Author Topic: Image Pricing? (Read 12122 times)

Redneck · « **on:** August 16, 2013, 20:11 »

Would anybody like to discuss the pricing of image licenses?

I have seen many very good Symbiostock sites and yet I hesitate to add them to my network because I think they don't value their work enough. Why do most of you price a full size image at 300 dpi, which will obviously qualify for most print campaigns at $20 or less?
Whoever wants to do any prints will probably pay more for the printer (ink, labor, offset etc) than you charge for the most important part of the campaign. Why do you sell yourself that cheap?
I do understand the need for cheap blog sized images. Most bloggers are privateers and don't have the budget to pay double digit amounts for pictures.
But full sized print quality images?
They don't need to be priced at lowest microstock level, IMO. Print campaigns have a budget. Why make one of the most efficient parts of the campaign the cheapest one? There's no practical reason for it, IMO.

Let me hear what you guys think.

PhilD · « **Reply #1 on:** August 16, 2013, 21:47 »

I agree with Redneck.

It does seem that microstock prices do prevail on most Symbiostock sites. I can't fathom why the time, effort, creativity, etc. needed to create the images, as well as build and maintain an SY stock image business site is not valued more by their own creators/owners.

For serious image buyers the actual image price is only a part of their overall cost. They are investing time and money in searching and obtaining the exact image they need or want. Whether they pay $10 or $100 is not a deal breaker if they get the image they need/want. If they find the right image for $100 why would they reject it on the basis that it cost $100 and throw away their time already invested to go look for a $10 image that might not be really what they need/want?

Anita Potter · « **Reply #2 on:** August 16, 2013, 21:53 »

I've left mine all at the default pricing scheme and all I've seen with the sites I've looked at are either default or under. I don't think I've seen anything priced higher.

I do have things I'll be uploading after I get finished with the SEO part. Those will be individual and then I need to figure out the pricing to sell them as a zipped set.

I don't think I have an individual file I feel would be worth $100 but that doesn't mean I can't come up with one down the road.

Pilens · « **Reply #3 on:** August 16, 2013, 22:08 »

One part of my port is more or less all over the micros. How would I justify an e.g. 5 times higher price on my own site if a buyers finds out and sends me a nasty e-mail? So, I feel my Symbiostock site pricing needs to be in line with what the micros are charging. IMHO Leo's "default" price setting of the Symbiostock theme is right at that spot.

I kept the other part of my port off the micros. I am glad now that I can experiment on ImagoBorealis how that exclusive content will be doing in comparison. Original size price range for this "premium collection" is between $80 and $96 (for a RF type license).

I had one sale so far. It was an exclusive premium collection photo for $40 at 1600px medium size. I like to take this as encouragement to expand my premium collection, although I know that 1 sale is hardly a statistically reliable base to build on.

plrang · « **Reply #4 on:** August 17, 2013, 03:30 »

I am over the defaults

Kerioak~Christine · « **Reply #5 on:** August 17, 2013, 04:56 »

I am a little over the defaults I think, as all images on my site are now exclusive there and new ones have never been available elsewhere I have been considering going up a little

picture5469 · « **Reply #6 on:** August 17, 2013, 05:46 »

I reduced them by 40% but not that I have a mix of exclusive content and non exclusive and now I cant change them in bulk without changing the exclusivity status

cathyslife · « **Reply #7 on:** August 17, 2013, 06:56 »

Good point. Mine were at the default and i think i will raise them a little. And i am going to raise the exclusives a little more than that.

Kerioak~Christine · « **Reply #8 on:** August 17, 2013, 07:10 »

I should mention maybe that I have put one licence one use, not one licence and use for whatever you like forever more

easybuyphotos.com · « **Reply #9 on:** August 17, 2013, 08:36 »

I would love to price my photographs at higher prices..............but I have all my Easy Buy Photos on microstock sites and if I don't reflect that price level I'm undermining my Symbiostock site and wasting all this time and effort. I do have images with Alamy a lot exclusively there as RM and have not decided to put them on my Sy site. I hope Symbiostock will grow as a concept into a higher value marketplace but it has been born from a microstock idea of fair pricing for artists. We are after all discussing this thread on The Microstock Group.

marthamarks · « **Reply #10 on:** August 17, 2013, 12:17 »

Quote from: easybuyphotos.com on August 17, 2013, 08:36

I would love to price my photographs at higher prices..............but I have all my Easy Buy Photos on microstock sites and if I don't reflect that price level I'm undermining my Symbiostock site and wasting all this time and effort. I do have images with Alamy a lot exclusively there as RM and have not decided to put them on my Sy site. I hope Symbiostock will grow as a concept into a higher value marketplace but it has been born from a microstock idea of fair pricing for artists. We are after all discussing this thread on The Microstock Group.

