Editorials
Mr. Stock Smarty Pants weighs in on stock licensing in a troubled economy
I feel your pain… Well, actually I don’t…after all, Mr. Stock Smarty Pants happens to be writing his latest words of wisdom while reclining under a dazzling sun and gently bobbing up and down on the deck of a sailboat anchored off Barbados. However, I’m trying my best to employ the technique known amongst us professional writers as “empathizing with your audience.”
What does MSSP hear over and over again these days? Wailings of doom and gloom, punctuated by exclamations that the sky is falling. BORING. E-mails filled with complaints about the state of the world economy. SO WHAT’S NEW? Phone calls (yes, every once in a while some lucky individual happens to stumble upon Mr. Stock Smarty Pants’ satellite phone number) in which people go on and on and on about the dire financial straits they’ve found themselves in. DIRE STRAITS…GREAT BAND, LOUSY CONVERSATION TOPIC. Letters (amazingly in this day and age, some people still like to spend money on postage stamps) detailing the many ways in which the stock picture industry is headed right into the dumpster. HEARD IT ONCE, HEARD IT A HUNDRED TIMES.
So, in an effort to bring to a screeching halt any further whining about “the economy,” “the state of the stock industry” or “I’m at the end of my rope, what should I do?” I have selected at random one such pathetic e-mail and will pass judgment on its content, all as a public service…to myself!
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Yo, Pants:
Hey, I’ve been a stock photographer for a lot of years but I think the party’s over. The global economy’s in the crapper, my picture sales are down and now they’re practically giving away pictures with this microstock stuff. I don’t think anybody can make a buck in this business anymore. You’re a pretty bright dudesickle, what do you think???
Your friend,
Dazed and Confused
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Dear Dazed and Confused:
First, “Yo, Pants” is an utterly disrespectful way to address the preeminent guru of the stock industry. And, as far as proper English diction goes, I only recognize “yo” as the first half of the word “yo-yo”, a descriptor which I believe may apply to you. Further, it’s “MISTER STOCK SMARTY PANTS” to you, fella, not “Pants.” Finally, letters or e-mails to MSSP are supposed to emanate from individuals, not couples…so, are you “Dazed” or “Confused”?
Under normal circumstances your e-mail would have been deleted simply on principle due to your flouting of the generally accepted MSSP rules; however, I made a pact with myself to select a note at random and, no matter how ignorant its content, to supply a suitably erudite response, so I’m afraid I’m stuck with you.
Let’s see, where should we start? Well, you allege that “the global economy’s in the crapper,” a none-too-refined way of saying that a number of countries, including our own U. S. of A., are probably in a recession. True enough. But, never lose sight of the fact that for every couple of losers out there, there’s also a potential winner. Wall Street’s precious stocks are selling at lows like we haven’t seen in years. The people dumping those stocks are the losers, having chosen to cut their losses and run…but somebody is buying them, and when the financial picture brightens, as it inevitably will, they will be among the winners.
Want another great example of losers and winners, all wrapped up in one neat little package? How about the American auto industry? Where else could you spend years running your business into the ground, lose money left and right, cede market share to your foreign competitors by doing your very best to think short-term while they’re thinking long-term, and then have the stones to ask the American taxpayer to “loan” you twenty five or fifty BILLION dollars as a reward for all your blunders? Wow! You have to admire the sheer audacity of The Big 3 and their new little buddy (formerly their arch enemy) the AFL-CIO, and you see, Dazed (or is it Confused?), there’s the problem: you’re thinking small when you need to think big. If you were some industrial behemoth bleeding cash instead of just an ordinary Joe Photographer (forgive me my Sarah Palin!) you’d have lots of folks eager to prop you up and hand you even more money to piss away! Instead, you have to try to stay in business the old fashioned way, by making really smart decisions and watching your bottom line very, very carefully.
