Author Topic: Size of Licensing Market (Read 20669 times)

Toms45 · « **on:** October 19, 2013, 18:02 »

I'm relatively new to stock. I've done a bunch of digging around though at many sites, industry analysis, etc. I came across this interesting article, that argues that the licensing market is actually much greater than anyone ever though of: http://www.danheller.com/blog/posts/total-size-of-licensing-market.html. It argues that the licensing market could be as large as 20 billion dollars if a company just accepted most photographers that tried to sell. I tried to sell at several agencies and was rejected. While I know that some of my work is not that great, I think it does hold some commercial value. Does anyone think that if a large social network company like Flickr made a marketplace, that they could make a billion plus dollar company, by just accepting everyone?

loop · « **Reply #1 on:** October 19, 2013, 18:30 »

No. The buyer that pays for licensing, pays also for security and legality; releases, images owned by the people who is selling them (as opposed to images maybe previously stolen) and easiness of search. Nothing of this is possible in a Flirck-like scheme.

Toms45 · « **Reply #2 on:** October 19, 2013, 18:34 »

I mean, all those points , loop, you mention licensing, releases, etc. could be made with a Flickr like website. As well as search. I would say that Flickr could even do better on search, as it could include social, geotagging, etc.

Any other thoughts? For or against?

ShadySue · « **Reply #3 on:** October 19, 2013, 18:49 »

iStock is accepting just abut everything these days, but most people are experiencing rapidly declining sales.
OTOH, if you had all the licences etc and legal issues correctly worked out, and you sold for 10c a time, the world might, or might not, be your oyster.
The problem being that if everything was accepted:
1. the buyers would find it incredibly difficult to find what they wanted at the quality they wanted among all the dross.
2. The pie would be incredibly thinly sliced among all the contributors.

All the existing problems of spammy and ignorant keywording would remain.

Are you saying that there are loads of subjects that buyers want that they can't currently get? If you can find out what these are and legally supply them, that will be good for you for a while, until the copycats get wind of it.

Toms45 · « **Reply #4 on:** October 19, 2013, 18:57 »

@ShadySue

I think iStock accepts far less than 50% of photos. At least, my friends and I were rejected. I was just thinking about the possibility for the company. I do think that it may spread it thin amongst contributors, but it would give many more photographers the chance to sell their work, ie, it would open the floodgates.

I'm just saying that I think that if you made a site like Flickr, with a marketplace. You would get a lot more contributors. You would also get a lot, *a lot* of buyers, just because of how much traffic the site would get.

So, I think it would be useful to have a Flickr/eBay type entity for photography. The users would set their own prices.

Sean Locke Photography · « **Reply #5 on:** October 19, 2013, 19:00 »

"It argues that the licensing market could be as large as 20 billion dollars if a company just accepted most photographers that tried to sell."

Nope. Buyers are tired of looking through tons and tons of useless images to find one good one.

Toms45 · « **Reply #6 on:** October 19, 2013, 19:03 »

@Sean Locke,

Most searching comes through Google Images first though, no? So, buyers first find the image in google and then go from there.

Doesn't this defeat your argument? thoughts?

ShadySue · « **Reply #7 on:** October 19, 2013, 19:06 »

Why not try it and see what happens?

Sean Locke Photography · « **Reply #8 on:** October 19, 2013, 19:09 »

Quote from: Toms45 on October 19, 2013, 19:03

@Sean Locke,

Most searching comes through Google Images first though, no? So, buyers first find the image in google and then go from there.

Doesn't this defeat your argument? thoughts?

Nope and nope.

Toms45 · « **Reply #9 on:** October 19, 2013, 19:17 »

@Sean Locke Photography

I've read a lot that this is true. Most buyers go to google and then follow an image from there.

Sean Locke Photography · « **Reply #10 on:** October 19, 2013, 19:24 »

Quote from: Toms45 on October 19, 2013, 19:17

@Sean Locke Photography

I've read a lot that this is true. Most buyers go to google and then follow an image from there.

That may be true for some, initially, but once they are at an agency, they tend to stay there, unless something bigger than a missing image sways them. IMO. Google is more a source for people to steal content.

ShadySue · « **Reply #11 on:** October 19, 2013, 19:25 »

Quote from: Toms45 on October 19, 2013, 19:17

@Sean Locke Photography

I've read a lot that this is true. Most buyers go to google and then follow an image from there.

I've never, ever read that.

Where is the hard evidence that "most buyers" first go to Google?
That would be even more frustrating, because the Google search is a nightmare and a huge number of images found there are not for sale.
Probably most people who want to steal images go to Google first.

Whoops, Sean beat me to it.

Toms45 · « **Reply #12 on:** October 19, 2013, 19:46 »

61% of image buyers go to google when they go to buy images. See below.

http://blog.johnlund.com/2011/04/art-directorsbuyers-searching-google.html [nofollow]
http://www.photoshelter.com/mkt/research/photo-buyer-survey [nofollow]
Modify message

Sean Locke Photography · « **Reply #13 on:** October 19, 2013, 19:59 »

Quote from: Toms45 on October 19, 2013, 19:46

61% of image buyers go to google when they go to buy images. See below.

http://blog.johnlund.com/2011/04/art-directorsbuyers-searching-google.html [nofollow]
http://www.photoshelter.com/mkt/research/photo-buyer-survey [nofollow]
Modify message

I doubt it. That would be a huge time suck.

