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Author Topic: Do the agencies really know value of images?  (Read 24558 times)

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« on: January 04, 2014, 16:43 »
0
Do the stock photo agencies really know the value of an image? Some photos are accepted by some agencies, same photos are rejected by other agencies. Many times, the reasons of rejections they give are funny.

If we upload a rejected photo once again after a gap of time, there is a chance for it to get accepted. Isn't it funny?



« Reply #1 on: January 04, 2014, 16:57 »
+1

Isn't it funny?

Yes. Bunch of amateurs (reviewers) working with professionals.

Beppe Grillo

« Reply #2 on: January 04, 2014, 16:58 »
0

« Reply #3 on: January 04, 2014, 17:01 »
+4
Do the stock photo agencies really know the value of an image?

Nope.

« Reply #4 on: January 04, 2014, 17:09 »
+2
wrong. An image have no value in it self.

it is not so much about images as about data and licences.
Since we are photographers we think we sell images.
But thats only us.

The agencies sell different things, like an easy and quick access to a licence to a certain data file.
The agency sells a combination of legal access to an amount of data and availability of that data.
Search engine and licence.
Thats what they sell.

What we photographers sell is keywords and copyright. Not images.

Which is why, ironically enough, equipment is not important.

and why reviews are not important, as long as keywords and image fit together.

And if you doubt what I say, you can begin to speculate why isolated on white sells so well.
« Last Edit: January 04, 2014, 17:19 by JPSDK »

« Reply #5 on: January 05, 2014, 11:28 »
+9
Mostly I agree with JPSDK.
A two more cents. A value of the image depends on the NEED of picture. That's why a buyer pay no regard to a $.50 value fantastic shot, made with $30k value Hasselblad, with a gorgeous model, payed $300/hour, BUT he pays several hundreds dollars for extended license for grainy seashore snapshot, made 20 years ago with an old, cheapest film camera. If the image is not needed, it does not have any value at all.

Beppe Grillo

« Reply #6 on: January 05, 2014, 11:42 »
0
Mostly I agree with JPSDK.
A two more cents. A value of the image depends on the NEED of picture. That's why a buyer pay no regard to a $.50 value fantastic shot, made with $30k value Hasselblad, with a gorgeous model, payed $300/hour, BUT he pays several hundreds dollars for extended license for grainy seashore snapshot, made 20 years ago with an old, cheapest film camera. If the image is not needed, it does not have any value at all.

I agree with you, but you don't answer to the question
Do the agencies really know value of images?
but to the question
Do the customers really know value of images?
(customers have needs and they look for what they need, no more)

it is a little different.

Well, probably agencies know the value of the images or they would do another job.
But they don't respect the value of the contributors who are only considered as milking cows, more and more, while they make more and more money on their backs (udders)
This is what they do, and they understand very well that they can do it and how they can do it.
The only value that they see in images is the value of images in number, surely not the value of single images.

« Last Edit: January 05, 2014, 11:45 by Beppe Grillo »

shudderstok

« Reply #7 on: January 05, 2014, 19:35 »
+14
yes the agencies know the value of an image/s, that is why they make millions of dollars profit, and they also know that most microstock photographers do not know the value of an image by agreeing to sell their images for a pittance in royalties.

my conclusion is that the agencies know full well the value of the image/s but they also do not respect the true value of the contributors who create these images.

i think the question should be - do photographers know the true value of their images?

« Reply #8 on: January 05, 2014, 20:02 »
+7
yes the agencies know the value of an image/s, that is why they make millions of dollars profit, and they also know that most microstock photographers do not know the value of an image by agreeing to sell their images for a pittance in royalties.

my conclusion is that the agencies know full well the value of the image/s but they also do not respect the true value of the contributors who create these images.

i think the question should be - do photographers know the true value of their images?

I disagree with this. I think they could make more by selling images at higher prices. I know I do, so I'm not sure why they think they can't. I think iStock proved you can do well with charging more than your competitors. Obviously, they have had problems too, but most of those seemed self-inflicted by squeezing both customers and contributors at the same time.

shudderstok

« Reply #9 on: January 06, 2014, 05:37 »
+4
yes the agencies know the value of an image/s, that is why they make millions of dollars profit, and they also know that most microstock photographers do not know the value of an image by agreeing to sell their images for a pittance in royalties.

my conclusion is that the agencies know full well the value of the image/s but they also do not respect the true value of the contributors who create these images.

i think the question should be - do photographers know the true value of their images?

I disagree with this. I think they could make more by selling images at higher prices. I know I do, so I'm not sure why they think they can't. I think iStock proved you can do well with charging more than your competitors. Obviously, they have had problems too, but most of those seemed self-inflicted by squeezing both customers and contributors at the same time.

