thats a realy interesting question! I think that microstock market will break into 2 different parts.
One part will be the cheap photos and the other part are the premium market.

There is not need to sell a professional photo at 1$ because most people who use it are able to pay much more.

Did you ever tried to start your own microstock agency, only for your portfolio?

Look at the graph to the right. Everywhere there is red except Crestock, which have prices starting at 5 USD

Have you looked into photoshelter, alamy or myloupe for RM?

I am seeing an increase in earnings except for the Christmas slow down.  Shaply-done made a good point.  I am sure diversification is the way to keep the sales going.

The simple answer may very well be that you've hit the saturation point for your niche. As profitable as your work has been, perhaps you should consider producing images that address a different market segment.

I agree with Sharply on that

Doing this kind of production for microstock is not worth it, and looking at it from an investment point of view, it is time to downscale or find new waters…with higher prices. I am in particular losing revenue on the subscription sites. SS, 123RF and StockXpert.

I keep saying sub models  is a kind of killer to the industry and it only lowers the prices and I don't think anyone will benefit from it in long term.
As for crestock yes they do have price tags starting from 5 dollars but as contrast they  offer one of the most reasonable(form buyers point of view) sub prices therefore I'd think their higher(?) prices is there to encourage people buy subscriptions  needless to say all my sales on Crestock  are subs(having said that I have a tiny folio there and a handful of downloads)

Yuri..(i'm your fans) 

Everything will be going well, as long as photographers walking to the right direction...
If photographers support the subscription agency or agency that give 20%-30% share, that will be bad thing in the long term...
Keep support to low share agencies at the moment for your cash flow, also support the 50-70% share agency like featurepics for long term and better future (who knows). When your revenue in 50-70% share agency going to be high you can delete your file from low share agency...

The problem is the high share agency not popular yet righ now, photographers should be help to make it popular.

Imagine that you have same ammount of download at same price between 20% share agency vs 70% share agency...maybe you not going to created this topic
Imagine that all photographers (at least best phographers) stop uploading at low share agencies..
imagine that your 60 hours a week pay at 70%..
imagine that all agencies give you 70%..

it's all about photographers...

I'm not convinced that a 5% reduction in revenue over the last four months is yet a 'trend'.  The last three months have seen a big shift to seasonal images, and as far as I'm aware you don't have those in your portfolio Yuri (except the disco/gig series).

People with a big seasonal emphasis in their portfolios will see a drop in the next three or four months, so their experience will be the opposite.

I agree that subscriptions (at these prices) devalue a photographers work and are not good for the long term.

I don't think Microstock has reached saturation (in fact I think it is still in its infancy), but it is possible for a photographer to reach saturation, as sharply suggests.

I noticed recently that Hidesy (at iStock) has just uploaded her 10,000th image.  A year ago she had 7,000.  But she still seems to be selling about 8/12,000 pictures a month, so although she's increased her portfolio by nearly 50% her sales over the past year appear to have stagnated.  It's possible that as she now uploads new work, her work of four years ago has become 'old' and drops out of the equation.

The same thing might be happening to you Yuri; the whole world is aware of your move to Hassleblad, and buyers 'might' prefer to buy those new images instead of your older ones, so you are 'working to stand still' (but at higher costs).  Sometimes publicity doesn't help the bottom line.

The good thing is that microstock prices are continuing to rise at 20% per annum or more, and I expect that to continue for the next five years, so even if sales remain constant, income should rise.

A photographer of your quality and experience Yuri should be taking on bespoke corporate client projects in the $150,000 and above budget range.

Talking to a designer friend the other day she said the advertising company where she works now uses SS for "not personalized" images (the ones used in compositions, small prints, preparation work etc) instead than getting them from Getty. She said the difference in quality is very small if any, just a lack of "realistic" people shot (you know every model smiles happily in micro).

Anyway they probably download ten times from SS than before from Getty but between the 200-300 $ of Getty and the cents of SS there's the ocean. Plus they don't have the time to download at full their subscription limit, so SS get the 100% of their unused subscriptions.

I'm still wondering where lies that quality difference to justify that an image on SS would cost less than 1% than on Getty. Especially when I browse through Yuri portfolio.

In my (very) humble position I decided that some shots will go to Alamy and other RM agencies, while the ones more widely usable (isolations, 3d renders, etc) will go to micro. I think diversification is the only way.

A photographer of your quality and experience Yuri should be taking on bespoke corporate client projects in the $150,000 and above budget range.

That goes without saying, but I'm glad you said it anyway.  Abandon microstock, Yuri.  Your future could be so much brighter! 

Here are my weekly statistics for 2007. The text is small, but hopefully, you can read it.



The trends are very clear:

- The distance between SS and the best of the others is decreasing.

- Sales value has flattened out, in spite of the fact that my portfolio has increased in size by more than 50% through the year.

I had a rather brutal reminder of the difference between subscriptions and regular sales today. At Crestock, where my sales are almost only subs, I had three regular vector sales yesterday, generating $3.00 each. That's 12 times as much as subscription sales.