ShadySue · « **Reply #14 on:** October 19, 2013, 20:05 »

That was 61% of only 500. How were the 500 chosen? How representative are they?

We got a pseudo-newspaper in last week from the Yes campaign with the big headline something like, "68% of Scots want independence". When the small print was read, fewer than 200 people were sampled and the question was something like, "Do you think it would be feasible for Scotland to operate as an independent country?", which is not at all the same thing.

Beware of vaunted statistics.

Toms45 · « **Reply #15 on:** October 19, 2013, 20:55 »

I've read this elsewhere. I'll try to dig up the sources later on.

It may be a time sink, but it's true. Is it that hard to imagine? If some random person needs an image, their first thought is to "google" it.

BD · « **Reply #16 on:** October 19, 2013, 21:44 »

Quote from: Toms45 on October 19, 2013, 18:02

I'm relatively new to stock. I've done a bunch of digging around though at many sites, industry analysis, etc. I came across this interesting article, that argues that the licensing market is actually much greater than anyone ever though of: http://www.danheller.com/blog/posts/total-size-of-licensing-market.html. It argues that the licensing market could be as large as 20 billion dollars if a company just accepted most photographers that tried to sell. I tried to sell at several agencies and was rejected. While I know that some of my work is not that great, I think it does hold some commercial value. Does anyone think that if a large social network company like Flickr made a marketplace, that they could make a billion plus dollar company, by just accepting everyone?

This BLOG you are talking about was written in 2007.

Toms45 · « **Reply #17 on:** October 19, 2013, 22:14 »

@BD.

I realize this. There are several other articles later on that support this.

Do you agree/disagree? How do you think things have changed?

Sean Locke Photography · « **Reply #18 on:** October 19, 2013, 22:43 »

Quote from: Toms45 on October 19, 2013, 20:55

I've read this elsewhere. I'll try to dig up the sources later on.

It may be a time sink, but it's true. Is it that hard to imagine? If some random person needs an image, their first thought is to "google" it.

That's totally different then a legitimate buyer looking to pay money to license an image legally.

BD · « **Reply #19 on:** October 19, 2013, 22:50 »

Which other articles support that the licensing market is greater than what people think? Or could be if a company simply accepted most photographers selling?

cthoman · « **Reply #20 on:** October 20, 2013, 00:00 »

Quote from: ShadySue on October 19, 2013, 20:05

That was 61% of only 500. How were the 500 chosen? How representative are they?

We got a pseudo-newspaper in last week from the Yes campaign with the big headline something like, "68% of Scots want independence". When the small print was read, fewer than 200 people were sampled and the question was something like, "Do you think it would be feasible for Scotland to operate as an independent country?", which is not at all the same thing.

Beware of vaunted statistics.

I saw Braveheart. They all want freedom.

Seriously though, I think Google buyers are the majority for smaller or new agencies, but once you establish a contributor base those frequent and repeat buyers are the real money makers.

On the original point, I'd say that if there is anything holding back the market from achieving higher earnings potential it would be price. I think there is enough content or content providers, but the prices are still too low. Too much content is devalued.

MichaelJayFoto · « **Reply #21 on:** October 20, 2013, 00:56 »

Quote from: Toms45 on October 19, 2013, 18:02

It argues that the licensing market could be as large as 20 billion dollars if a company just accepted most photographers that tried to sell.

I am too lazy to read the article but this is something I'd typically expect to hear from a photographer. And it is pure crap if you just leave it at that sentence. Making the available offer bigger never increases the amount of money in a market. If you could grow the image licensing market, I doubt you would need anymore images than available at agencies right now. It's about finding new customers and that doesn't happen by adding more images.

You would need to discuss about things like image pricing, availability, ease of use, understanding of the legal situation if you want to grow the market size.

roede-orm · « **Reply #22 on:** October 20, 2013, 01:52 »

Quote from: Toms45 on October 19, 2013, 18:02

It argues that the licensing market could be as large as 20 billion dollars if a company just accepted most photographers that tried to sell.

There are some agencies that accept everyone and everything. A good example is MostPhotos. But however, this is not a model for success, how you quickly will notice when you offer your pictures there.

Me · « **Reply #23 on:** October 20, 2013, 02:03 »

The size of any market is not determined by supply, it is determined by demand.

Everyone in the world could become a supplier but the demand to buy those images would not change.

sharpshot · « **Reply #24 on:** October 20, 2013, 04:08 »

Mostphotos accept anything with no reviews. Just look how far down the earnings list they are. Alamy only look at the technical quality of an image and they aren't one of the best selling sites for most people here.

Anyone can now sell whatever they like with their own Symbiostock site.

The problem is that most buyers do seem to like low commercial value images and those that don't reach a fairly low technical standard to be rejected. Then they know that when they do a search, they have a better chance of finding something they can use. It's better for us too. It's not difficult to get in to the big microstock sites, I think anyone that can't do that is never going to make much money from stock images.

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Author Topic: Size of Licensing Market (Read 20669 times)

Toms45

loop

Toms45

ShadySue

Toms45

Sean Locke Photography

Toms45

ShadySue

Sean Locke Photography

Toms45

Sean Locke Photography

ShadySue

Toms45

Sean Locke Photography

ShadySue

Toms45

BD

Toms45

Sean Locke Photography

BD

cthoman

MichaelJayFoto

roede-orm

Me

sharpshot

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