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To micro-stock or not to micro-stock? That is the question for Mr. Stock Smarty Pants
Mr. Stock Smarty Pants has been a busy boy of late, meeting with hedgefund managers, investment bankers and assorted Mafiosi (and, if you really think about it, they’re all pretty similar) in hopes of siphoning off at least a small portion of the $2.4 billion that Hellman & Friedman is apparently coughing up to acquire stock industry behemoth Getty Images. Nonetheless, despite his very full schedule of clandestine meetings and drafting of threatening letters, MSSP found time to sort through his voluminous e-mail and select one lucky inquiry for his attention:
Dear Mr. Stock Smarty Pants:
I’ve only been a professional photographer for a couple of years, and now I’m interested in getting into producing stock photos. Some of the “veterans” that I meet at association meetings have told me to avoid producing royalty free images, and I’ve been given the impression that doing so is akin to selling one’s soul to the devil. Even worse, they say, is this new thing called “microstock.” Is all this true? Will I roast in Hell forever if I make a deal with an RF producer or put my pictures on a microstock website?
Praying for an Answer
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Dear Praying:
Bless you, my son, for coming to Mr. Stock Smarty Pants. You are truly fortunate, for MSSP had his course on the road to spiritual enlightenment set early-on at Our Mother of Uncompromising Misery High School, and he is now a fully ordained minister in the First Church of the Divine Download. This means that I am legally authorized in many states, as well as several Balkan countries, to perform marriages, offer the invocation at state fairs and confer my blessing onto contestants in the Miss Universe pageant. So, when Mr. Stock Smarty Pants speaks, it is with the full authority and support of God…or Buddha…or Donald Trump…or whomsoever you may prefer to worship as a divine being (personally, MSSP prefers to place only Pamela Anderson in that rarefied category, but to each his own, you know?).
And so, my son, I have good news for you: a fiery afterlife does NOT await you if you shoot stock for a royalty free image producer! The old-timers would have you believe that choosing whether or not to produce RF is a moral issue. I have news for them, as well as you: it’s NOT a moral decision…it’s a BUSINESS decision. Oh, sure, when royalty free first hit the marketplace in the very early 1990s there was much gnashing of teeth and a collective hue and cry of “The sky is falling” from the professional photography community. And, in some sort of bizarre collective homage to Nancy Reagan, there was a concurrent “Just Say No” campaign which attempted to persuade photographers that if they just didn’t provide images, the RF producers and their dastardly products would all shrivel up and go away.
Guess what happened?
Not only didn’t royalty free go away, it now accounts for something in the neighborhood of fifty percent of ALL the stock image transactions that take place globally! And the poor schmucks who sat on the sidelines while all of this was going on, because RF was just too icky for them to lower themselves to, missed out on a ton of revenue which was scooped up by the smart shooters who saw opportunity instead of the-end-of-life-as-we-know-it.
What’s the lesson here? Well, there are actually several.
First of all, stock photography is a business…it is not your life, it is not a moral code, and it is not a secret society like the Freemasons which you join, swear allegiance to and then can never digress from its “rules.” Every stock photographer (at least, every successful stock photographer) needs to evaluate opportunities and make decisions regarding his stock career on the same basis as any other businessperson: what works for me and my business? It’s not a question of RF (and now microstock) being inherently either “good” or “bad”…it is a question of whether or not it is good or bad for YOUR business.
Secondly, we do business in a relatively unfettered capitalistic society in which the marketplace decides what is worthy of sustainability and what isn’t, not a bunch of effete creative-types who are tied to the past and lack a vision of the future. In the case of royalty free stock, art buyers said “We LIKE this!” and that was enough to power a real revolution in how stock imagery was licensed. I believe it was that well-known revolutionary Bob Dylan who said, “Money doesn’t talk, it swears.” One thing art buyers swore was that licensing stock under the old rights managed model was just too damn cumbersome. Along came RF with a really hassle-free way to obtain stock. Funny thing: you get enough picture buyers willing to part with their cash for something they like, the next thing you know you have yourself a trend!
