Thoughts of how I can possibly turn this photography lark into a way of prolonging my travels when I inevitably start to run out of money half-way round China has occupied almost every waking second for the past few weeks. I bought a new camera instead of spending that which I’d sensibly set aside on a TEFL course – as originally planned – which would have seen me earning some extra cash teaching English as a foreign language when I’m out in the sticks. But now I’ve made myself into a mugger’s wet dream and I’m beginning to doubt whether my idealistic notion that I’d be able to sell a few pretty pictures in order to keep myself travelling wasn’t just a pretence wrapped in a cosy cloak of denial. Or maybe I still think I know what I’m doing.
Either way, over the last week or so, it has become clearer in my tiny mind that the easiest way to begin making my snap happy ways pay, at least hypothetically speaking, is to concentrate my energies on getting my images in front of as many potential buyers as possible in the most efficient manner possible, that being, via stock agencies.
I have already signed up to several microstock sites and uploaded several images taken some years back on my trusty 4 megapixel Canon G3. I’ve even already had one of those photographs licensed and found myself a whole 50 cents richer. But in between then and now I’ve been doing a lot of research and a fair bit of thinking.
What Is Microstock?
For those of you who don’t know, microstock is a relatively recent phenomenon in the world of stock photography. Relative to traditional stock agencies, microstock is the eBay to traditional stock photography’s Sotheby’s. Whereas traditional stock agencies such as Getty Images and Corbis demand extremely high quality submissions from their mainly professional contributors and can command greater fees for the images they sell, microstock agencies tend to be less stringent about quality, are open to anyone to contribute, and sell their images for a fraction of the fees commanded by the bigger agencies. So, just like eBay tends to be used by the general public to earn a bit of extra cash from their garage clearout, microstock is an ideal way for the amateur photographer to make money from a spring clean of their hard drive. This isn’t to say that microstock represents the dustbin of stock photography. There are many professional photographers out there making very comfortable livings solely from microstock and many many top quality images to browse. The nature of microstock agencies, however, means that the quality of images on offer is always somewhat diluted compared to a Getty or Corbis.
Rights-Managed & Royalty-Free Images
In general, stock photography is licensed by the photographer (who retains the copyright) to the buyer via an agency acting as the middle man introducing each to the other. Images are licensed as either Rights-Managed or Royalty-Free.
Rights-Managed licenses state the exact uses to which an image will be put, as well as the duration of use, the quantity in which it will be used and the geographical region of use. The image fee is negotiated accordingly and the exact history of use of each image can be traced by subsequent buyers so as to ascertain an image’s uniqueness.
Royalty-Free images, on the other hand, are not liable to the same restrictions. There is no need for the buyer to state the exact manner in which an image will be used. The image is simply purchased within a broad set of stipulations (i.e. no defamatory or pornographic usage; no secondary commercial usage such as the selling of prints unless an extended licence is acquired etc). Royalty-Free images do not, therefore, have a traceable usage history and cannot be licensed exclusively to a single buyer. Hence the uniqueness of a given microstock images is undermined in comparison to Rights-Managed images. Microstock photos are always royalty free.
Microstock Prices vs Rights-Managed Prices
Prices of microstock images are low; often less than a dollar per image. This encourages buyers to buy in bulk to justify the cost of subscription or transaction and means that the more images a photographer submits, the more he or she is likely to earn.
Rights-Managed images, because of their more unique nature and their traceable usage history, command greater fees than their microstock counterparts. As such, an editor may be more prepared to purchase a Rights-Managed image in order to avoid the risk of duplicate or repeat images appearing elsewhere such as in a competitor’s advertising campaign. However, this also means that in order to appeal to said editor, the image in question needs to be high quality or unique enough to sell under a Rights-Managed license. Otherwise, it may as well see how it fares at a less exclusive microstock agency. See here and here for more on Rights-Managed vs Royalty-Free images.
With this in mind, I have devised myself a strategy of sorts. My best, most original images will be submitted to a mid-range agency such as Alamy, which gives contributors the option of selecting to sell images under either Royalty-Free or Rights-Managed licenses. Any other images, or those that do not pass Alamy’s quality control, will be uploaded to those microstock sites that I am currently signed up to. It’s not exactly rocket-surgery so we’ll see how this new strategy of mine succeeds. I shall report back if and when I have any luck with either.
You can take a look at some of the microstock sites that I’m currently signed up to at the following links. You can even sign up yourself and start earning money with your own photography today.
See Also:
- Microstock Diaries – For People Selling Photos Online
- Microstock Insider
- Photo Secrets – “How Can I Sell My Photos As Stock“
- Yuri Arcurs or: The self-styled “world’s top selling microstock photographer.”
