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Should I sell my photos through a stock photo site?

Do you offer your photos from Colorado Portraits for sale on sites like iStockPhoto.com? Another nice way to make some k'ching! I am working on organizing my bizillion photos to sort out the good from the mediocre so I can start uploading. I have recently been approved as a photographer that can upload photos to sell! Yay!

Dave's Answer:

Never really thought about selling my photographs online, actually, though I've been approached a few times and now that I just got a shiny new Nikon D80, I'm sure that I'll be taking a few more thousand photographs in the next few months.

What I wonder is the average payout for a typical photographer who offers pictures on a stock photo site like iStockPhoto, so let's just dig into the terms of service and see what we can extrapolate.

From the perspective of buying a picture, that's pretty painless, $1 for a small image you can use to adorn a blog entry, web site, HTML-formatted email or even brochure is about as painless as it can get, and what I like is that the purchase is a contract between iStockPhoto and the buyer, so there are no questions about whether it's a violation of copyright to use the image as you often have with so-called royalty free sites.

According to their FAQ, however, you as the photographer only get 20% of the royalty for a sale, so that $5 payment for a full page version of one of your images actually breaks down to be $4.00 to them, and only $1.00 to you.

As I suspected, it's actually pretty hard to even make "soda money" through stock photo sales, especially when you consider that even your best images are competing with over 1.2 million other images. That's why I find it hard to get enthused about selling my images as stock photographs.

On the other hand, when I get a professional assignment, it's quite reasonable to charge $500 or more to spend an hour or two shooting a party or event, so one or two of those and you've just paid for your latest gear. Realistically, it'd take over 500 individual photo licensing sales through iStockPhoto or similar sites to equal that simple revenue stream.

Maybe I'm being a bit too pessimistic here, however. If you have experience selling your photographs through a stock photo agency like iStockPhoto or similar, please share how you got involved, how carefully they screen individual images, and what kind of money you have been earning on a per-sale and monthly basis.

Me? I'll stick with taking pictures for fun rather and accept the occasional professional assignment rather than worry about uploading images for others to utilize or purchase.

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Categorized: Business and Management (Article 7002)
Tagged: nikon, photography, stock photographs
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Comments

In my opinion there is no way to make the money you expect to make as a pro from *most* stock photo agencies. There are some agencies that do a good job and treat their photographers right and you'll know them because they've been around since before the internet. They also know the value of a good photo and won't peddle bad images.

The current crop of online stock agencies can only serve one purpose and that is to dilute the photography market and make it harder for the pros to continue making the money they deserve. Why pay for a top-shelf shot when you can get bathtub gin for nearly free?

Posted by: Ben Zvan at November 17, 2006 11:49 AM

I wonder if a professional photographer could not accomplish better sales of photos by using a personal site. If the personal photography website was built to advertise "stock photos" in a specific area (e.g. country or region specific or maybe topical photos), would they get similar money out of their photos? At the above mentioned rates, they would only have to sell one fifth the photos to make the same money.

Well, I guess the people that browse the stock photo sites may not be searching for "stock photos" out there on the web. So, if the photos are not in the stock photo website's stock, it will never be found, more than likely.

Just thinking aloud.

Posted by: Cooper Strange at April 5, 2007 9:54 PM

i have been looking in to making a stock image site for a small while now and i have a few comments to make.

1 i do think they are a very good facility for any company that needs graphics no matter what the medium (we build websites but i am also a photographer)

2 advertising a site with proper "seo" is stupid expensive (we provide "seo" as a service and we spend a lot of time to get great results but when you look at time spent against the money it costs it is cheep).

3 to go up against a site like istock would take some (lots) of very good photos (that are new) from lots of good photographers and have a very big server to store all these images and massive bandwidth and then you would need the time and money to advertise it (seo and contact email lists and link building)

i am still thinking about it and if were to do this i would split the sale 50/50 with the photographer.

the big but here though is it would take about 3 months for google to see the site and something like a year to get on to page one of google for "stock photo"

if enough photographers want me to sort this out i will.

danny

Posted by: danny at April 6, 2007 1:38 PM

Hi,

I'm a little late with my comment but better late than never :o)

When you can charge $500 for 2 hours work, I wouldn't even think about micros. I would shoot the hell out of my cam. But ...

be honest. How many can charge $500 for 2 hours and be fully booked ? I don't think many can do this.

For those having some spare time, micros are a great way to earn some extra. To make a long story short, you can/should earn around $1/image/month. 1000 images online should yield you around $1000/month.

For those wanting to read the long story, they can visit my website :
http://www.perrush.be/SYF_micro_E_1.html

Greetz
Stefan

Posted by: Perrush at September 25, 2007 5:43 AM

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!