Selling-Stock (http://www.selling-stock.com) is conducting a worldwide, blind Stock Photo Revenue Trends survey and is asking all photographers who earn money through licensing rights to some of their images to respond. Individuals can respond to the short, 8 question survey by going to this link. (http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/3006211/Stock-Photo-Revenue-Trends ) A full report of the results will be available to each respondent.

With this survey I�m trying to determine how individual stock photographers and videographers have been doing over the last 6 years from an income growth perspective.
 

If you are a stock agent, or a service provider, but do not directly produce images or video yourself, please do not respond to this survey.

If you are a production company and license the work of multiple staff employees, please do not respond to this survey. (Given present market conditions, this survey is designed to learn what individuals can earn through producing images themselves.)

If all your work is graphic design or illustration and you do not produce any photographs, please do not respond to this survey. If you produce some photographs, and can separate that portion of your income from your total stock income, then please supply answers that relate to the photography part of your income.


The survey is designed so that individual responses cannot be tracked to the specific individual. However, we have provided a method for individuals to separately notify Selling Stock that they have responded. When the survey is complete we will make available a full, detailed analysis of the results to all who notify us that they have responded.

This is a very helpful survey for the community to have.  I encourage everyone to respond.

As this is your first post on MSG, I wondered who you were - is this you?

http://blog.johnlund.com/2011/05/photographer-shannon-fagan-answers.html

http://www.shannonfagan.com/

If it is, why would microstock issues be of interest - do you contribute to any of the microstock agencies? A little more explanation about why you think this survey would be helpful to the contributors here might be helpful (if you're hoping to increase responses from this group)

Hi Jo Ann

Shannon is a very successful stock contributor to both traditional and microstock collections. As RM and traditional RF prices have fallen (sometimes lower than microstock prices) more and more photographers have started exploring microstock. A number have found that in order to maximize revenue they need to operate in both the traditional and microstock arenas.

Clearly more and more customers are getting their images from microstock distributors. Fewer and fewer are turning to the traditional agencies, although some still do. If you want to license images you�ve got to be where the customers are.

I would be interested as to whether you think Stocksy, Offset, AdobeStock Premium or even iStock Signature are microstock brands, traditional or something else. It seems to me that these brands charge higher prices than many of the traditional agencies. Based on analysis I�ve done of 2015 sales of some major Getty contributors 60% to 70% of their RM and traditional RF images were licensed for GROSS SALE prices under $25. The average price of those sales ranged between $4.00 and $8.00. At those prices, a photographer has to start considering microstock.
 
The survey is focused on trying to understand what ALL photographers � microstock or traditional � are earning and the revenue trends. Initial results show that two-thirds of the respondents have seen their annual revenue decline since 2010 with the most significant declines in the 2013 to 2015 period. However, 19% of respondents saw revenue growth of 20% or more between 2013 and 2015.

So far, gross 2015 revenue for 75% of the respondents has been $40,000 or less. While this information is a good start, we need a lot more responses to get a reasonably accurate picture of what is happening in the industry.