Are there dark clouds over the stock photography business?

Over the past years, we�ve seen continuous changes making it harder and harder for stock photographers to survive in this competitive business. Are the stock agencies now preparing for the final death blow to separate themselves from the photographers?

If you are a stock photographer, I�m sure you know that making a living from selling your photos hasn�t gotten any easier over the past years. Although the need for digital content is higher than ever before, the competition between stock agencies has led content prices to drop year by year.

For those not involved in stock photography - you may be surprised to hear that most subscription sales on big agencies like Shutterstock only pay the photographer 10 cents per download. That�s not much. In fact, it�s so little that a photographer needs to �sell� a photo to a client at least 30 times to be able to afford a small Caffe Latte at Starbucks. On sales that are not coming from subscriptions, the stock agencies take roughly 70 - 90% of the commission on any sales.

There needs to be sustainability in any business for it to survive. Without sustainability, it can�t exist. Sustainability in stock photography is when clients pay for content, agencies take a cut for facilitating the sales and marketing of the content, and there�s a chunk left for the content creator to pay for their work and reinvest in new content production. But intensified competition and in attempts to maximize profits - the agencies are in constant search of ways to maximize their earnings, leaving less and less on the table for the content creators. And they meet little resistance; who is going to fight them? It�s David vs. Goliath. Big publicly traded corporations vs. solo photographers.

Now there�s a new strategy from stock agencies to increase their profits. It�s hard for them to lower royalties even further - so the next obvious step? Cut out the photographers entirely from the equation. That�s what is happening now.  At least two of the biggest and most well-known stock agencies are now aggressively acquiring content ownership by buying out photographers' portfolios. But then you might ask - if they are paying for it - what�s the problem?

The problem for content creators is that it�s like peeing your pants. It�s going to feel good for a minute, and then it will feel very, very cold. The agencies will give preference to any content they own before anything else (because there�ll be more profit there). If they get to the point where there�s a critical mass of content, they might be able to cover most basic content needs with this critical mass. This will make it even harder for photographers to get sales on their platform. Eventually, it will be impossible for photographers to find any financial incentive for shooting stock photography.

From the perspective of stock agencies, this move makes sense in the short run, but I can have my concerns about whether there are any considerations about the long-term effects of this. Is there an understanding of the long-term game it is to acquire quality content? For me, it took at least five years from I got involved in stock photography until I started to be able to produce any quality content. Stock agencies need photographers who can run a sustainable stock production business to continuously provide relevant quality content.

For the industry, this portfolio buying strategy is problematic as it can end the chain of sustainability. The fewer royalties that end with the content creators, the fewer content creators will be able to produce quality content. Then the agencies are eventually going to struggle with quality content acquisition.

Dark clouds are forming. Is this the end?
Change is inevitable in any industry. That�s a fact. The way I see these new strategies from stock agencies is a part of that inevitable change, and as photographers, the best we can do is to figure out how to adapt to this change proactively. My take is always to look at the long-term game of any of these deals and generally, I refuse offers that I find harmful to the industry. Remember that no employee at any stock agency has the same passion for your work as you do. For them, it�s a job. For you, it�s your life.


For the past year, I've also worked on figuring out ways to connect more directly with clients. That�s, in my opinion, a way more sustainable way for this industry to survive when agencies are squeezing photographers out. Ultimately most of the value for clients needing content comes from the content creators - they are literally the ones producing the content the clients are requesting. I see it a bit as a farm-to-table movement in photography, and I hope that more photographers will succeed in connecting directly with the clients out there. That�s why I also started building a Shopify app that can help more content creators create beautiful portfolio websites to sell their content. This project started more than two years ago, and we are finally getting very close to a public launch. It�s obviously hard to compete with the stock agencies who are spending millions of dollars on marketing - but at least it provides an alternative. And while photographers might not have big budgets for marketing - a bit of well-thought-out SEO takes you quite a long way.

To my colleagues in this business, I�d advise thinking twice before selling your portfolio to a stock agency. If they are willing to buy you out to earn the remaining 15-30% percent of the royalty split, it�s because they know they can make way more on it that they�ll pay you for any buyout bid. Then think about the next step. Because when the agencies own an extensive portfolio themselves, they�ll be pushing that over any new content you shoot for many years to come. And then what are you going to do for a living? I�d say: Hold on to your hard-earned work and find better ways to connect directly with clients in the future.

Hi guys,

Would you please spend 2 minutes on answering this survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CRZQQHS

I'm working on a project that could potentially be a great help for the many stock photographers and videographers here. Unfortunately I can't really say anymore at this very early stage, but I appreciate you taking your time to answer this.

Very best,
Jacob Lund

Today Colourbox was removed from my list of images, which I submit images for. Here is why:

For some time I have been monitoring the average payment per download on all the 13 agencies I submit images for. The average payment per download is about 0,69 USD for these 13 agencies. Colourbox was among these agencies and only pays $ 0,26 per download (0,20 Euro). By far the lowest payment per download among all the agencies. The second-lowest (Deposit Photos) pays $ 0,56 per download. For some time I believed that the easy upload system could compensate for the low payment per sale. But....

As I'm trying to make a serious business of my work I started looking at the big picture. I came to realize that I was actually supporting a company that was pushing the limit for how low you can pay the photographers in this business. Colourbox sells single downloads for as much as 9,5 Euro and pays the photographer 0,20 Euro. So they keep 98% of the sale price!

As I was looking at the numbers I realized that Colourbox is raking in money on selling our images and leaving pennies for the photographers.

Back in January 2013 I decided to contact Colourbox and hear about their royalty structure. I was corresponding with the CEO Esben Darling Meng. He wrote me a mail explaining how Colourbox was offering photo contests and fame as one of the benefits of being a contributor at Colourbox. Furthermore he wrote, that the they in March (2013) would start to pay "good photographers" as much as 50% more per sale. I decided to stay to see the changes in commissions.

I waited until April and there was no news from Colourbox. I contacted them again and CEO Esben Darling Meng wrote, that they would implement the new commission structure within a couple of months.

Today I had a phonecall with Esben Darling Meng from Colourbox. We had a 25 minute conversation. He told me that they had been busy employing new people and expanding their business. Therefore they hadn't had time for implementing a new royalty-structure and he couldn't promise me when they would do this.

This made me decide to remove my 1100 images from Colourbox. I hope that other Colourbox contributors will think about this and that selling your images for  0,20 euro (with up to 98% commission for the agency) does to the business of selling stock images. It helps them to create an agency that compete with e.g. Shutterstock, iStockPhoto and other more sustainable agencies and in the end forcing other agencies to lower their commissions. I decided that I didn't want to support that.