MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => Selling Stock Direct => Topic started by: PaulieWalnuts on October 17, 2014, 18:23
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I'm running some numbers for possibly selling direct and am trying to figure out what the average price per sale might be. I'm currently IS exclusive so I send any leads from my website to them. I just went back through most of the leads and to my surprise I had over 75 so far this year. Neither IS or GI are doing all that great for me so I'm looking at Plan B.
So for all of you who sell direct what's the average price per sale?
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from the symbiostock sites:
For 140 sites reporting
Size Average price
Blog 5.55
Small 11.69
Medium 19.74
Large 33.18
Vector 21.58
Zip 59.39
http://cascoly.com/symbio/symbiostock-analysis.asp (http://cascoly.com/symbio/symbiostock-analysis.asp)
so size does matter
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I've decided to stay a little bit lower the average price (www.millionstock.com (http://www.millionstock.com))
Are you satisfied with your sales?
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Not to quibble but Asking price and Selling price are always a different thing. How many of these 140 sites, are making sales at these numbers? How many are making sales at lower numbers, while the ones asking higher values, make no sales? Or are some selling for higher prices and the low sites just make less?
Does the average represent average actual sold price?
from the symbiostock sites:
For 140 sites reporting
Size Average price
Blog 5.55
Small 11.69
Medium 19.74
Large 33.18
Vector 21.58
Zip 59.39
[url]http://cascoly.com/symbio/symbiostock-analysis.asp[/url] ([url]http://cascoly.com/symbio/symbiostock-analysis.asp[/url])
so size does matter
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since symbiostock doesn't track sales we don't have any of those numbers -- a few of the sites report sales in the sym forum
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Forget selling direct, its a fantasy.
I get a handful of sales barely enough to pay for the upkeep of the site. Designers need a broad range of work for their clients.
Your Plan B should be grounded in reality and that is selling through agencies.
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Forget selling direct, its a fantasy.
I get a handful of sales barely enough to pay for the upkeep of the site. Designers need a broad range of work for their clients.
Your Plan B should be grounded in reality and that is selling through agencies.
It could be total fantasy. I'll never know until I run some numbers and see what makes the most sense to do with my images. Right now micro is quickly becoming the wrong place.
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Forget selling direct, its a fantasy.
I get a handful of sales barely enough to pay for the upkeep of the site. Designers need a broad range of work for their clients.
Your Plan B should be grounded in reality and that is selling through agencies.
It could be total fantasy. I'll never know until I run some numbers and see what makes the most sense to do with my images. Right now micro is quickly becoming the wrong place.
Sorry I'm not being negative for the sake of it, just speaking from experience. Selling stock direct is a time suck for little or no return, you're far better spending your time key wording your existing port and uploading to the top 5 agencies.
Micro may well become the wrong place for the majority trying to survive full-time. I wouldn't worry about that right now and concentrate on stabilising your income as an indy, after that you can reassess your long term goals.
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I license RM stock directly - in fact I just got a box full of products with my photos on them from a client today, but I wouldn't remove my photos from the various stock agencies since many buyers don't look beyond the agencies.
You could license RM images and still stay with IS so you don't lose your base.
I license photos via people finding them on my site, but I license the most by sending out queries to publishers who license stock and getting on their photo request lists - it's a lot more work than licensing via an agency. Though you don't need the volume of microstock, you still need a lot of volume licensing RM to make it worthwhile, at micro price points I can't imagine you could get the volume - even Yuri couldn't do it on his own.
Good luck!
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I'm actually thinking about selling direct as well.
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I license RM stock directly - in fact I just got a box full of products with my photos on them from a client today, but I wouldn't remove my photos from the various stock agencies since many buyers don't look beyond the agencies.
You could license RM images and still stay with IS so you don't lose your base.
I license photos via people finding them on my site, but I license the most by sending out queries to publishers who license stock and getting on their photo request lists - it's a lot more work than licensing via an agency. Though you don't need the volume of microstock, you still need a lot of volume licensing RM to make it worthwhile, at micro price points I can't imagine you could get the volume - even Yuri couldn't do it on his own.
Good luck!
What about Yuris Site peopleimages.com ? That site is not making it?
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this is not accurate poll ...you must put in mind the number and the quality of work.. lets say that the person who have his own site is expert and have quality work then the number of work must be in the analysis..the site with 100 is not like the site with 1000 designs.
i have solution for that ... you can calculate the average earning per one design by dividing the total earning per month by the number of the stock you have in your site..
example:
site with 500 stocks earn $100 per month the average earning will be $0.5
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I've taken images out of the micro market that used to sell for 50 cents and put them in the macro market where they now well for for $50 or even $500. One sale at $500 beat out all combined micro sales for that image. But how many of those do I now get? Not many.
