iStockphoto.com

Hi all.

Has anyone heard of iStockphoto.com? Does anyone here use them?

Our marketing guy at work told me the other day that he does not buy images from anywhere else now, especially where they are so cheap at iStockphoto. Basically images for web sizing and use are $1. He told me that I should upload my photos there, that it was free money.

I told him that many stock photographers would have a problem with this site, as it is undercutting normal rates so much. He told me that with over a million images on iStock, it was pretty much 'game over'.

I do not sell my work at this point, but I feel like I would rather not sell it than to sell it for $1. Needless to say, I have not uploaded any images.

Nathan

there have been seeveral topics on this and other boards In Re this agency and others,, lots of different feelings about them,,,it probalby cost you at least 50 cents of your time just to process, set up and edit the shots,, i guess it depends on what your goals are with your commercial photography,,

Moved to Photo Marketing Forum...

If you're a marketing guy you'll love it.

Marketing people will love it is because it is so cheap for them to obtain images for use in their ad campaigns. Buyers get 500,000 reproductions for an inordinantly lowball price. iStockPhoto is a Royalty Free stock photo library in the business of making money for themselves by ripping off photographers who don't know better. I just went over to their site and read their buyer and contributor information pages.

A buyer purchases credits for $1 each, minimum 10 credits required, and uses these credits towards downloads. Downloads cost from 1 credit all the way up to 40-50 credits, meaning $1 all the way up to $40-$50. Their large image at $40-$50 should go for anywhere from 5 to 30 times that amount depending on the publication and their circulation. And how much of that $40-$50 does the contributor get? Their FAQ says the contributor gets a 20% royalty. So you earn 1/25th to 1/150th (1/5th of 1/5th to 1/30th) of what a rights managed rate would be. If you enter a exclusivity agreement with them, you can double that. So let's say someone buys your image for $50 to use as a double-page spread. You get $10 for that. If you did this through a rights managed stock agency that gives you typically 50% and who got you the fair market rate of say $1000, you would get $500.

I think the math speaks for itself ... support the industry and avoid Royalty Free ...

Another thing to keep in mind here - how much is your time worth? For me to scan, use PS autoadjust (to make this example easy), save and download, I am looking at 8 minutes an image. Now if the image actually require some work, at best I can handle 6 images an hour.
Multiply this by hundreds, to a couple of thousand images needed to make it worth the time to go this route.

For this, I will be getting at best $10, **IF** one of the images sells. This is giving away my work.

The same amount of work to prepare the images is going to be required for any outlet I am willing to market my images in. Assuming that my work is good enough to sell, which I think it is, there are far better paying markets. I may sell fewer images, but make more.

At least look at Alamy (www.alamy.com). They have a fairly good reputation, and my personal dealings with them have been good, with a few sales through them.

By the way, has that marketing buddy ever expressed interest in using your photos? Sending them to IStock means he will get them for essentially free.

I agree with all the responses. I suggested to the marketing guy (who is also looking for pics for the walls of our new offices) that I send him some shots to use for that. He basically asked if I would charge them (THE COMPANY) for them. I have not sent him any images.

Nathan

Gotta love the innocent photographers that bite into the whole scam. The poor simps would have to sell over fifty photos to get our minimum fee for a 1-year web license, 1/4-page or less.

It's a matter of ignoring the markets that use RF and learning which need photos they can't get RF. Buyers are out there in good numbers, though the average nature photographers- no matter how good their photos- will likely have to change the type and style of nature photos they take.

Pretty pictures are common and readily available from RF sources (think of them in the same light you do generic foods and drugs), but the more specific and discriminating the buyer's needs, the less likely they'll get what they need from RF sources.

The heart of business management is to buy and produce as cheaply as you can, and the heart of marketing is to turn out products that sell and to find places to sell them profitably.

