MicrostockGroup

Hello guys,

do you know how, or is there any chance to sell your whole image rights of your portfolio (perhaps including your all ms accounts)? to whom/where and how much price should you put for all of your hard works?  And is it ok with ms terms?

Thanks alot for your advices

best regards,
Brent

ps: currently i've got around 800 images of 3d render and illustration

Thank you very much for the info AVAVA.. appreciate it 

You may not be allowed to sell your Fotolia account to someone, but you can sure as heck deactivate the account, sell the imagery to someone else, and they can then upload it as the copyright holder.

I'd love to see what the folio looks like and how much you get for it! any chance of a link?

You should also expect the buyer of your portfolio to include a non-compete clause in the contract - this means you wouldn't be able to produce any microstock work for that specified time (e.g. 1+ years).

Thanks for yr nice comment Matt, you also have a lot of great well posed models with really nice expression photos, beside solid isolated objects! i know how hard to pose a model since my last job at ad agency, it looks easy but actually you really need to be very extremely creative..

i got your point about the clause sharply_done.. thx for the thought

This topic comes up pretty regularly, in the context of selling rights to a portfolio of images to a private buyer for resale purposes, not to an agency. As mentioned, it is possible but must be done offline. Some sites like Fotolia won't honor a transfer of ownership of an account.

The only real hurdle seems to be that this just hasn't been done in microstock before. Maybe not even in traditional stock. And so there is no precedent for comparison. It's all possible, but someone would have to be a little pioneering to try it and get through the process of deactivating accounts, making the sale, and seeing if there are any issues for the buyer in re-uploading the images.

Of course, there is also the issue of finding a buyer who can meet your price expectation. In previous discussions, the general rule seemed to be that artists would expect a price of around 5 times the projects annual earnings of a portfolio. So if a portfolio generates $50,000 a year for an artist, their selling price for the whole lot would probably be around $250,000.

This is why it never happens - people are using a business model that isn't *POSSIBLE* in microstock.  Traditional businesses sell for 3-5 times annual profit.  Microstock is never worth as much as it is today.  It's a declining business model.  Someone's current portfolio is worth about 1-1.5x their last year's profit from those images.  Not 5x.  5x is a great model for like a wedding business - you can anticipate the biz would generate 5 years of the same.  That's not true in micro.

I'd pay $1-$3 per image for every image someone had or $3-8 per image if I got to select them.  There's *no way* EVERY single image of someone's is going to make more than that in the next 3 years.  The difference between buyer expectations and seller expectations is why it never happens.

If this can be used as standard, i think i should wait until next year so my portfolio's value would be higher, because i joined microstock just 1,5 years ago and i've been actively uploading only since last 7 months ago, therefore i should expect around $6000 on 2009 alone. (but unfortunately i need urgent fund for financing my apartment, so i'm trying to sell them, *sigh*..)

so i think the valuation method using annual income would also depend on how long a collection has been up and selling.. the longer they have been sold - the lower investor should expect in value. vice versa. please correct me if i'm wrong, thanks for the suggestions..

Artists set their worth at 5 years of income, I do too, but that isn´t what i would expect it to sell at.  I set my portofolio worth at 5 years because I own my portfolio and expect it to generate income for 5 years.  If i was going to by a portfolio though, I expect to make a profit on my investment.  If I purchase it for the same 5 years calculation then I would only be ´hoping´ to break even.  No one is going to invest $250,000 for a five year term just hoping to break even.  If I invest in a portfolio I want to earn at least 2x, and hopefully 4x what i invested.  So I would agree with mantonio that 1-1.5x a years income is a more likely figure.  That would allow the investor to have to wait 1-2 years to get back his money, then ´hopefully´make a profit for 2-3 years... unless things change in microstock.

That's why you can't obviously get so much from it if that's what its worth. Leaf pointed out that the buyer buys it to get something from it . That's why you have to give him discount. Honest 5 year earnings prediction is a good start, then they would need to talk about how much off the buyer will get. Given the risks of the unstable business and that the honest prediction may not be occurate would mean that 50% off is where reasonable prices would start for portfolio with as much long-term stability as can be reached in this business.

Interesting enough, but what are you basing this on? Do you have empirical data or are you merely speculating? If it's the latter, what assumptions have you made in your model? If the former, what type of images does the portfolio contain?

It's just a guestimate, based on my own portfolio.
I think this is much more realistic then thinking that a portfolio will earn the same as it did in last year for the next five years, which I guess is what is assumed if it is valued at 5X the years earnings?