In a down economy (and MSSP has survived several of them throughout the decades and always come out on the other side relatively intact if not better off) a couple of things happen. First, companies make the boneheaded decision that marketing is some silly frill that they can easily cut back on in order to try to make the expense side of the ledger come at least somewhat close to the income side. This is pure nuttiness: in a tight economy it’s more important than ever to both stroke existing clients and seek increased market share. How do you do that? Marketing! But, rather than cut back on use of the corporate plane, or executive bonuses, marketing usually takes a hit. And, on first blush that would seem to be a bad thing for stock shooters like you. However, there is a concurrent action that takes place with these same companies: when they cut back on marketing, among the first things to go are expensive assignments for photographers. Why? Because they can find alternative pictures cheaper and easier in stock! So, is it a total wash? No…stock picture sales and transaction prices probably WILL dip a bit, but just like stocks on Wall Street, there will still be both buyers and sellers, winners and losers.
Like a lot of photographers, you say that “my picture sales are down.” This is often a cop-out by shooters who have failed to follow the advice I just gave you: making SMART decisions. Have you been submitting new pictures to your agencies on a regular basis? Have you stroked your relationships with your picture editors, and are you constantly asking them what they need more of and what’s selling well? Have you done an exceptionally good job of keywording your pictures? Do you push yourself to try new ideas, styles, subject matter and models or are you just mailing it in with tried-and-true routines that have become the photographic equivalent of shtick? Have you diversified your picture outlets so that you are not overly dependent upon any single one? Are you a fanatic about studying the picture market to see what the latest trends are? Are you constantly ripping pages out of magazines that contain images that inspire you to find a new way to photographically illustrate a concept or idea? Do you make your decisions on what to shoot based at least partially upon good business principles rather than just what seems really “groovy” to shoot?
If you answered “no” to any of these questions, then the problem may be looking at you in the mirror, not from the pages of the Wall Street Journal.
Oh, and that part about how “no one can make a buck in this industry anymore”? That’ s another credo of the perennial loser. Don’t kid yourself, there are still photographers out there making hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars every year from stock sales. But, the game HAS changed. The successful photographers have changed with it, staying as near or even ahead of the curve as possible. The losers sit around wailing about how it’s all going to hell. One change that is not certainly for the better, of course, is the movement by the Big Agencies (you know who you are!) to grab more and more of your money by cutting back on royalty percentages paid out to contributing photographers. It’s a shame that image creators have allowed middlemen to essentially take over the industry and dictate how much money they receive for their efforts. But, MSSP believes in dealing with problems, not whining about them. So, how should you respond to this? By becoming more and more aggressive in selling directly to picture buyers and by-passing the guys who are always sticking their hands in your pocket and fishing for more and more of your cash. If you haven’t already started selling your images through outlets like Alamy, myLoupe, IPN, Fotolio or the others out there like them, you had better start pronto, because the writing’s on the wall: the Big Agencies already take a big chunk of your sales revenue, and they’re only going to demand more in the years ahead.
Lastly, microstock…ah, microstock, the new whipping boy of the stock industry. Whenever photographers see their incomes dwindle now they can simply blame microstock. To which MSSP says: maybe yes…probably no. Let’s start with the basics: what is “microstock”? Just cheaper royalty free, right? Right! And what did everybody say when RF first hit about two decades ago? “The sky is falling,” “it’s the end of the stock picture industry” and “nobody can make any money shooting this stuff.” Hmmmm…sound familiar? Instead of cursing micro, get with the program. Don’t hem and haw about it, get your feet wet. Once again, that means making a smart decision…not dumping everything else you’re doing and going 100% micro, but putting SOME of your production into that sector and watching it closely to see what happens. RF didn’t change the picture business overnight, but it DID change the business. Micro will probably change our industry faster than RF did, but that change, too, will not happen overnight, so you need to stay alert, diversify your production and put images where good logic dictates based upon your constant monitoring of trends, sales reports and good business sense.
And that, my friend (or friends?) should help you avoid being both Dazed AND Confused.
Mr. Stock Smarty Pants, an internationally known and occasionally even respected figure in the global professional picture industry, answers your questions about the business side of stock photography on sporadic Mondays, or whenever the mood strikes him, on About The Image. Although MSSP travels the globe constantly in his never-ending quest to avoid paternity tests, your question regarding anything about the stock photo business will be forwarded to him and, so long as Mr. Stock Smarty Pants is reasonably sober and 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.
Posted in: Editorials, Micropayment Stock Photography, Mr. Stock Smarty Pants, Photographers, Stock Photo Companies
