For what it's worth here is my experience. November of 2007 I sent 10 images to Getty at the introductory rate of $250 for 10 (half price). Six months later I submitted nine more. So I spent a total of $700 in placement fees. Back then the images had to be Rights Ready, and the collection was Lifesize. Now lifesize is gone and incorporated into their existing PC collection. Also, now you can submit RM or RF (RR is leaving soon). Also now they have a deal that for every image you sale within a year of submission, you can submit another for free. Initially they didn't offer that otherwise I would have submitted more.

 Anyway, in one year with 19 images (10 for six months and the other 9 for six months) I have earned $1363 subtract the placement fee and my net is 663. My production costs were low, about $200 total. My guess is that if my images were RF I would have earned more, and I believe for now on I will place most images as RF. So $663 from 19 images in a year. For me that's better than Alamy, Acclaim, or any of the micros. 

Does anyone here have images with Getty as RF and RM (or RR)? If so, can you comment on which model seems to earn more for you? I paid to place images with Getty shortly after they started their pay to play scheme and initially we had to submit images as RR. Now I'm considering sending more images and trying to decide if they should be RM or RF. Thanks.

For the record, I have been averaging about 1 sale per month per 1000 images on Alamy. in 2007 I netted $2600 from 2000 images, will be less this year. Not expensive production shots, no amazing travel, just pretty simple but unique conceptual still life's and some local location and landscape images. Alamy is just barely worth the effort and no way would I drop the micros for Alamy. As far as Don Farrall is concerned, two points. One: a lot of his stuff (not all granted, but a lot) is pretty slick production stuff, after all he is a 20 year veteran pro photographer. Second, and perhaps most important, his images are listed with an agency on Alamy, Photodisk. Alamy provides higher ranks to agencies. So decent (money spent) production images that show up on the first pages of searches, no wonder. Even if someone does produce equally good images, unless you're listed with an agency you wont land that high in the searches on Alamy.

Avava thanks, nice images, very inspiring. It's so refreshing to have a macro shooter sharing his inside information. Question, how much do you spend on a shoot like this, the whole kit and kaboodle, models, props, space rental / lease,  including staff fees? Trying to get a ball park figure as to what I should be looking to spend for a good lifestyle shoot.

Thanks.

AVAVA

You think my returns are high? Maybe you misread my figures, compared to many (most?) micro shooters mine are pretty low. Basically I earn $1000 per month from 1000 images (give or take a few hundred images depending on the micro agency, and give or take a few hundred dollars depending on the month / time of year) from six micro sites. You are the guy I admire, I want to start shooting lifestyle and I am really inspired by your work. I would have started investing more into my shoots and started lifestyle this year except I injured my back mountain biking and now I can hardly lift my bag of camera equipment let alone an entire set of strobes and battery packs. I'm in the process of getting second and third opinions regarding surgery so I'm out of commission for probably another year. Thank god I have a little money coming in to pay the health insurance premiums. Anyway I digress, my figures are ok considering how little I spent however, Lifestyle images is where the real money is and as soon as I'm whole again, thats what I'm aiming to do.

Off topic, sorry, but can anyone answer my question, what was the general consensus regarding subs on SX (photos.com)? most people opting out or in? Thanks.

Sean�

You know your little sarcastic quips all over the different forums are getting old dude. You're not nearly as witty or in insightful as you think, just obnoxious.

I know, without question, from 3.5 years with the micros, that my one image that licensed for $1000 (that I was referring to in my previous post) would have never sold on the micros more than a few times, so earning $500 for it was infinitely better than the few bucks it would have earned on the micros.  I carefully select certain images to be licensed as RM for traditional stock markets and have had many of those images licensed for hundreds of dollars, images that would never have been licensed on the micros more than a few times. Someone who doesn't understand the different markets and just blindly uploads everything to iStock is the sucker.

And knowing people who only upload to "traditional" markets I know firsthand how much more, potentially, can be earned, and just how NOT infrequent these kinds of large sales are. I'm not arguing in favor of traditional stock agencies over the micros, they're not for everyone, or for every image, however by calling me a sucker because I don't blindly upload everything to istock is unnecessarily insulting, vulgar, and certainly suggests a lack of comprehensive knowledge about the stock industry on your part. Yes I know about you, your 358,000 downloads for 5000+ images, your one of the iStock guys who was accepted to Getty, well I�m on Getty too and I didn�t  have to be an iStock sweat shop slave machine for the privilege. I also know you have a number of images uploaded in 2004 and 2005 that have been only downloaded a few times.

$600.00 $1000.00 even $8000.00 dollar license fees do not happen as infrequently as you think Sean. You've made these comments before, referring to these larger sales as playing the lotto, but for arguments sake, how many times would that image (that I provided the link to in my previous post) have been downloaded on the micros? Not many I would think.  So by uploading images to Alamy that wouldn't earn more than a few bucks on the micros anyway in hopes of the "big sale" is a safe bet IMO, better than having hundreds of images that have been downloaded 2 or 3 times sitting on iStock for years with no chance of every making any real money from them. You�re free to slave away to make Bruce a rich guy but don�t call me a sucker because I know there are other avenues for licensing imagery than iStock.

Not knowing anything about submitting video to the stock agencies, how would a camera like this measure up? Would the fps, video quality be good enough for video submissions to iStock and Shutter Stock? I'm a canon guy but after watching this little vid of Chase (who is one of my fav photogs) really makes me wonder if I'm in the right camp.

Chumley, out of curiosity, what is your total cost for this shoot that you shared with us? The studio rental (or if you own, the breakdown of cost per shoot, monthly rent / lease divided by the average number of shoots per month) the assistant fees, stylists fees and models fees. Thanks

There might be 2 billion images on Flickr but I bet that all but a few hundred thousand (at most) are useless for stock, either because of technical problems or because of the lack of consumer driven concepts.

On a side not regarding Getty, for a long time I desperately wanted to be a �Getty� photographer. I knew a few Getty photographers and they made huge amounts of money, one guy $250,000 a year from around 500 images. Initially, a few years ago they rejected me, recently I paid for placement in their Lifesize collection. Of the 10 images I initially submitted, I made six sales in the first three months. These were mediocre images, lifestyle but no real production quality to speak of. So I thought that was a pretty good indication of Getty�s potential, two sales a month from ten images out of all of Getty�s two million or so images. So I paid to place nine more. Just around the same time I sent the new images Getty did away with their Lifesize collection and those images were assimilated into their photographer�s choice collection. No new sales since then, and that was three months ago. Coincidence? So I�m currently out $400.00 bucks just to have images with Getty. But to make matters worse, all the similar images from those shoots are useless now. Getty won�t accept them because of their sistering policy; you have to submit all similars at the same time. Now initially this policy was only for RM images, however, at some later time (after I uploaded my initial 10 images) they changed the policy of sistering to include RR images. But with Lifesize you initially had to license RR. This really screwed me up because that initial 10 was a test go for Getty, I had dozens more from the same shoot that would have been great on Getty as RR or RF. So my images that are with Getty, and all the similars, are tied up for two years, and they pay a measly 20%. Man I was duped and dumb.

So screw Getty, really, don�t worry about them, don�t scramble to get images on Flickr just hoping to get into Getty. Don�t tie your images up for two years for only 20%, not worth it anymore, Getty is (hopefully) on the way out and most old time pros will tell you that they are the worst thing that ever happened to photographers in spite of the money they make. I make most of my stock income from the micros, Alamy is OK but I�m really excited about Photoshelter. I like their pay structure, their web site is great. I hope these guys take over the stock world.