That's my thinking, exactly. Everything up on my SYS site at this moment is for sale somewhere else. But starting this fall, I'll make some exclusive images available here, and will certainly price those higher.

picture5469 · « **Reply #11 on:** August 17, 2013, 12:30 »

I want to take off this 40% discount, but cant unless i do each file individually or when the premium plugin becomes available.

cthoman · « **Reply #12 on:** August 17, 2013, 12:43 »

Quote from: PhilD on August 16, 2013, 21:47

For serious image buyers the actual image price is only a part of their overall cost. They are investing time and money in searching and obtaining the exact image they need or want. Whether they pay $10 or $100 is not a deal breaker if they get the image they need/want. If they find the right image for $100 why would they reject it on the basis that it cost $100 and throw away their time already invested to go look for a $10 image that might not be really what they need/want?

$10 to $100 is a pretty big range. I think that would be a deal breaker in a lot of cases. I'm all for higher prices, but it definitely has to be something that makes sense too.

Redneck · « **Reply #13 on:** August 17, 2013, 13:54 »

Quote from: picture5469 on August 17, 2013, 12:30

I want to take off this 40% discount, but cant unless i do each file individually or when the premium plugin becomes available.

Yes you can. Just set the discount back to "00" and then "apply to all images".

picture5469 · « **Reply #14 on:** August 17, 2013, 13:59 »

Won't that also change exclusivity status?

I have some non exclusive and exclusive images

EmberMike · « **Reply #15 on:** August 17, 2013, 14:11 »

Quote from: Redneck on August 16, 2013, 20:11

...They don't need to be priced at lowest microstock level, IMO. Print campaigns have a budget. Why make one of the most efficient parts of the campaign the cheapest one? There's no practical reason for it, IMO...

Remember that even at standard microstock prices, Symbiostock site owners are still making out better than with the microstock agencies by not having to give up 50-80% of the cost of the image.

For me, the sweet spot for my vectors seems to be around $10-12. Sure that's pretty standard microstock fare, but in keeping 100% of each sale I'm doing far better than anywhere else while still keeping things within a reasonable range as compared to microstock.

Let's face it, people are well aware of microstock these days. I don't think we're going to attract a lot of buyers if we're pricing our stuff at double or more of what it goes for elsewhere.

Redneck · « **Reply #16 on:** August 17, 2013, 14:35 »

Quote from: picture5469 on August 17, 2013, 13:59

Won't that also change exclusivity status?

I have some non exclusive and exclusive images

No, I don't think so. I was afraid it would change the release status when I did this but it left it untouched.

Redneck · « **Reply #17 on:** August 17, 2013, 14:46 »

Quote from: EmberMike on August 17, 2013, 14:11

Quote from: Redneck on August 16, 2013, 20:11
...They don't need to be priced at lowest microstock level, IMO. Print campaigns have a budget. Why make one of the most efficient parts of the campaign the cheapest one? There's no practical reason for it, IMO...

Remember that even at standard microstock prices, Symbiostock site owners are still making out better than with the microstock agencies by not having to give up 50-80% of the cost of the image.

For me, the sweet spot for my vectors seems to be around $10-12. Sure that's pretty standard microstock fare, but in keeping 100% of each sale I'm doing far better than anywhere else while still keeping things within a reasonable range as compared to microstock.

Let's face it, people are well aware of microstock these days. I don't think we're going to attract a lot of buyers if we're pricing our stuff at double or more of what it goes for elsewhere.

I actually think an image will be purchased because the buyer likes/needs it. The price is not the main criteria.
And you can't really compare images since every one is unique. I also believe starting to price products aggressively will create a race to the bottom. We should instead price our products the way that both parties, artist and customer, get something with a certain value. With full sized images at 20 bucks or less the customer will probably pay more for the shipping of his products than for the image that has been printed a thousand times. How can he value what he purchased from you?

cthoman · « **Reply #18 on:** August 17, 2013, 15:21 »

Quote from: Redneck on August 17, 2013, 14:46

I actually think an image will be purchased because the buyer likes/needs it. The price is not the main criteria.
And you can't really compare images since every one is unique. I also believe starting to price products aggressively will create a race to the bottom. We should instead price our products the way that both parties, artist and customer, get something with a certain value. With full sized images at 20 bucks or less the customer will probably pay more for the shipping of his products than for the image that has been printed a thousand times. How can he value what he purchased from you?