I disagree with your disagreement :)

Istock is the agency primarily responsible for the original decline of a once very prosperous industry for it's contributors on the whole. that said, if it was not IS it would have been another agency.

"In 2002, iStock began selling credits. Now you could get a high-quality image for under a dollar, and the artist who contributed it got paid a royalty. It was an entirely new way of doing things. Some people called it the birth of 'microstock'." - from the istock site.

now when IS was so boldly selling images for 'under a dollar' the likes of GI was selling the lowest res RF image for websites for $75. Soon to follow suite were all these other microstock agencies wanting to get in on the action. The result is the likes of the founder of IS and SS are now incredibly wealthy by creating a new price structure for imagery that has since seen the devaluation of pricing industry wide. GI has followed suite, and it is now widely accepted that images are now worth a fraction of what they were just 12 years ago.

i applaud IS for trying to get things back to where they should be price wise, but this is more from the powers at GI than from IS. still though, thousands of photographers submit to sites that sell sub images and rave on about the BME by accepting a royalty rate of 0.38c or whatever it is. even though they are attempting to raise prices, contributors whine and moan about it.

this is why i ask - do photographers really know the true value of their imagery? The agencies sure do.


« Reply #10 on: January 06, 2014, 06:53 »
+2
Mostly I agree with JPSDK.
A two more cents. A value of the image depends on the NEED of picture. That's why a buyer pay no regard to a $.50 value fantastic shot, made with $30k value Hasselblad, with a gorgeous model, payed $300/hour, BUT he pays several hundreds dollars for extended license for grainy seashore snapshot, made 20 years ago with an old, cheapest film camera. If the image is not needed, it does not have any value at all.

I agree with you, but you don't answer to the question
Do the agencies really know value of images?
but to the question
Do the customers really know value of images?
(customers have needs and they look for what they need, no more)

it is a little different.

Well, probably agencies know the value of the images or they would do another job.
But they don't respect the value of the contributors who are only considered as milking cows, more and more, while they make more and more money on their backs (udders)
This is what they do, and they understand very well that they can do it and how they can do it.
The only value that they see in images is the value of images in number, surely not the value of single images.

We could turn things upside down a bit.
The images are useless if they are not brought in front of the customers. So the agency adds value to an otherwise worthless asset (empty your harddisk) by providing a platform that brings that asset into contact with the customers.
Which again is exactly why they can be so greedy and take up to 85 % commission or worse.
All this is made possible by a combination of digitalization, and internet, and the ability to process and control large amounts of data.

So its not us photographers that are stupid, we are moneterizing a new hitherto worthless asset, thats smart enough, but the agencies are smarter and have a grip in the long end of the stick because we need them.
But that can change, middlemen are middlemen and everybody try to avoid them, as well as the internet can be centralized it can also be decentralized.
We see it with news agencies, newspapers and tv stations. They loose business these days as more and more traffic becomes peer to peer.

« Reply #11 on: January 06, 2014, 08:55 »
+1
yes the agencies know the value of an image/s, that is why they make millions of dollars profit, and they also know that most microstock photographers do not know the value of an image by agreeing to sell their images for a pittance in royalties.

my conclusion is that the agencies know full well the value of the image/s but they also do not respect the true value of the contributors who create these images.

i think the question should be - do photographers know the true value of their images?


I disagree with this. I think they could make more by selling images at higher prices. I know I do, so I'm not sure why they think they can't. I think iStock proved you can do well with charging more than your competitors. Obviously, they have had problems too, but most of those seemed self-inflicted by squeezing both customers and contributors at the same time.


I always suspected that SS in particular kept prices low to gain market share and SS management confirmed that price undercutting is indeed their growth strategy in a recent interview.   

One of the gripes I have with SS is the impact its pricing has had on other stock sites. They have had to contend with SS's grab for market share in the form of SS not raising prices for over 8 years. SS has been able keep pricing low at the expense of contributors even though increasing content standards have increased our content productions expenses.

They are well aware of our increased costs and if SS had to pay to produce it's assets you can bet they would have been forced to raise prices.

One of the biggest problems I have with SS is that their growth strategy comes at the expense of it's contributors.

Snip
Duck Swartz

So whats changed in the marketplace thats giving you the opportunity to locate in the enterprise in a more, in a more robust way?
Timothy E. Bixby - CFO

The quality of the images has increased pretty dramatically over the past 10 years and as that now work keeps moving back and forth. The contributors 40,000 of them all over the world are constantly competing with each other.

So in the past five years the contents gone up to a level where the biggest publishers in the world mediated either starting to notice that is price, these images are not only price well, but they are also similar to some images that they have paid thousands of dollars for and also had to be on the phone for an hour negotiating the license for that image.

Snip

Duck Swartz

Talking about your present strategy longer term?

