MicrostockGroup

Lately I've been thinking about not just how much I can grow my microstock revenues in the short term, but also about whether I can count on it in the long term.

When I started nearly a year and a half ago, I set short term and long term goals for myself.  I recently hit my short term goal, and if my rate of growth holds steady, I could hit the long term goal (which involves making microstock my main source of income) in a few years.

But with all the recent changes in the industry, I'm wondering how realistic it is to think that a microstock income could last me well into my golden years (another 20 or 30 years).  Of course evolution will be constant, and this market may look completely different in just a year or two.  But I also strongly believe that communication will only become more and more visual, and images will be relied upon more than ever to convey ideas.  Therefore good imagery will always be needed, and thus, valuable. 

So here's my prediction:  Globalization and the race to the bottom will make our returns become smaller and smaller, but if the rewards of doing this work become so insignificant that talented artists (or even the copycats) can't justify the effort, then the supply and demand equation will level out making it worthwhile at least for those who can do unique, quality work in volume.  Today, of course, we all aim to do "good, quality work in volume," but I think the future will redefine the meaning of that (think 5x or 10x what it takes today to make a decent microstock income).

What do you think?  Does microstock have a decent lifespan in front of it, and if not, what might replace it?

First of all, I'm 70 years old.  I count by ones.  LOL
And, I think Video is the way to go in microstock.

I'm confused by "race to the bottom" - I'm assuming you mean a downward trend in RPDL, and I'm not seeing that at all. I've been doing this for three years, and prices have gone nowhere but consistently and steadily up.

As far as the original post, it's hard to say. I assume things may not change too drastically in the next 5 years. Beyond that, I don't know. I think there is still a lot of room for growth in the microstock customer and contributor base.

I'd like to think that I'm still making money with my stock portfolio 10 or 20 years down the road, but who knows? That's a long way away.

I think you are right about most things but I disagree with you on this one.  I am a complete amateur with video and I have uploaded a small portfolio to a few sites.  The sales are reasonable and the commissions are good.  It is worth getting in to, have a look at the number of sales some people are getting, I was surprised.  Wont most advertising be moving images in the future?  Print is dying, everything is moving to the internet and screen advertising.  I see more and more moving images taking over from stills.  I still prefer stills but what do the advertising people think?

None of us can predict the future with any real accuracy and I think it is sensible to diversify in to footage, there is a chance it wont pay off but it is just as likely to be the next big thing.  I also like the fact that it isn't as simple as taking a photo, most people can master that now.  Footage has a steeper learning curve and at the moment it isn't as easy to upload 500mb files.  There is less competition at the moment, that will probably change in the future.

In the "micro" view, I too have seen an increase in my RPI, suggesting that prices for my images are holding steady or even rising.

But I'm talking about the "macro" view... the big picture down the road.  Consider the current big discussions on this forum... ThinkStock's .25 commission plan, Fotolia's pricing direction, etc.  The big sites will be under more and more pressure to cut prices, and our commissions along with them.  Those pricing pressures, plus a rapidly growing base of contributors in countries like India and China who will be happy to work for tiny commissions, will tip the supply/demand equation so far that we may see commissions reduced to pennies.  It's even conceivable that images will be available free in a new microstock model that derives revenue from ad placements on the download pages.  In five years, we may look back at $.25 commissions as the lucrative days of microstock. 

I don't mean to be such a pessimist, but this is what is happening to every industry today, and there's no reason to think microstock will be immune.  In fact, this scenario has already begun playing out.

I agree with stockastic about this industry turning towards the subscriptions, but has any one taken into account the present economy? My sales steadily increase. This economic condition started back in 2002 for me and many of us got into microstock in 2005 - 2006. We don't know any different. I personally think once the economy starts to improve...sales will improve with it. I realize right now the market is saturated but I think once things get better those photographers that think they can make a thousand with microstock will fade away because they will have other places to make their income. Rather the stock agencies will raise our commissions...I don't know, but I do believe sales will increase when these ad agencies have a less tighter budget. I don't think they will ever go to the macrostock because its call profit and loss as far as a business and they will stay where they can get the cheapest images. That's just business. Only time will tell but that is what I think.