I have bundled images that cost $80. They do sell, but fairly infrequently compared to my normal images (especially considering their value). I have to assume that some of that is budget/cost related. I was actaully thinking of opening a Symbio site with just those bundled images, but I wasn't sure if the site would pay for itself.

cathyslife · « **Reply #19 on:** August 17, 2013, 15:31 »

Quote from: cthoman on August 17, 2013, 15:21

I have bundled images that cost $80. They do sell, but fairly infrequently compared to my normal images (especially considering their value). I have to assume that some of that is budget/cost related. I was actaully thinking of opening a Symbio site with just those bundled images, but I wasn't sure if the site would pay for itself.

Could you add a second domain to your existing hosting account to see if it would be worth it? At least you wouldnt be paying for more hosting fees, only the domain name and your time spent building the site.

Travelling-light · « **Reply #20 on:** August 17, 2013, 16:00 »

Quote from: Redneck on August 17, 2013, 14:46

Quote from: EmberMike on August 17, 2013, 14:11
Quote from: Redneck on August 16, 2013, 20:11
...They don't need to be priced at lowest microstock level, IMO. Print campaigns have a budget. Why make one of the most efficient parts of the campaign the cheapest one? There's no practical reason for it, IMO...

Remember that even at standard microstock prices, Symbiostock site owners are still making out better than with the microstock agencies by not having to give up 50-80% of the cost of the image.

For me, the sweet spot for my vectors seems to be around $10-12. Sure that's pretty standard microstock fare, but in keeping 100% of each sale I'm doing far better than anywhere else while still keeping things within a reasonable range as compared to microstock.

Let's face it, people are well aware of microstock these days. I don't think we're going to attract a lot of buyers if we're pricing our stuff at double or more of what it goes for elsewhere.

I actually think an image will be purchased because the buyer likes/needs it. The price is not the main criteria.
And you can't really compare images since every one is unique. I also believe starting to price products aggressively will create a race to the bottom. We should instead price our products the way that both parties, artist and customer, get something with a certain value. With full sized images at 20 bucks or less the customer will probably pay more for the shipping of his products than for the image that has been printed a thousand times. How can he value what he purchased from you?

I think it's sometimes true that an image will be purchased because the buyer likes/needs it, but I also think there are many buyers who would rather have something cheap and good enough, than something better but more expensive. With so many photos available, you are limiting your sales by only having more expensive images.

We have two price levels on our site, and so far we have only sold the images at the lower price levels. In other words, we have earned far more from images that are cheap but good enough, than from ones we think are good

However we are keeping some of our files at higher prices because we think those particular files won't sell often enough to be worthwhile at lower prices, and those files won't be going on the micros. (Unless one of the micros brings in a good deal, which seems unlikely).

cascoly · « **Reply #21 on:** August 17, 2013, 17:45 »

I've priced my images under the defaults - my competition is with the microstock agencies, not with alamy & others that charge $50 or more.

http://cascoly.com/symbio/list.asp?list=67 shows the average prices (a few sites haven't upgraded to the version that includes prices in the symbiocard). Until recently, all prices were similar, with one site set at more than 10x the average. but now there are 7 sites with a price of $30 or more for large. however average prices are down about 10% from what they were a month ago

PhilD · « **Reply #22 on:** August 17, 2013, 18:40 »

Quote from: cascoly on August 17, 2013, 17:45

- my competition is with the microstock agencies, not with alamy & others that charge $50 or more.

I have images on Alamy. But I really don't see Alamy as competition. The competition is to get our images seen by buyers that are looking for what we offer. Someone is always willing to take a little less - so to compete with agencies on price is a race to the bottom $.

It might surprise many to know that there is a potentially huge number of image buyers that are not really aware of "agencies" - micro or otherwise:

Ref para: Public Awareness of Stock Agencies in http://www.danheller.com/blog/posts/myth-that-microstock-agencies-hurt.html

I thought perhaps one vision for Symbiostock was to provide us with a tool to break free to some degree of the agencies and their bottom feeder pricing and discounting.

CrackerClips · « **Reply #23 on:** August 17, 2013, 20:40 »

I've been giving a great deal of thought to this issue as well. I'm getting to the point in our site development that I will want to be turning on the network soon and I have some of the same concerns as Redneck. First let me say, to each their own. Symbiostock is giving everyone the opportunity to run their business in whatever manner works best for them. I fully support that and this is from my viewpoint only.