Timothy E. Bixby - CFO

We think we can raise the prices over the long term but were primary in the growth mode right now and we would like to continue to cover as much of the world as possible and take as much as growth in the business that we can before we play with the pricing level. We havent raised prices in many years and then been a great strategy so far to grow.

Snip
Jonathan Oringer - Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board

It still multiples. So it's order of magnitude whether it's if you look at us compared to other stock marketplaces like an iStock or others, it's two or three or four times more expensive to not use Shutterstock. If you look at the higher end sort of more traditional marketed might be 6 or 8 or 10 times more expensive.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1841072-shutterstocks-management-presents-at-the-goldman-sachs-us-emerging-smid-cap-growth-conference-transcript?page=2&p=qanda&l=last

 

shudderstok

« Reply #12 on: January 06, 2014, 09:09 »
-2
@gbalex...

so it appears SS is purposely exploiting content providers for their own gain.

just one more reason i'd never contribute to them.




ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #13 on: January 06, 2014, 10:04 »
+2
@gbalex...

so it appears SS is purposely exploiting content providers for their own gain.

just one more reason i'd never contribute to them.

I think that's the business model of most businesses, for better or worse.

Rinderart

« Reply #14 on: January 21, 2014, 01:22 »
+2
I said this 8 years ago. We are the fault of where we are. Our Work is "Our" assets. NOT THERES. thats the issue and until we understand that fact...We are screwed. But I think it's way to late now, We got lazy and did nothing about it when we could have and the majority were so happy with 25 cents and "Someone Liked my work" attitude and wanted to keep quiet. We can have the power, But we don't.  Now, 20,000 can quit and be replaced in 30 Days. We had a chance and we didn't take it. 2005/2006. The owners saw this and said...Hmmmm , they don't care. So they took it.

« Reply #15 on: January 21, 2014, 01:45 »
+3
@gbalex...

so it appears SS is purposely exploiting content providers for their own gain.

just one more reason i'd never contribute to them.

That's definitely iStock out of the window for you, too :)
Actually, it's all of them. You need to find another job where the person handing you cash isn't exploiting you. Off hand, the first job that comes to mind is being a self-employed plumber. That way, you are the one doing the exploiting (at least, you are if you are in the UK). Or you could try being a lawyer or private practice doctor. Or even a shareholder in Shutterstock :)

On topic, the agencies do know the value of an image: as long as we are willing to keep providing them in return for what they pay us in commissions, then they've got the value right. Ultimately, we are the ones who value our images, by determining what sort of remuneration we are willing to part with them for.  We can, if we like, value them at $10,000 each - and then sit back to wait for a buyer who agrees with the valuation.
« Last Edit: January 21, 2014, 02:03 by BaldricksTrousers »

« Reply #16 on: January 21, 2014, 02:52 »
+6
Photography is nothing special. Corporations get where they are because they act as a valve between supply and demand and most suppliers don't have the the assets or time to go around it.

Besides we're not talking about oil paintings or diamonds here, photographs (and I mean high quality images) are in abundance and increasing by the second, which in itself devalues the commodity.

Thinking we ever had control once digital allowed significantly more people to increase quality and work rate is truly naive from a business POV.





« Reply #17 on: January 21, 2014, 03:27 »
+2
I said this 8 years ago. We are the fault of where we are. Our Work is "Our" assets. NOT THERES. thats the issue and until we understand that fact...We are screwed. But I think it's way to late now, We got lazy and did nothing about it when we could have and the majority were so happy with 25 cents and "Someone Liked my work" attitude and wanted to keep quiet. We can have the power, But we don't.  Now, 20,000 can quit and be replaced in 30 Days. We had a chance and we didn't take it. 2005/2006. The owners saw this and said...Hmmmm , they don't care. So they took it.

I agree that "we" are to blame for where we are and how much we get for our images - just because "we" are all still uploading to these terms.

I disagree that "we" ever had a chance to change that - because there really is no "we" that could stand up and fight for something. It's a huge number of individual contributors, and they will never all have the same incentives to take a stand, there will always be a big enough number for who the current deal looks good enough.

Ron

« Reply #18 on: January 21, 2014, 03:31 »
+10
All the people complaining now, who were submitting 8 years ago are constantly raving to newbies how they raked in the money, and that 'we had to be there' when it was all gold at the end of the rainbow.

And now they complain about the value of their images. Any professional photographer who valued their work, and starting submitting as RF micro, devalued their own work that same instance.

The only excuse I have for myself is that I didnt know any better. I wanted to sell my images and ended submitting to the agencies. I had no idea what RF and RM meant, and all the history of it. I found SS, DP, CanStockPhoto, DT and 123 when googling how to sell images. I found this forum, saw the table on the right, and started submitting to the first 10 agencies.