Well.....I am gonna screamed at I guess...but --------> read this from Pop Photo entitled "25-Cent-Fortunes" http://www.popphoto.com/popularphotographyfeatures/2837/25-cent-fortunes.html IStock, fyi, is owned by Getty Images. The bizz models between micro and macros are totally different. I sell RF on Shutterstock some of my outtakes. I also sell on Featurepics.com with RM. There are actually quite a few folks who are making quite a living selling RF on micros. However, one thing I have noticed is that anything nature oriented doesn't seem to do quite well. It is very commercial, and so far my shots of random office buildings and outtakes of Hotrods at car shows have done pretty good. Though I have just started 2 mos ago there.
If you are thinking of going stock, I would suggest looking at Alamy.com whom I just sent my CD off to, or Featurepics.com who does both RM and RF. I really see nothing wrong if you have a lotta duplicates and outtakes of shots...making money is making $ period. I'll use the micros just for that ( and they are picky...though some of the shots I was surprised that slid through on bigstockphoto.com) It seems though that many are starting to do this now...doing it both ways.

No screaming here John. Glad you make it work to your satisfaction. Rest assured that my photos won't be diluting your market ops, and yours won't be compeating with mine. Sounds healthy to me.

Using something like Shutterstock or IStock for your outtakes is probably a good idea. It is certainly an alternative market for images which are not your best.

My problem with going that route (no screaming here either) is that I need to spend the time on preparing the files. I just don't see the tradeoff of time vs payoff as being worth it, especially since I shoot almost exclusively nature, which these places are greatly saturated with.

For my digital files, I could probably automate some of it with PS CS2 or a third party, but I am using Elements 3 so it has to be done hand. Even after making a switch (if Santa is nice this year), I would have to give thought to that route.

That's about the third article I've read like that in the past couple months. You may as well call it a press release for places like istock--isn't it funny how every article I read was almost identical--only the names and places have been changed.

It's really no different than the infomercials you see on TV--the one's where the couple sits by the pool and talks about how they hardly worked for the $10,000 they just made in the last week.

These discussions go on and on and yet I never hear of anyone who shoots outdoor photography and makes a living by going the microstock method step up and say so. I wonder why...

In the case of the lady profiled in the article, she's obviously in the cream of the crop of micro shooters, which is why she was selected to be interviewed. She sounds very skilled and motivated (and knows what subjects to photograph) My guess would be she someday might join a professional organization like SAA, learn the business side of photography, and then move on to a better paying business model. One where she wouldn't mind saying what range of income she's making. Even at 600 downloads a day, which seems like an astronomical number to be making day in and day out, if the photographer is making .25 cents a download like the article mentioned that's $150/day. Now start deducting taxes, insurances, upgrades, etc., etc. And remember we're probably talking about one of the top photographers out of the 20,000 photographers signed up.

I'm not screaming, just cynical As for the talk of using your stock photos as pension, I think that's a bit of hype from the agencies. If the majority of sales are in advertising as it sounds like, I really doubt that the models and set ups someone uses today would be sought after ten or twenty years from now. Just look at the ads you see now on the internet for instance, I'm not seeing anyone looking like they just stepped out of the 1970's.

Actually though, I really don't think that thses sites have much of an impact on outdoor photography markets since they so rarely even use outdoor photos and the ones that do are not the typical businesses that we would even be marketing to.

But hey, it's fun to rant and rave about it Randy

The funny thing to me Randy, is your speculation about that exceptional daily income. It's surprisingly close to our hourly shooting fee! I'm shooting right now with a job contracted for 100 hours at that rate as a first installment, following which we'll reassess the project and decide how much more to shoot. Guess I should give up my day job and try microstock.

I have to laugh about the pension comment as well. If I ever succeed in making a profit from this, the extra funds will probably go into 401K savings, or something. I seem to be in no real danger of that occurring for a while...

I recall when I first began considering photography as a job naively thinking that if I shot x number of stock photos each year and worked x number of years then I should have x number of photos with a stock agency making me x amount as a yearly income or pension once I retired. Perhaps there used to be a time when you could do the math like that and have it come out as planned but I don't think so today. I'll definetly have some income coming in but I'll probably have to look at it as some extra bonus money, not anything to rely on. Reality hurts some times However, even if I'm poor I love my job so I can't imagine wanting to retire anyway. Randy

He told me that with over a million images on iStock, it was pretty much 'game over'.

Well, I think he exaggerate it. One million is nothing compared to the whole stock industry. While the RF method has impact on the stock industry, there are many reasons photo buyers still looking for RM images. Among one of them they have to avoid getting the same image with their competitors.

In my cases, some of my buyers try the RF agency and still turn to me again. The schemes not suit their need at all. Often they couldn't find the specific images they look for, because one million is not mean they have everything.