Third, our cute little, mom-and-pop stock picture industry got a little too complacent. Over the course of about a century very little changed in the way stock pictures were marketed and sold. That all changed in the late 1970s when Comstock came along and introduced two (then) radical ideas to our industry: mass marketing techniques and shooting stock images specifically FOR stock. And then around 1990 we had the introduction of royalty free. The common thread here is that from time to time every industry, including the picture industry, can be turned upside down by people who come into it with a totally fresh perspective and are not married to the concept “Well, that’s how we’ve always done it.”
And that, my friend, is the perfect segue into addressing microstock. Once again our industry is wrestling with a fistful of angst because a bunch of upstarts came along a couple of years ago and said to themselves, “Hey, what if we sold stock images REALLY cheap? Could we attain a high enough volume of sales to make that worthwhile?” Microstock is still relatively new, so the jury’s definitely out on whether or not the concept has “legs.” There is a very valid debate taking place right now as to whether or not photographers can afford to even produce stock-quality images if they’re then going to be sold at micro prices. However, don’t make the mistake that shooters made with RF! If all you do is sit on the platform and watch as the train pulls out of the station, you run the very real risk of being left behind as it disappears into the distance. Again, think like a businessperson. Keep a close eye on microstock (if Corbis and Getty are fully engaged in micro, doesn’t that tell you something?). Note the sorts of images that are being marketed. Keep tabs on the trends in micro pricing. And perhaps even stick your toe in the water. That’s not advocating for a full-blown commitment, just a very smart effort on your part to keep the train in close proximity so that you can still jump on board if and when the time seems right to do so.
Royalty free didn’t go away, and my hunch is that microstock won’t either. So don’t be swayed by the dinosaurs who refuse to change with the times: while they keep their heads buried in the sand, there will be photographers who are laughing at them all the way to the bank. I’m not saying that you necessarily SHOULD produce either RF or microstock, just that no intelligent businessperson should summarily dismiss either one. So, consider whether or not either of those licensing models fit into your business plans and then move forward without thinking twice about what anybody else thinks (except Mr. Smarty Pants, of course!).
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Mr. Stock Smarty Pants, a well-known figure within both the worldwide stock picture industry as well as at Interpol, answers your questions about the business side of stock photography every other Monday (or whenever the mood strikes him) on About The Image. Although MSSP stays in constant motion from continent to continent due to his innate sense of wanderlust, as well as his frequently expressed desire to avoid his numerous probation officers, your question regarding anything about the stock photo business will be forwarded to him and, so long as Mr. Stock Smarty Pants is within reach of an Internet café, he will consider responding to you in an upcoming edition of About The Image. E-mail your questions to: . Oh, and MSSP categorically denies any affiliation whatsoever with the company called Stock Answers™ LLC.
Comments(1)
post a comment »Tim McGuire Images, Inc., May 16, 2008 [#]
The questioner should, as MSSP writes approach this question as a business person would. Most businesses create what is called a business plan laying out the research and numbers that support or don’t support starting a business enterprise. It is a lot of work and research that is not easily found, especially in the stock imagery business but I think you could do it if you really wanted to. I did it 7 years ago for my Rights Managed business and it took a few months but was incredibly empowering once it was done and I could see that if I followed the plan I could make a legitimate business out of full time stock photo production. But don’t forget, a business plan can also lead you to also valuable conclusion that the business you are thinking about getting into is not a good one. Everyone is different so there are no pre-packaged business plans available so you have to do it yourself.
Research the licensing model(s) you’re interested in. Find out how much the average Microstock participant is making per image / per year. Figure out if you could become that “average” microstock participant or maybe above average. Figure out what it would cost you (time and money) to make and manage images that would be licensed on micro sites. Figure your business overhead including your salary for the time you spend managing and creating your microstock image collection. Then, once you’ve gathered all the info you can get, do the math and based on all you’ve learned, ask yourself, does microstock licensing make sense? Can I make a profit and grow my business? If you can, then make a plan and follow it. If not, you’ve saved yourself from a failing business idea.
If microstock or any other kind of stock licensing is just a portion of your business, you still must ask yourself if the time and expense required will pay for itself AND turn a profit AND is that profit big enough to justify not doing something else. Of course all of this assumes you’re in the stock photography business to make profits.
Tim McGuire