Anyone who's been battling to sell photos online for any period of time will know that photographers have been getting a pretty poor deal recently. High competition has meant that most photographers are getting significantly less sales than in years gone by and those sales they do pick up are typically at much lower prices.
To add to the injury, with digital submissions the photographers are typically doing more of the work that the stock agencies used to do. Where before they used to just post off a submission a number of times each year and leave it to the library to do the rest, now they end up formatting & cleaning picture files, adding captions and keywords, plus all of the other photography business mangement chores ...
And the big stock libraries are still taking their hefty commissions out of any stock image sales, although online catalogs and eCommerce checkouts mean their participation is virtually hands-free.
It's no great surprise that plenty of independent photographers are asking what they are really splitting their sales for?
Well a new breed of stock photography library has appeared that deals with these problems and tries to put the photographers back in the drivers seat. They're the direct contact stock photo libraries and more and more photographers and photo buyers see them as the way of the future.
Most operate as photography marketing co-ops, where their photographers work together to promote their work and generate sales while sharing their costs and expenses. The library provides the marketing platform and the photographers take responsibility for their own sales. The photographer is liberated from limiting contracts, agency deductions and they're free to set their own pricing and license conditions.
An added bonus for the photographers is that, for the first time ever, stock photographers can build their own buyer list -- buyers known to use the subjects they shoot -- and they can sell stock photos to them on their terms and their schedule. Instead of waiting around for new photo clients to find them or hoping their existing clients might come back for more, they can take new stock photography and concepts directly to the photo buyers, effectively creating online photo sales on demand.
In the current day's super-competitive stock photography industry many believe this is the only possible way for photographers to grab control and build a viable and sustainable business selling photos online.
To add to the injury, with digital submissions the photographers are typically doing more of the work that the stock agencies used to do. Where before they used to just post off a submission a number of times each year and leave it to the library to do the rest, now they end up formatting & cleaning picture files, adding captions and keywords, plus all of the other photography business mangement chores ...
And the big stock libraries are still taking their hefty commissions out of any stock image sales, although online catalogs and eCommerce checkouts mean their participation is virtually hands-free.
It's no great surprise that plenty of independent photographers are asking what they are really splitting their sales for?
Well a new breed of stock photography library has appeared that deals with these problems and tries to put the photographers back in the drivers seat. They're the direct contact stock photo libraries and more and more photographers and photo buyers see them as the way of the future.
Most operate as photography marketing co-ops, where their photographers work together to promote their work and generate sales while sharing their costs and expenses. The library provides the marketing platform and the photographers take responsibility for their own sales. The photographer is liberated from limiting contracts, agency deductions and they're free to set their own pricing and license conditions.
An added bonus for the photographers is that, for the first time ever, stock photographers can build their own buyer list -- buyers known to use the subjects they shoot -- and they can sell stock photos to them on their terms and their schedule. Instead of waiting around for new photo clients to find them or hoping their existing clients might come back for more, they can take new stock photography and concepts directly to the photo buyers, effectively creating online photo sales on demand.
In the current day's super-competitive stock photography industry many believe this is the only possible way for photographers to grab control and build a viable and sustainable business selling photos online.
About the Author:
Matt Brading is a freelance photographer and writer who chooses to sell stock photos with the OzImages Stock Photo Library.
No comments:
Post a Comment