A little on sales

There are a few reasons for taking pictures. Firstly: because one wants a record of a time, place or thing. Into this category falls everything from snapshots to incredible works of art.

Secondly: one wants to convey a message. Again, this runs the gamut from snapshots (my child is cute) to intense statements of intended meaning (Piss Christ).

Thirdly (and it can encompass both of aforementioned), to sell.

It’s the last I’m going to deal with now, and specifically with the teasers for easy sales; known, by and large, as “Royalty Free Stock”. Right off the bat, making a living with stock photography is difficult. It’s work. Those who do it make it a career, devoting time, effort, talent and training to it. It’s “passive” income only in that the successful stock photographer can spend most of her time making photos, rather than flogging her work.

Why? Because there is someone else being paid to do it. Either an agency (the more common method), or an employee. Agencies are more common because there’s a lot of work in managing a stock portfolio. Things have to be categorized, cross referenced, described, priced (on which more in a moment) and sales have to be recorded.

Clients have to be solicited, and billed and chivvied to return slides.

It’s work, which is why the agency takes a hefty cut. Odds are, if you have enough images to make an employee useful, they will cost as much as the agency did. There are photographers who (usually with a spouse) manage their own stock, but that’s time they spend doing business, not shooting.

What’s a good price for a stock image? That, as they say, depends. Is it a one time use? How long is it going to be tied up (most customers don’t want to have a dozen other people using the image they just paid for, so they will ask for a piece to be removed from availability for awhile. That’s time you aren’t able to sell it). What’s the market?

A shot being sold to someone using it in a full-page ad for Time Magazine will be charged more than someone asking to use it as an illo for the alumni annual. One, they have the budget, two, it’s a bigger publication. If they hired someone to take the photo they’d be paying a pretty penny. Well, they’ve decided you took a photo as good as the one they could hire; they should expect to pay the going rate.

All of which an agency has practice doing, and explaining. It’s why they take 40-60 percent of the price. But you don’t have to do that figuring; don’t have to send the images, the invoices, the reminders, etc. They do that, and they send you a check.

They also tend to specialize, which means people who want pictures of birds, landscapes, machine parts, cars, people walking on the beach, kayaking, mountain climbing, picnicking, etc., know which agencies to call. If you want to do your own marketing (and keep all the money), you will have to find customers, and convince them you have what they need.

It also means having a lot of pictures. Initial submissions to agencies are in the 100-250 range. After that they tend to want new pictures on a steady basis. Because old customers want new pictures, and new customers may not want things which have been used often.

Not that having an agency removes all need for record keeping. You have to keep track of what you have with which agent(s). It’s not just bad form to submit to multiple agencies; it’s usually a contractual violation. You will need releases for models, and sometimes for property (“The Bean” in Chicago is copyrighted, it’s theoretically impossible to sell an image of it without the City of Chicago’s permission. Lots of places have tried the same thing. It is, at best, a questionable legal theory (because the image is what’s copyrighted, not the thing, so when you take an image, you get the copyright to it. The arguments by companies are basically, “it’s been done; all a new photograph does is repeat something already in copyright”. As I understand it (I am not a lawyer) this is a specious argument, but the people who make it tend to have money, which can be used to chilling effect).

So what of, “Royalty Free Stock Agencies” (which is a misnomer; stock isn’t sold on a royalty basis, but on a use basis)? They are, from the photographer’s point of view, a scam. You upload images, and for a flat fee anyone can download an image, and use it for whatever they want. The photographer gets between $.25 and $1.50 for it.

The alumni annual and the company which wants to have a full page ad in Time for a month, makes no real difference to the photographer, she gets her pittance, and they get to use it. It may be the one month run has to pay four times, but that’s still nothing, when compared to what a real stock agency would get (the alumni mag might be as little as $20 to the photographer, Time might be as much as $80,000; that’s a pretty big gap).

The other question is payout. The agency will pay quarterly. It’s possible they will have a minimum, but if/when you cancel the contract, they will pay in full. The “royalty free” places tend to pay when a threshold is reached. The better ones pay at the $25 level, but most of the ones I’ve looked at set the bar at $100. That’s a lot of $.25 sales. Some of them pay 30-90 days after the threshold is reached. Once the balance falls below the minimum, one has to wait until its more than the minimum again to get paid.

If you decided to call it quits, and cash out, they often have a processing fee for cutting the check. That’s 10-25 dollars raked of the top before you see a penny.

Which is great for them. The odds of any single photographer getting across the thresholds are high (because it takes a lot of people buying a lot of uses to get to even the lower thresholds). Most people don’t have that many photos which are in the right sorts of categories (or they don’t have model releases, etc.). But the client is paying.

That’s cash in hand (because the photos aren’t being sold for 50 cents, they are selling for between $1.00 and I don’t know what. The best I recall was a sliding scale, in which one got more money for more sales in a given period. Reading between the lines I’m guessing they are charging the customer 5-25 dollars a use, and passing on $.35-2.00 to the artist.

So they have a revenue stream and a largish pot of money they are supposed to be holding in escrow. That’s a free float of the combined money’s interest. Probably also a pretty penny for the going concerns (and who knows how many of these are under-capitalised/ill-run, and prone to bankruptcy ... who then will pay the outstanding accounts?).

If you want to do stock, do it right; get an agency, or several.