But even of the $500 I don't see a heck of a lot of the final price. Some suit sitting on a yacht guzzled back a swig of Dom and some caviar on his share. I bought a twelve pack of KD at Costco with mine. This bothers me a great deal. And although selling direct is not going to be the road to riches, at least I may be able to look in the mirror with a greater sense of self worth. I see a mini revolt starting to take shape. Technology was what made them very successful and us mere serfs in the equation, it may soon be what brings them down.
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I think everyone should give selling direct a try, especially those with large portfolios and great images. But even if that person is excellent at marketing their own site, I don't see how most people with their own sites will be able to compete with the agencys' marketing and advertising budgets. And clearly the top 10 agencies have $$ to throw at Google for search placement.
I don't like defeatist attitudes, and I am not saying it can't be done. I am just saying for the average photographer, handling marketing, advertising, website building, etc. on top of wanting to shoot, even if they have some $$ to spend on marketing, is going to be a tough road.
A few sales a month, though, might make the same $$ for you as 200 sales a month on an agency, so sometimes it is worth it to give a shot.
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Well it's a year later and I have my answer. As of right now it's about $200 but I just got started a couple months ago after dropping my IS exclusivity. It will probably take another year before I get a stable average. My site was up and running for about a year before I went indie so it was already indexed by Google and getting traffic. I simply turned on the RM license after my exclusivity expired.
Obviously this will be different for everybody. Demand for your images, uniqueness, sales and marketing experience, search engine knowledge, social media skills, and a ton of other factors will affect your results. It has been a ton of learning and work so far but absolutely worth it for me.
You need to offer something that buyers can't get on micro. If you're selling the same apples on white as micro why would they bother coming to your site? Why would they pay higher prices? They wouldn't. Have a strategy that makes sense and commit to executing it.
Thanks to the people who took the poll or responded.
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I think everyone should give selling direct a try, especially those with large portfolios and great images. But even if that person is excellent at marketing their own site, I don't see how most people with their own sites will be able to compete with the agencys' marketing and advertising budgets. And clearly the top 10 agencies have $$ to throw at Google for search placement.
I don't like defeatist attitudes, and I am not saying it can't be done. I am just saying for the average photographer, handling marketing, advertising, website building, etc. on top of wanting to shoot, even if they have some $$ to spend on marketing, is going to be a tough road.
A few sales a month, though, might make the same $$ for you as 200 sales a month on an agency, so sometimes it is worth it to give a shot.
There are people who still believe they should shop at the small independent store down the street because they know that is who actually makes their community a better place to live. OF course at the same time, you can't get a parking spot at the Walmart on the other side of town. But if enough of the goods, that used to line Walmart shelves started to disappear, that shop, or group of shops would begin to flourish. Without missing a penny, most of us can put 80% of all sales into site advertising.
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I'm strongly considering switching my entire model from RF to RM in favor of well priced one-time-use sales. I think competing with the large agencies must come with innovation, and it's possible that reducing the price of each download while providing a more restrictive license may be the key to opening up the independent market.
I'm going to analyze it more, but over some time now it's been heading that way. If it does seem to be what works, we may consider planning the future Symzio search engine around that licensing model as well.
I'm considering a one-time-use license, and a more expensive extended RF license. Two choices, both full size, simplified and easy. If you just want it for one project, pay only a dollar or two and get it for that. If you want to put it on t-shirts for sale, pay more.
It also seems to be a more leveled set of pricing options. Right now, there aren't great opportunities for buyers. They are forced into expensive subscriptions or expensive on demands. This way, you are cornering two different markets.
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How can you possibly make a decent living if you are licensing on your own for $1-2?
My RM licenses vary - sure if someone wants to use a photo once in a Powerpoint presentation I might just charge them $15 but in the past few months most of my RM licenses - both direct and via other agencies as well - have been in the $200-400 range for one-time use in publications, and a low cost license for say web use goes for $50. If you hope to earn enough licensing images yourself you need to set realistic prices and you still need volume at $200 per license - at $1-2 per license how can an individual get enough volume?
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What we want to make is somewhat irrelevant to what the market dictates. My goal is not to make a one off here and there - I legitimately want to be able to live through independent sales.
Currently, with SS you can buy a 5 image RF pack for $49. You can get 750 images for $249. These are RF licenses.
Canva provides 1 image for $1. These are RM one time uses.
Picfair provides images that vary from 1 pound to 30 pounds. These are RM one time uses.
