P#4 Q1b: Microstock And The Evolving World of Stock Photography
Can you make it selling stock photography in the era of microstock?
Low-end microstock agencies have changed the stock photography world. They have made selling stock more accessible to more photographers, but they've also changed the way the great photographers work.
We asked Scott Stulberg if he's felt the effects of the move away from the big agency policies to the less exclusive policies of the microstock agencies.
Read on to find out more about microstock agencies...
Access the entire spectrum of stock photography agencies -- including microstock agencies
Scott Stulberg: The past couple of years have opened up a whole new world that has upset a lot photographers with microstock. With microstock, photographers are getting paid about a dollar or two dollars, sometimes ten, sometimes twenty but it's usually under five dollars for an image.
People are able to buy those images for five dollars or ten dollars and the photographer gets a miniscule amount. It's degrading to a lot of photographers, but many photographers are making a lot of money doing that.
There's one photographer who's making $25,000 a month doing microstock. He's one of the top photographers in the world, in the Guinness Book of World's Records, too, for making that kind of money selling microstock, but there are very few people out there like him and very few people making that kind of money.
As photographers, we don't feel good about making two or three dollars for an image when we're used to making anywhere from $50 to $10,000 an image. That is what has taken over the now, and that's why we're in the middle of a really weird period for stock photography right now.
Audri Lanford: The last part of this question was: Can I sell my photos to more than one stock agency?
Scott Stulberg: Oh yes. I'm with five agencies. As long as it's not the same photo or it's not a similar photo, meaning they can't have the same kind of pose, the same clothes, or the same exact photo of the Eiffel Tower.
As long as it's different and it looks like it was shot at a different time or by a different photographer, or something like that, it's fine. If the agencies find out you are sending in similar or the same photo to different agencies, you will get in a lot of trouble.
You can be with multiple agencies, that is no problem.
In summary
Submitting your work to multiple agencies and keeping all of your options open will help you manage the world of stock photography. Some photographers object to some agency practices. You have to decide if your goal is representation by the big and mid-sized agencies, by smaller microstock agencies, or both.
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