Success © Carsten Reisinger
Yes, absolutely!
For many years traditional, professional photographers have tried to “exorcise the devil” out of Microstock photographers claiming that they undersell their products. While at first glance it appears to be true, you have to dig a little deeper to understand the mechanics.
In general, Microstock is built upon the image needs of thousands and thousands of freelance designers all over the world. These designers often fill the need of small or mid-sized companies who seek competitive advertising and marketing projects. Those companies cannot afford to have their designers pay hundreds or thousands of Dollars for a single image that they need for their campaign. This is where Microstock comes in. It fills a big void where over many years nobody could supply the need for cheaper images.
The success of several Microstock agencies shows that there is a huge demand for low priced imagery. One image can be sold many, many times and in fact there are images at some agencies that have sold over 10.000 times ever since they were approved.
Now get your calculators out of your bag packs and multiply this by $0.25. $2.500 for a single image IF it was always purchased for the low 25 cents commission. It’s is more than likely that this image has been sold numerous times as an Enhanced License or was paid via credits instead of subscription, so it is fair to assume that this very image generated a minimum of $6.000.
To be fair to you, I have to mention that we are talking about a really, really good photograph.
Long story short, it’s the high number of downloads that will reward a great image. Don’t get scared because of the 25 cents argument. There is more to it!