« Last Edit: January 21, 2014, 03:34 by Ron »

« Reply #19 on: January 21, 2014, 05:04 »
+1
I guess the question is, what can be done about it now.

1. Are there any macro stock agencies that I can submit my work to. Getty picks from flickr, that's all I know

2. Would it make more sense for the elite micro stockers to move to macro stock and all (considering that even though they get a pittance per sale but there are a huge number of sales that give them a good value per image)

3. Should micro be served only by newbies, sort of like how you can get handicrafts made by the apprentices/students at prices that are way cheaper than what the masters sell them for. So it's a sort of proving ground, you work here selling dirt cheap till you learn the ropes and then move up

4. We'll need to remember that pricing will hit the demand too. Right now many bloggers, small website
owners etc easily buy images since it's barely a couple of bucks a pop. But do you think they'd do the same if the image cost $100? They'd probably resort to using the free alternatives from Google or worse pirating the images

And once more, if I feel that my images have a much higher value than what MS gives, where do I turn to? Getty (can I submit there?), FAA ( I need to pay them right?) or are there any that I am missing

Ron

« Reply #20 on: January 21, 2014, 06:38 »
0

...

4. We'll need to remember that pricing will hit the demand too. Right now many bloggers, small website
owners etc easily buy images since it's barely a couple of bucks a pop. But do you think they'd do the same if the image cost $100? They'd probably resort to using the free alternatives from Google or worse pirating the images

You whats funny about that? Bloggers probably pay a higher price for your images then the big multimillion dollar corporations as I dont see a blogger having a subscription deal. They dont need 750 images per month.

A blogger most likely buys the images with credits or cash (Credit card) or as ODD. A big company most likely has the subscription package. You make more per image off of the blogger than off of the big company.

« Reply #21 on: January 21, 2014, 10:03 »
+1
I agree that "we" are to blame for where we are and how much we get for our images

Nobody is to blame IMO. There are more and more pictures therefore of course they are getting cheaper. Soon many people will be wearing their camera and continually uploading. Probably companies will start giving away free devices in exchange for the right to harvest your image stream, the same as they harvest our metadata today. And it would not surprise me at all if signing a release were not one day part of the T&C. So with facial recognition and / or tagging the pictures of you which your friend took will potentially be ready to use.

Right now many bloggers, small website owners etc easily buy images since it's barely a couple of bucks a pop.

Also remember that there are fewer and fewer active bloggers and small website owners. Many bloggers and small websites have moved to the social media and micro blogging. And many of those who are still blogging will today be using free content - something their friend or one of the employees or a customer took with an iPhone and shared on FB.

Also - many fewer people are sitting at home doing a blog. Many fewer people even use a traditional computer or laptop.

Ron

« Reply #22 on: January 21, 2014, 10:37 »
0
There are more blogs than ever and every blog needs images. Doesnt matter if it was written on a train or on a toilet in the pub.

http://socialmediatoday.com/mikevelocity/1698201/blogging-stats-2013-infographic

« Reply #23 on: January 21, 2014, 11:08 »
+2
They know the value of images, and they know that this value exceeds the price point they have. But they also know the value of the money they earn. If they can have 60,000 photographers sending their images and agreeing to sell them for 0.30 it's great, as long they sell a lot. And they probably will, selling so cheap. Individual photographers make a few dollars, but they make a few dollars x 2 or 3 x and then x 60,000. That's and old trick. Have many people working for you, no matter if each one makes not much; you'll do a lot.
The real trick is being able to convince these 60,000 people that they must go on producing, assuming production costs, sending stuff and being ok with these returns (or even wooyaying you)
At the end of the day we are the cheap wh*ores of the business. In any project made with subs images, the cost of these images is nil. Nothing. Nada. Rien de rien. Designer gets hundreds, production gets hundreds or thousands, placement in media can even cost ten thousands. Images, some cents. Not even worth to count this ridiculous expense. The boy that carries coffee gets much more. 
« Last Edit: January 21, 2014, 11:13 by loop »

« Reply #24 on: January 21, 2014, 11:12 »
0
There are more blogs than ever and every blog needs images. Doesnt matter if it was written on a train or on a toilet in the pub.

http://socialmediatoday.com/mikevelocity/1698201/blogging-stats-2013-infographic


I am not contradicting you - but can you point be to the part of that infographic which says something about there not being fewer active blogs today than before the FB era ?

Incidentally - I have the impression that many/most of the big pro blogs are using mostly free PR content.

Study: Blogging in decline as social media takes over

Blogging Declines As Newer Tools Rule (University of Massachusetts)

Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter (New York Times)

Everyone Uses E-mail, But Blogging Is On the Decline (Mashable)

etc


 

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