardworking people selling microstock that should be charging a lot more for their efforts.
: ) |
I sell on microstock because it is my job. I make good money doing it and spend about 70% of my work day at it. why I don't submit to macro. Well I do submit to a few macro agencies, but so far, the micro agencies have outperformed the macro (on $/picture/year)
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02/05/2008 04:36:24 PM · #10 |
Some folks have got the stock-shot skill down cold. They know what sells and how to produce it quickly. No company is likely to want to pay $200 for a shot of a tomato on white, but 1000 may grab it up at .25.
And a lot of this type of shot will add up to enough to finance the artistic side, where a few shots may sit on a macro site for some time before bringing in the bigger bucks.
For many, microstock is the steady-income "day job" that keeps them going until the macro gets consistant enough, if it ever does. |
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02/06/2008 03:20:50 AM · #11 |
Originally posted by BeeCee:
Some folks have got the stock-shot skill down cold. They know what sells and how to produce it quickly. No company is likely to want to pay $200 for a shot of a tomato on white, but 1000 may grab it up at .25.
And a lot of this type of shot will add up to enough to finance the artistic side, where a few shots may sit on a macro site for some time before bringing in the bigger bucks.
For many, microstock is the steady-income "day job" that keeps them going until the macro gets consistant enough, if it ever does. |
Exactly. |
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02/22/2008 12:44:08 PM · #12 |
Originally posted by BeeCee:
For many, microstock is the steady-income "day job" that keeps them going until the macro gets consistant enough, if it ever does. |
and for others, they are too happy with microstock to pursue macrostock :)
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02/22/2008 12:53:46 PM · #13 |
I've been on the fence about this for a long time.
I was with ss for a year or so. Nothing big, but I did make $200 bucks or so (with like 15 pictures).
I decided to abandon microstock and do the photographer's direct thing. I've had a couple of nibbles, but no takers. I'm in WNC, don't travel alot, and we just don't have a lot of native Sudanese dancers with carts of apples and figs, and people dancing around it in a local street festival. ;)
The one time there was a request for my town, the property owner would not sign the property release. >:( However, I've got three requests with shots under consideration right now.
If one of those sells, I will have made almost as much in one sale as I did the whole time at shutterstock.
If one of them doesn't sell, it will have been well over a year since I made any stock sales.
Right now, I have a 300D. That's it, and all there will be for the foreseeable future. It is fine for microstock, and frankly, in my opinion, for other "bigger" people too (though they disagree), but even at PD, I am pushing it with the lower limits. BUT, I'm not making enough to upgrade anytime soon.
I thought at one point about venturing into "people" photography -- portraits, weddings, etc., but I just really don't enjoy that a lot. Maybe I'm just anti-social.
So, I am seriously considering going back to the "little" people and taking my $0.20 per shot. :/
Message edited by author 2008-02-22 12:56:30. |
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02/22/2008 01:14:15 PM · #14 |
well consider how much time you spent uploading and preparing the shots for shutterstock and what your return was, and how much time you have spent on photographers direct and taking pictures and what your return is.
I think the return on hours spent taking / editing / uploading etc is actually pretty good on microstock. The people who disagree are generally the ones who haven't tried it. I have yet to find someone who tried microstock seriously for 6 months (say a 1000 image portfolio or so) and said it wasn't worth their time.
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02/22/2008 01:17:51 PM · #15 |
i have no argument there. I've spent a lot more *time* "working" for PD than I ever did for SS. Heck, for the microstock stuff, it was just pictures that I took here and there.
Like I said, I had about 15 pictures earning money, at tops 20 uploaded. I've often wondered what would happen if I made an organised, concerted effort to upload and get a fairly large port going what would happen. |
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02/22/2008 01:58:48 PM · #16 |
| If you can wait six months, ask [user]fotomann_forever[/user] how it felt to have one of his images used for a condom ad in Australia and knowing that he only got paid enough to buy a gumball. |
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02/22/2008 02:18:57 PM · #17 |
I remember when that happened.
I actually left microstock before he did.
Of course, with my earnings from this past year, after leaving microstock, I haven't even earned enough for a gumball. . .. |
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02/22/2008 05:15:06 PM · #18 |
yeah, definatly, if you look at an individual sale and say... i only made $2.00 - i should be paid more... it is very disheartening.
You have to be able to look at the big picture though. The person buying the picture also has to share it's use with 200, or 2000 other people... so it isn't very 'special' anymore. Looking at the big picture also lets you look at an image, or the average earnings per image and think - was it worth it to earn X amount of $$ for these images.. was it fair payment, in TOTAL. Once i have done that, I find it is worth it.
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02/22/2008 05:32:40 PM · #19 |
Not entering the debate on micro/macro but would someone chime in on a portfolio size question?
I've toyed around with the idea of committing 6 months dedicated to uploads for stock sales(in and around my real job and other commitments). Let's say I produced 40 accepted images/month for a total of 240 images. Is that number of uploads sufficient to get a feel for the saleability of my stock? Shooting stock isn't inspiring to me per se, but the trickle of $$ sounds good and I'm shooting anyway, so why not sell?
Or, should I not even consider stock unless I can commit myself to 500-1000 images?
I'm specifically thinking micro... |
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02/22/2008 05:44:18 PM · #20 |
well even 100 images would give you a pretty good feel of what the sales might be like, although sales would fluctuate more than if you had 1000 image say.
If they are top notch stock images you could shoot for earning $1.00 / picture / month total accross the top 6-10 sites.
If they are mediocre the images might earn closer to $0.50 each... so pic your earnings goal and set your portfolio size from there.
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02/22/2008 05:59:30 PM · #21 |
| I have thought about tying micro stock, but I'm not sure that a. I am good enough, and b. that there is any market for the sort of things I shoot. I don't have any access to models of any sort (friends and family run every time my camera makes an appearance...) and nor do I have any studio lighting. Any advice? |
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02/22/2008 06:42:15 PM · #22 |
Why? For the same portfolio size, over a year, I make more from micro than I do from macro. That's all. Submitting to micro sites is actually often simpler than with macro, and the time it takes for the images to go live is less, so I start realizing a return on my image sooner.
But sure, if you'd like to see more money for your images, stay macro.
Having spoken to very many pro photographers, it's funny that even before the micro world existed, their rule-of-thumb was to earn $1 per image per year. Look at it that way and micro might not be such a bad way to go!
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02/22/2008 07:28:09 PM · #23 |
Originally posted by samchad:
Having spoken to very many pro photographers, it's funny that even before the micro world existed, their rule-of-thumb was to earn $1 per image per year. Look at it that way and micro might not be such a bad way to go! |
if that is true micro WAY outperforms macro since you can expect $6-$10/image/year minimum
advice to sara, check out what sells on the micro sites (in an area you are interested in), then think about what you can do better, and get to work :)
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