Nathan, RF world is very captivating especially for the new comers. On the other hand, start doing business seems difficult. But whether it is difficult or not depends on your goal, circumstances and more importantly whether you enjoy it or not. I believe there is no easy-quick big money, especially in the saturated industry like us (if I can say so). But if you go step by step by selling prints or pro bono to your relatives or church (for example) or to magazine like what I did, while 'investing' in Alamy or the others, you will find it exciting and worth the effort. At least that’s what happen to me. I appreciate my works even more (and so do my clients), always try to make better photographs and enjoying the process.

After all, we are not machine that must produce a certain amount of different images daily constantly. I believe most of us love photography because we enjoy the process.

Good luck to you.

Hi Fadil, you make such excellent points--One thing I would never do is take advice about the photography business from a marketing guy There's always going to be markets for photography in so many different directions and areas. Think of whatever in the world it is a person enjoys or is interested in and you'll find there will be a need for photos somewhere.

And you're so right, making a living from photography is just like any other business--you have to have clear goals, take things one step or one sale at a time and gradually build up a business. So many people today seem to want to find a quick and easy way to make money and it just doesn't work that way.

Like you said, you must love what you're doing. I'll never have the extra spending money I used to have when I worked construction--as I make more money it just goes right back into the business. So if you don't love what you're doing, or if you find yourself planning your business around what you think will make you money quickly rather than what you enjoy, a person will soon burn out and move onto something else (of course, companies that run these micro stock businesses don't care because there's going to be a few thousand newcomers for every few thousand that give up). They probably picked up several thousand people alone just from having an article in Popular Photography. Randy

Excellent points Fadil and Randy.

A couple of points used to promote RF are pure quicksand, dire threats to your ability to make a living, much less assure a meaningful "retirement" income.

Putting your dupes out into RF while trying to sell the originals RM is purely stupid. Why would anyone buy RM from you when they can get the same image RF?

And, accumulating a huge bank of photos that will provide income in your dotage ignores trends and evolution, much less improvements in quality in photography, over time. How many of your images from 20 years ago are selling today?

If you really hope to retire on income from today's photography, better get your thinking straight. That is, you should maximize your income today just like any job, then assign a portion to retirement accounts and investments. If you're not making enough money from all sources for meaningful contributions to your retirement accounts, it will be a long, long time before you can afford to retire.

We generate income from older photos, but that's so unreliable that it rates right up there with lotteries and slot machines. But our current income has paid for real estate, built IRAs, bought CDs and money market accounts, and more. Sure we'll enjoy any bit of income that comes from photo sales after retirement, but we'll be supporting ourselves on income from wise investments made today.

In regards to places like istock, and this game over attitude; what I see as equally nasty as the marketing side, is the way photographers value their images. I wrote about this in an article on my weblog, and it too promted some very lively discussion. I hope it's OK to post the link here:
"How Many for How Much"

The short end of the stick is that photographers allow themselves to be taken advantage of, and there's a whole slew of clients out there happy to oblige them.

Gary - thanks for posting the link to your blog entry. You wrote a very informative, illustrative article. I have considered writing something very similar to that. Now I can simply tell people to go read yours. I have engaged in several respectful debates on the microstock and RF markets. And to answer the last question in your article, I certainly want to make more money!

A little off topic, but in ballpark here. I did a wedding for this couple and when I was doing the formals, the father of the groom told me to make sure these images were especially good. He said that the place where they got the tuxs made a deal with him that in exchange for the photo, he would get a discount. I did not say anything at that point. Later the groom told me that he knew that was not a good thing to do and for me not to give the photos up. To just say they did not turn out. He said his dad would take the deal the company offerred him.

Now this is a big company, they know better. But I am sure they also knew that if I seen the image, they could show where they "purchased" the image. That would then past the buck to the father of the groom...

That's a new one on me Sue, but I'll add it to the reasons we don't turn loose digital files from weddings and portrait shoots.

In fact we shoot weddings "ala carte," charging an hourly shooting fee and selling the prints and other products like DVDs and albums individually. There are large bux involved with our big canvases, so we're not about to let the files out of our hands. Along the same lines we imprint all the smaller photos and sign the big ones- both with our © and date. Local outlets know not to allow our clients to scan them for more prints.