The value of the subscription sales may be decreasing, but the fact that it's an option for the customers at an increasing number of agencies, decrease the value of my photos. I'm tending towards dropping agencies that offer subscriptions unless they have an opt out option, like StockXpert and SV. I  will lose some profit short term, but long term, it's the only way to go, at least if I believe that my images have qualities that customers are willing to pay at least $5 for.

I read the comparison with groceries here but me thinks that you should rather compare with the restaurant business.

Subscription is all you can eat for a fixed price. The food is OK, but fatty and starchy to get you full fast. A clever eater goes first for the oysters and the seafood (if there is any) but most are seduced by the cheap dishes near the entry. Anyways, a stomach is finite and most people just don't eat all they can.

Microstock is the fastfood restaurant were prices are somewhat higher but you can choose. The food is in disposable plastic cups. All is plastic. The spoons, the forks, even the ketchup is wrapped in plastic.
You will have to queue in a very brighly lit hall full of gossiping and screaming teenagers, then fight for a place somewhere and get over with it quickly.

Midstock is the better middle-class restaurant where you are served in a relax way at your table, with some music, in a cozy atmosphere, with real dishes and real glasses and proper forks. You don't have to queue, you are being served and taken care off. The food is better too.

Macrostock is the 5-star restaurant. It has all that midstock has, but better. The food is top-notch. Prices are much higher but you get value for money, the best caviar and seafood. Those restaurants have many customers, often you have to make reservations.

Now who would make the most money? The fastfood chain or the 5-star restaurant? Designers obviously want to pay for convenience and for finding the right top notch quality shot fast. They don't have time (=money) to crawl through google or cheapstock to see whether the same image is available elsewhere for 1$ instead of 10$.

Another thing: you can serve different types of food but not degrade a photo. You can downsize but it's still the same photo. What if a fastfood restaurant offered the caviar, just in smaller portions?
Finally, what about a regular restaurant customer that sees that at the same counter, an all-you-can-eat customer gets the same hamburger for less?

Yuri Arcurs offers the worlds finest caviar and sushi. He caters the best restaurants. Now suddenly, this exquisite brand name Arcurs concludes a deal with McDonalds or all-you-can eat to serve the same caviar, only in smaller portions. What will customers think? Arcurs fools us and he is throwing pearls to pigs. Plus the screaming teenagers in McDonalds don't even know the difference between caviar and fries with ketchup.

Just a thought. I am getting hungry.... ;-)

Interesting thread and it's nice to see Bryan and Josh adding their point of view from an agency side.

The thing I dislike the most about the subscription model is that we the photographers get exactly the same amount of commission irrelevant of the file size that has been downloaded, what I'd like to see is a commission structure for subscription sales the same as for normal credit sales, for instance 30c for a web sized download and then say $1.20 for an XL, of course for an agency the subscription model is a money making machine which is why SS are so succesful, the bigger the file size a buyer downloads the more money they make because a buyer downloads fewer images but they still pay the contributor the same commission.

I agree totally with what Yuri has said but the same applies to all of us no matter what level of contributor you are, production costs are not being met by commissions, even if you don't hire models,locations and props etc you still have the cost of equipment and your time to balance out.

Microstock exists because of amatuers and by that I'm not talking about the quality of imagery that's produced, for an amatuer who's main source of income is one other than photography the commission is not as a major concern, yet for someone who's income relies on a commission structure from stock it's a fundamental problem, I can see that long term Pro's are going to reach a saturation point as previously mentioned whereby they stop submitting at the current levels they are to Microstock agencies, this in turn will effect the Microstock agencies because even though there are some very very talented amatuers they won't be able to provide a large enough supply of fresh images because of other commitments, then in turn buyers are going to go elsewhere to source fresh material.

Josh, I can't speak for Yuri but I'm surprised at your comment regarding how he must get a buzz seeing his image on a billboard, personally if I saw that and knew it was the result of a few dollars commission 'buzz' is the last feeling I'd have, however your comment is exactly what I am referring to above, for an amatuer 'buzz' is part of the enjoyment they get for doing this, speaking as a Pro the buzz wore off a long time ago I'm in it for the money because it's my job.

Bryan's comment (whatever your personal feelings about LO) is much nearer the mark IMO, I hear people say that buyers are not concerned about how much they pay for an image, I don't agree with those type of statements, when you're running a business or working to a budget you have to get the best deal you can on every part of a contract, price is an important factor and so is quality.

A simple example, Paper, for my business I purchase two types of paper, the cheapest reams of white A4 for my personal records/files etc but I also purchase expensive watermarked stuff for sending out invoices or writing letters to clients, they are both white A4 but for some things I require a better quality and I'm prepared to pay more for it.

Something I've mentioned before is that I would be prepared to send exclusive images to some of the Microstock agencies in return for a better commission, by that I mean proper commision not just another 10% of the $2 dollar download, Fotolia have started their Infinate collection and it'll be interesting to see how that works, however for the life of me I can't understand why they've restricted submissions to a very select few, why not do what I've mentioned above and open it up to exclusive images.