I come from a traditional stills background and know from experience that a single license can be worth many thousands of dollars. It doesn't happen these days as much as I'd like but it does still happen. My experience in the micro arena, outside of footage, comes from a few hundred images placed with the micro outlets over the last few years. I've learned from this experience that I can still make hundreds or even well over a thousand dollars from some micro images due to the increased volume of sales over time. So I wanted to approach our symbiosite with both ends of the market in mind.

Although I've priced some of our more basic images (photo objects & backgrounds) with current micro pricing, the bulk of the images we'll be adding to our site will be our "premium" collection. With these images I'm striving for two distinct pricing bands. The two smallest sizes (bloggee and small) are priced with volume sales in mind. The images are sized for web usage and are affordable for graphic designers, small businesses, really anyone who needs an image for the web and is willing to pay for it.

In the second band are the two larger sizes (medium and large). They are sized for more custom tailored usage such as print. I'm capping the medium size at 2300 pixels on the long side giving approx a 5x7 print at 300dpi. It is still relatively affordable at $25. My thinking here is that for 25 bucks a small business can get an image for a smaller print use (such as a direct mail piece) for a fraction of the cost involved in designing, printing and delivering that mailer.

For the large I've more than doubled the size from the medium (up to 5600 pixies long side) and have doubled the price to $50. This size is for a significant use (full page, magazine cover, on up to billboard size). For anyone who needs an image for this type of usage, 50 bucks is more than reasonable.

In addition, when the functionality becomes available I plan to be offering extended licenses for resale products and print runs over 100,000 copies. The premium pricing will be for single use with discounts available for multiple use requests. The term length for the premium images will be for the life of the product. In other words, if you license an image for a website you can use it on that website for as long as you like. The license will expire when you remove the image from that site. If licensed for a direct mail piece it can be used for the life of THAT design up until the print limit is reached.

My goal is for the end user to pay a price that is reflective of the benefit they are getting from the image. A small local business using an image on their website should be able to get an image for an inexpensive price while a large company putting print adds in multiple magazines should pay a reasonable price that coincides with the benefit they are receiving from that image.

It may not be a perfectly designed licensing model and there WILL be things that come up that I haven't even thought of but I'm comfortable with the overall idea and believe it will meet both my needs and my customers needs for a sustainable future.

Anyway, that's what I'm thinking at present. Comments are welcome.

LesPalenik · « **Reply #24 on:** August 17, 2013, 20:46 »

Quote from: Redneck on August 16, 2013, 20:11

Why do most of you price a full size image at 300 dpi, which will obviously qualify for most print campaigns at $20 or less?
Whoever wants to do any prints will probably pay more for the printer (ink, labor, offset etc) than you charge for the most important part of the campaign. Why do you sell yourself that cheap?
I do understand the need for cheap blog sized images. Most bloggers are privateers and don't have the budget to pay double digit amounts for pictures. But full sized print quality images?
They don't need to be priced at lowest microstock level, IMO. Print campaigns have a budget. Why make one of the most efficient parts of the campaign the cheapest one? There's no practical reason for it, IMO.

I fully agree with Redneck and CrackerClips, and just changed my prices. Keeping the two small size affordable, and raising the prices for the large sizes (I also increased the default size for medium size from 1000 to 1200 pixels). I'm still only setting up my site, and will adjust the prices for premium images as I get to them.

I don't worry about competing with the same images of mine on the other agencies, since I don't have them on many sites, and anyway, as my SYS site starts selling, some of the "duplicate" images will be purged systematically from the other agencies. In addition, at this early stage, realistically, not too many images will be sold or seen on SYS sites, or compared with the same images on the other sites (hopefully that will start changing in 2014).

Bulk Pricing Utility
What I would like to see, is some versatile bulk pricing utility. For instance, select all exclusive images, certain categories, or some collections and apply special pricing just to those images. Excluding some images or narrowing down the previous selection would be also nice.
It would be quite useful to have a very flexible selection process (select by all kinds of criteria - keyword, category,date, etc), ideally also nested selections, and then being able to run the pricing utility just on the selected images.
Keep the selection process totally independent, so the selected images could be used potentially as input also for other processes to be added in the future (zipping, export, resizing, applying a new watermark. etc).

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Author Topic: Image Pricing? (Read 12122 times)

Redneck

PhilD

Anita Potter

Pilens

plrang

Kerioak~Christine

picture5469

cathyslife

Kerioak~Christine

easybuyphotos.com

marthamarks

picture5469

cthoman

Redneck

picture5469

EmberMike

Redneck

Redneck

cthoman

cathyslife

Travelling-light

cascoly

PhilD

CrackerClips

LesPalenik

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