Assuming I get a set amount of sales at SS, and a majority of these are subscriptions, in the end I am making about 25-33 cents a sale. If I charge $2 and get the same amount, I'm netting about 6-8x the amount I am currently making.
And, these are not RF - if they are one time uses, I retain a lot more comfort in knowing I'm not giving everything away for such nominal amounts.
Let's recap:
Currently, a customer can buy RF, full resolution images from SS for $0.33/image on subscription, and $9.80 on demand.
They can buy one time use images from Canva/Picfair/Unknown from betwen $1 to $5.
In order to remain competitive, it simply does not make sense to sell independently at $20 an image, or $200 an image. By doing this, we are asserting that we always intend to remain on the fringes.
I don't have the illusion of competing in volume with SS tomorrow, but I hope to cut into that market in the future. So in planning for it now, I should price competitively. Yes?
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What we want to make is somewhat irrelevant to what the market dictates. My goal is not to make a one off here and there - I legitimately want to be able to live through independent sales.
Currently, with SS you can buy a 5 image RF pack for $49. You can get 750 images for $249. These are RF licenses.
Canva provides 1 image for $1. These are RM one time uses.
Picfair provides images that vary from 1 pound to 30 pounds. These are RM one time uses.
Assuming I get a set amount of sales at SS, and a majority of these are subscriptions, in the end I am making about 25-33 cents a sale. If I charge $2 and get the same amount, I'm netting about 6-8x the amount I am currently making.
And, these are not RF - if they are one time uses, I retain a lot more comfort in knowing I'm not giving everything away for such nominal amounts.
Let's recap:
Currently, a customer can buy RF, full resolution images from SS for $0.33/image on subscription, and $9.80 on demand.
They can buy one time use images from Canva/Picfair/Unknown from betwen $1 to $5.
In order to remain competitive, it simply does not make sense to sell independently at $20 an image, or $200 an image. By doing this, we are asserting that we always intend to remain on the fringes.
I don't have the illusion of competing in volume with SS tomorrow, but I hope to cut into that market in the future. So in planning for it now, I should price competitively. Yes?
A few thoughts.
Sales Volume. Even if you're in an area with very low cost of living you would need big volume to live off of $2 sales. Let's say in the US an average salary is $50,000. That's $961 a week. You would need 480 sales weekly. Even at half that of $25,000 which I think is considered poverty level here, that's 240 sales a week. Maybe you're a master of marketing or social media but that seems to be a stretch. Then there's the fact that you're running a business and your revenue isn't necessarily your salary. Your business revenue goal will probably need to be a lot higher than your salary goal.
Price Point. If you create similar images to what's available at most sites already you will have no choice but to match or undercut their price to try and compete. But why would they come to your site if they can get what they need at a similar price just about anywhere else? If you create unique images that have demand and arent readily available at most other sites you are more likely to be able to get $20 or $200 an image. And unless you come up with some totally new category of image that people go wild for you wont have much sales volume. Maybe $200 isn't the right price point for you but I'd question if $2 is enough.
One Time Use. I'd question what percentage of buyers know or care what the license terms are for most existing sites. The terms and licensing options are normally hidden in the background for the sake of buyer convenience. And if the idea is to enforce your license terms are you going to contact clients or thieves to get the $2 they owe you?
Not trying to blow the wind out of your sails but I'm not seeing how this would work. Do you have really low salary requirements or know how to get a ton of sales volume?
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I don't have the illusion of competing in volume with SS tomorrow, but I hope to cut into that market in the future. So in planning for it now, I should price competitively. Yes?
No, you should price much higher, even if the images have a similar look to the zillions on SS. As Paulie pointed out, there is no hope of you competing with those image packs and subs, of which I see iS just sent out a 20% off sale for 5 days only. Starting down that road is futile. No one will take you seriously. The images have to be good though. There you can't cheat.
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I'm not going to explain it much further except in this way: you earn $0.25-$0.33 a sub sale right now. If you can steal even one of those daily sales and earn a dollar on it as an independent, you've made 3-4x the money on that one sale.
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I'm not going to explain it much further except in this way: you earn $0.25-$0.33 a sub sale right now. If you can steal even one of those daily sales and earn a dollar on it as an independent, you've made 3-4x the money on that one sale.
I doubt that you are adressing the same customers.
So your one dollar sale on your own site does not replace a subs sale anywhere, but rather a more expensive on demand sale.
Comparing what you get to subscription royalties only makes sense if you are going after the same customers - and then you need to offer subs (and need to have a very large collection with constant updates, because that is what makes subscription buyers pay a large monthly amount).
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I'm not going to explain it much further except in this way: you earn $0.25-$0.33 a sub sale right now. If you can steal even one of those daily sales and earn a dollar on it as an independent, you've made 3-4x the money on that one sale.
