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General Stock Discussion / Why Shutterstock and other big microstock agencies will thrive
« on: June 10, 2020, 08:21 »
Why Shutterstock and other big microstock agencies will thrive no matter how hard they spank their golden hens.
I will try to make it short, but first of all main answer is that no matter how hard they cut the commissions, there will always be tenths of thousands of contributors, which will contribute content even with 1% commission and that fact is already proved by free image banks. Biggest free image banks have millions of beautiful images that photographers and videographers have contributed to the community. I know that the idea behind that contribution is very novel, but Im pretty sure most of the contributors havent thought about the consequences of the concept of free. After a few years after microstock prices became standard, it hit hard on my stock agency. In 4 years, revenue dropped 85% because of microstock landing and owning a Finnish market area, and in that period, free image banks were about to rise. In 10 years my agency (Rodeo) revenue has been dropped a dramatic 98% of what it was ten years ago. In our customer survey in 2018, 24% of our clients were using free image banks as a primary source of stock photos, and over 70% were using free image banks as a secondary source of stock photos. Were already over 50% were using microstock agencies primarily in their stock photo source.
The point is that it doesnt matter that a few thousand people take off their portfolios. It just doesnt make enough impact on a bigger scale for over 300 million image banks. Also, as long as there are tenths of thousands of contributors that already contribute to free image banks, there will be much more to contribute to microstock agencies, whatever pennies theyre willing to pay. There are also big production companies that cant just stop contributing if some leading agencies change their commissions. They have monthly expenses that have to be covered or everything collapses, or agencies probably make exclusive deals with the best to maintain the production of certain content to most essential categories.
What comes to free image banks is another story. It is pretty weird that Unsplash has over 1 million dollar expenses and probably quite impressive development staff which perhaps want something in return for their work that they make so much money with affiliate sales of Shutterstock and other agencies that they can run that business AND they get their content free from photographers. Is there a thought that free image banks are doing that for just goodwill?
It would be very interesting to see how much the biggest free image banks really make revenue. I think that a lot of contributors would change their mind to give their images for free to use for making money to other people. Not to mention of course that many designers make money with the free images too.
Keep up the spirit and thumbs up for everybody!
I will try to make it short, but first of all main answer is that no matter how hard they cut the commissions, there will always be tenths of thousands of contributors, which will contribute content even with 1% commission and that fact is already proved by free image banks. Biggest free image banks have millions of beautiful images that photographers and videographers have contributed to the community. I know that the idea behind that contribution is very novel, but Im pretty sure most of the contributors havent thought about the consequences of the concept of free. After a few years after microstock prices became standard, it hit hard on my stock agency. In 4 years, revenue dropped 85% because of microstock landing and owning a Finnish market area, and in that period, free image banks were about to rise. In 10 years my agency (Rodeo) revenue has been dropped a dramatic 98% of what it was ten years ago. In our customer survey in 2018, 24% of our clients were using free image banks as a primary source of stock photos, and over 70% were using free image banks as a secondary source of stock photos. Were already over 50% were using microstock agencies primarily in their stock photo source.
The point is that it doesnt matter that a few thousand people take off their portfolios. It just doesnt make enough impact on a bigger scale for over 300 million image banks. Also, as long as there are tenths of thousands of contributors that already contribute to free image banks, there will be much more to contribute to microstock agencies, whatever pennies theyre willing to pay. There are also big production companies that cant just stop contributing if some leading agencies change their commissions. They have monthly expenses that have to be covered or everything collapses, or agencies probably make exclusive deals with the best to maintain the production of certain content to most essential categories.
What comes to free image banks is another story. It is pretty weird that Unsplash has over 1 million dollar expenses and probably quite impressive development staff which perhaps want something in return for their work that they make so much money with affiliate sales of Shutterstock and other agencies that they can run that business AND they get their content free from photographers. Is there a thought that free image banks are doing that for just goodwill?
It would be very interesting to see how much the biggest free image banks really make revenue. I think that a lot of contributors would change their mind to give their images for free to use for making money to other people. Not to mention of course that many designers make money with the free images too.
Keep up the spirit and thumbs up for everybody!