There is only over supply if you supply something that is already there or isn't of a high enough quality.  From what I have seen in the past 3.5 years, buyers love new images.  I can still spend a day doing searches and find things that haven't been done yet.  Can't see that changing, as there aren't many people that try and find new subjects.  There seems to be far more buyers now and I think as more people get websites, blogs etc, the demand will continue increasing.  There are always people in the forums that find it tough but that is good for the suppliers, it would be a lot worse if doing this was an easy way to make money, everyone would be doing it.

The sites are going to try and squeeze more money out of us but the way we have to upload to all these sites and they have to spend money reviewing and storing images is looking old, I am sure someone will come up with something better, that gives us more control and makes it cheaper for us to do business with buyers.

YouTube is quite a success, I think.  It could be a "fad" but it seems to be for real.

Again I think the place for this is in the macro agencies where decent sales prices can make for a viable business model. YouTube as far as I have heard is a total money loser. Sure it has millions of users and videos but it makes NO money. That does not make it a success.

Really interesting question, and one I have been thinking about a lot lately. 

I want to buy a larger house with more studio space, and with houses cheap right now I think it is feasible on my current microstock income. 

My dilemma is that, of course, the time it takes to pay off a mortgage is most likely longer than I can expect my microstock income to hold out, even if I keep adding images. 

I am thinking that if we can get a 15 year mortgage, then we will probably have a significant amount of the principle paid off in 5 or 10 years, and if the micro market has dried up by that time we can refinance the balance and be paying around what we are paying in our current small house.

So I guess my answer is that I am fairly confident I will be able to maintain my income for the next 5 years.  Hopeful about the next 10 years, and fairly certain it won't last 15 or 20 more years.   

It is an interesting question and, for those of us that make our living doing this, one that is never far from our minds.

If I examine the data from my graphs then it is difficult to be overly optimistic about the longer term future. Although I've been doing microstock for five years my sales on most agencies grew consistently up until early 2006 and yet, despite more than doubling my portfolio since then, has stayed at more or less the same level. My income on the other hand has quadrupled in the same timescale. I haven't worked particularly hard though.

Essentially most of my growth in earnings over the last 4 years has come from ever-increasing prices but clearly that can't continue at the same rate forever. I think most people will find that eventually their sales and income will stabilise and then gradually start to slip downwards as the market matures.

The growth in new images will continue to increase and no individual contributor will be able to maintain their own share of the marketplace __ just as they haven't been able to for the last few years. I remember an interview with Istock's Hidesy a few years ago when she stated that her target was to maintain a 1% share of the total library. She'd have needed a portfolio with 64,000 images by now to have done so.

There will always be money to be earned from microstock but at some point in the relatively near future the income per image will progressively start to reduce. It will just become increasingly more difficult to earn the same money. Only last night I had 2 requests to join my CN at Istock __ coincidentally both from Chinese contributors. Think about it.

This is THE question!

I have no answers of course, but a few random thoughts (mostly already espressed by the original poster):

- people will always need pictures, so microstock will last "forever" (=that is a few years at least); video may replace photos in certain uses, but not all;

- not every buyer is even aware of microstock, so the buyers' base will continue to increase for a while;
 
- more and more photographers will join as well; although new photographers may find it too difficult to start and leave;

- more and more pictures uploaded every day means it may soon become unsustainable: not enough time to shot and edit photos not to lose market share;

- whether it will be profitable for us photographer or not, it depends on whether buyers will outgrow photographers or not;

conclusion: I do not know, but every "real" job is even worse: we could get fired out of the blue, while - even in worst case scenario - microstock's fall will be a slow decay at least; in the meantime we'll find something else to do; I didn't even know about microstock 3 years ago: there was life before microstock and there will be after