How many images before you finally turn a profit?

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How many images before you finally turn a profit?

By Dan Heller July 06, 2006

When photographers consider setting up their businesses online, the natural curiosity is wondering how many images do they need before the sales start trickling in. Then they consider their particular images, and wonder what the size of the market is (hence, the "opportunity" to make money). And, finally, if they believe they have "enough" images, and the market opportunity exists, what's the best way to market those images to the target buyer.

All this is demonstrated by an email I got from someone, which is almost identical to those I get on a fairly regular basis:

1) What gross sales and net revenues are possible from a well run, part-time web based stock photo business with a single photographer supplying images?

2) How many images do you feel are the minimum to make available in order to be taken seriously and make a profit?

3) What is your most effective marketing technique and why?

4)I'm considering focusing the scope of my stock offerings to very local images- Bucks County PA, because that's where I live and I've been unable to find much available stock of the area. I've been accumulating local publications that I think might be potential customers. Can you offer some advice on how to best approach them/market to them?

All of these questions are good, but they are all based on the faulty premise that a photo business's success is based primarily on the photos, either the quantity of them, or their quality.

What makes a photo business successful is more based on other factors. For example, your main subject matter can be very specific, or very broad. How well you do will be contingent on how well you know the business of the industry you're shooting for, or how well you know "business issues" in general.

If you shoot specific subjects, like horses, or fashion, or food, or sports, or Bucks County, Pennsylvania, your revenue is going to be based in large part by how well positioned you are with the media companies that buy such specialized images within any of these industries. Those who are well-connected, know what the market is like, and how those businesses are run. They also understand how photography fits into those business models, and can package a marketing/sales plan that is "industry-friendly." If you have no such contacts, or don't know the business-end of that target industry, your likelihood of success will be pretty close to nil, regardless of the quantity or quality of your images. It is highly unlikely that those who need specialized images of a niche area browse the web for stock images from random photographers' websites. It may happen, but it won't amount to much sales.

On the other extreme, if you shoot really mediocre pictures of everyday things, you could hypothetically build a very profitable business by pricing them for a few dollars each and bundling hundreds or thousands of them together in royalty-free compilations for several hundred dollars. Here, you don't even need to target media companies--the general public is good enough.

Let's say you have 5000 images that you sell for $200, and you have no strings attached to the use of those images: no additional royalties, and no limitations on use. If you manage to sell 1000 of these compilations over the course of a year, that's $200,000. That ain't bad. But it also isn't that easy, despite how simply I described it, because setting up a business infrastructure to do this sort of thing requires some degree of business sense. While not difficult, it isn't something you just throw together in your spare time unless you've had past experience doing it.