I understand the 3-4x part. If that works for hitting your sales goal great. It's a different approach than I'm taking but I'd love to hear the outcome of how it worked.
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I'm not going to explain it much further except in this way: you earn $0.25-$0.33 a sub sale right now. If you can steal even one of those daily sales and earn a dollar on it as an independent, you've made 3-4x the money on that one sale.
I'll just say, you gotta be kidding me? You will spend many dollars to make that one dollar. That doesn't make for a good business model. Oh well, at least it won't take long for you to go out of business.
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I doubt that you are adressing the same customers.
So your one dollar sale on your own site does not replace a subs sale anywhere, but rather a more expensive on demand sale.
Comparing what you get to subscription royalties only makes sense if you are going after the same customers - and then you need to offer subs (and need to have a very large collection with constant updates, because that is what makes subscription buyers pay a large monthly amount).
That's partially true - however, SS's entire business model is based on the fat retained from the large number of subs most people fail to download. That means, without doubt, that a majority of the profit SS makes comes from all the money these customers are paying and not using. They aren't stupid either - they are aware that all that money is being wasted. Every month an assessment is likely made. This is the first angle where we have room as independents; if enough contributors provided low cost one-time licenses, it would provide an alternative to lots of subscribers that download 100-300 images a month out of the 750 they are allocated. Again, not tomorrow, but over time.
Secondly, I believe there is a large untapped market - I believe this is the same market that Canva is targeting. They are small businesses and individuals. These are organizations that want low cost images, on demand, for one time uses in things such as online ads, blogs, and other primarily electronic uses. Symbiostock is also one of these organizations.
Look at the Symbiostock blog -
http://www.symbiostock.org/blog/ (http://www.symbiostock.org/blog/)
Every 'stock' image there is used from free, public domain sources. However, we would prefer to be able to shop for and use specific images for each entry. But we're not going to pay an agency a monthly or hefty fee to do so, because our needs are sporadic. We're also not going to spend $20 an image because that is too high an opportunity cost for our needs.
To understand how large this potential untapped market is, even a small example gives us large numbers: Like us, there are over 40 thousand other plugins on the WordPress platform. There are over 70 million users of these plugins - that means there are at least 70 million individual organizations or people actively running their own WordPress site. 70 million individuals actively running their own blog CMS. This is where $1 on demand sales for low resolution images has a huge potential market.
Canva is proof of it. Their designs are primarily online based as far as I know - Facebook headers, that sort of stuff. Low res, low cost, on demand. They have increased their user base 10x in the span of two years.
Symbiostock and Symzio are free - we can't make it any easier to get independents online. Install WordPress, download the plugin, upload images. If this solution existed prior to my joining Symbiostock, I'd be all over it. And I have no ulterior motives; if you want to host with us, host with us. If you don't, don't. My goal is to keep swelling our numbers so our combined footprint is larger.
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I thought the same way as Robin, and I'm just breaking even on my site, despite spending $ on marketing. So I just doubled my vector prices and raised my jpg prices even more. I'm curious to see what happens. I figure I have nothng to lose because I'm not making any money on my own site anyway.
I'm doing this because I raised my "real world" freelance writing and illustration rates 50-100% overnight and nobody batted an eye. Now I want to kick myself for undercharging all this time.
If I make the same number of sales on my Symbiostock site I'll raise prices even more.
In advertising we do price tests all the time. Sometimes raising prices makes something seem more desirable, and it sells even better. Sometimes not. So we'll see.
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Just had my first sale at double the price. The price is higher than a single sale at SS. If my sales continue as normal I'll raise prices again. Maybe my site will actually make a little money.
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Predictability is key - variance permits purchases here and there that may have nothing to do with the pricing. On the other hand, it may have everything to do with the pricing. Large scale experimentation, exactly like what you are doing, is what we need to contribute to the statistical database we have so we can make more accurate market analysis.
Based on what I've seen, most independents are pricing at over $20 for full size images, and getting few sales. There will, of course, be exceptions to that, but it is that knowledge that drives me to experiment with a new license model (one time use) at a much lower cost ($0.99 for a small, $4.99 for a full size).
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You can't possibly police a one time use license though, unlike Canva.
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Predictability is key - variance permits purchases here and there that may have nothing to do with the pricing. On the other hand, it may have everything to do with the pricing. Large scale experimentation, exactly like what you are doing, is what we need to contribute to the statistical database we have so we can make more accurate market analysis.
Based on what I've seen, most independents are pricing at over $20 for full size images, and getting few sales. There will, of course, be exceptions to that, but it is that knowledge that drives me to experiment with a new license model (one time use) at a much lower cost ($0.99 for a small, $4.99 for a full size).
This is good to know but do you know why there's a $20 max? Is it the images aren't differentiated enough from micro? Is it lack of traffic? Are they targeting specific buyers or any buyer? Other?
Getting pricing right also depends on traffic and conversion rate. Based on what I've seen so far I don't think I could get enough traffic to make $5-$20 work for me. So while I may get fewer sales, the sales at a higher price more than make up for the volume. I just had a $450 license sale. It would take 90 $5 sales to match that. Are there a decent amount of Symbio people that are getting that level of traffic to get over 90 sales in a month?
I haven't really seen any stats on independent stock sales. If you have any Symbio data you'd be willing to share I think it would be helpful. Like you said, I'm also experimenting to find the sweet spot between price and volume.
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I agree. I don't think any of us will get the volume we need to make decent money independently at low prices. Higher prices might be the way to go. I may raise my prices again before the Xmas season kicks into high gear and see what happens. If I was making a lot of sales I might not risk it, but there's actually no risk for me at this point. So why not?
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Predictability is key - variance permits purchases here and there that may have nothing to do with the pricing. On the other hand, it may have everything to do with the pricing. Large scale experimentation, exactly like what you are doing, is what we need to contribute to the statistical database we have so we can make more accurate market analysis.
Based on what I've seen, most independents are pricing at over $20 for full size images, and getting few sales. There will, of course, be exceptions to that, but it is that knowledge that drives me to experiment with a new license model (one time use) at a much lower cost ($0.99 for a small, $4.99 for a full size).
This is good to know but do you know why there's a $20 max? Is it the images aren't differentiated enough from micro? Is it lack of traffic? Are they targeting specific buyers or any buyer? Other?
Getting pricing right also depends on traffic and conversion rate. Based on what I've seen so far I don't think I could get enough traffic to make $5-$20 work for me. So while I may get fewer sales, the sales at a higher price more than make up for the volume. I just had a $450 license sale. It would take 90 $5 sales to match that. Are there a decent amount of Symbio people that are getting that level of traffic to get over 90 sales in a month?
I haven't really seen any stats on independent stock sales. If you have any Symbio data you'd be willing to share I think it would be helpful. Like you said, I'm also experimenting to find the sweet spot between price and volume.
PW, I wonder about this too. Based on what I see, especially those new to stock, is the general disbelief that images can be worth more than $10 or $20.
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Predictability is key - variance permits purchases here and there that may have nothing to do with the pricing. On the other hand, it may have everything to do with the pricing. Large scale experimentation, exactly like what you are doing, is what we need to contribute to the statistical database we have so we can make more accurate market analysis.
Based on what I've seen, most independents are pricing at over $20 for full size images, and getting few sales. There will, of course, be exceptions to that, but it is that knowledge that drives me to experiment with a new license model (one time use) at a much lower cost ($0.99 for a small, $4.99 for a full size).
This is good to know but do you know why there's a $20 max? Is it the images aren't differentiated enough from micro? Is it lack of traffic? Are they targeting specific buyers or any buyer? Other?
Getting pricing right also depends on traffic and conversion rate. Based on what I've seen so far I don't think I could get enough traffic to make $5-$20 work for me. So while I may get fewer sales, the sales at a higher price more than make up for the volume. I just had a $450 license sale. It would take 90 $5 sales to match that. Are there a decent amount of Symbio people that are getting that level of traffic to get over 90 sales in a month?
I haven't really seen any stats on independent stock sales. If you have any Symbio data you'd be willing to share I think it would be helpful. Like you said, I'm also experimenting to find the sweet spot between price and volume.
PW, I wonder about this too. Based on what I see, especially those new to stock, is the general disbelief that images can be worth more than $10 or $20.
Well, some probably wont be worth more than $10 or $20 if there's no reason for them to be worth more.
If you're selling the same images on your site as on micro then you're probably not going to be able to go much higher with price. I've removed most of my images from micro so they're only available on my site. If a buyer really wants my image, they can't get it elsewhere and I control the price.
Whenever I ask a buyer how they found me, almost every time the answer is the same. "We've looked at Getty, Istock, and Shutterstock and haven't found what we needed". So most of the time they couldn't find what they needed and were forced to do a Google search.
For anybody who wants to set up their own website I would ask what's unique about your website that buyers won't be able to get the same thing on micro or elsewhere. Unique images? Unique subject? Unique licensing? If the answer is nothing is unique then I wouldn't expect much or any sales. Some buyers have no problem paying more for the right image and those are the buyers I'm targeting.