Sell photos and stock illustrations via top microstocks
Traditional Rights Managed vs. Royalty Free Microstock – Any Chance?
An example of a traditional rights managed photo
Rights managed photograph of a girl, underwater
Note the final price and the number of various options I had to select to find out the price. It is so confusing and time consuming!
I had not idea at the beginning how much such an image costs, and I had to waste my time precisely selecting all the options just to see that my budget is far away of the final price.
Why buyers would agree for that? The only answer is – if they have no choice. Would you buy some cheese in your local supermarket if you have no idea how much you pay at the cash desk? Would you buy a car if you do not know its price?
Right Managed photography accompanied with user interface of ‘adding options to see the final price’ is a totally wrong idea! It won’t sell.
Let’s compare it to the Royalty Free microstock alternative.
Well, today iStockphoto is not exactly a microstock agency anymore, particularly when we are talking about Extended Licenses prices. However, it is still ten times less for quite a similar stock photograph!
Is it the same photo? No, of course it’s not. I probably could find something much more similar, and even much more cheaper on other microstock sites, like Dreamstime or Fotolia.
Will the buyers prefer an iStock image, paying 10 times less for a stock photo and getting more in terms of time, usage and warranty, and saving time going through the time-consuming “find the final Rights Managed price” process? I bet they will.
iStockphoto Royalty Free Photo with Extended License
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| Print article | This entry was posted by David Mail on June 27, 2010 at 23:56, and is filed under Microstock Articles. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
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ignoring the difference in image quality we’re not really comparing like for like here are we? one is RM and one is RF hence one comes with a level of exclusivity (world wide) and the other can be used by anyone else in any industry if they want to, that’s why one is a lot more expensive
about 2 months ago
Steve,
First off, welcome to ProStockMaster blog!
Right, let’s leave image quality aside. As we can see, the image quality on microstocks is getting better all the time, because of two reasons:
– the more images a microstock agency get the higher are their quality requirement
– many amateur photographers who get their first bucks from microstock photo sites invest in better photographic equipment trying to earn more
So, do we compare apples and apples, comparing traditional rights managed photos and royalty free microstock images? Of course not, these are two different products. They can differ in quality, and they differ in licensing terms and in their prices.
My question actually was if product A, the microstock, leaves some market place for the product B, the rights managed photography.
How exactly the rights managed photography product can be differentiated? Ten years ago they would say “quality”. Well, I believe that today it is not a good differentiator anymore.
Exclusivity?
Well, for the rights managed photography exclusivity is typically time-limited. So if a buyer really wants a face or an image to be associated with some brand identity and probably to appear in the marketing campaigns, he will hire a photographer and models, and will sign them on exclusivity agreements, protecting his brand. A one- or two-years exclusivity will not work for him.
With such an agreement, the buyer gets hundreds of top quality images released exclusively for his business. The funny thing is that the costs of doing that are comparable to buying a few rights manages photos, if they are priced at $4000-6000 each, like this one above.
When I add here inconvenient time consuming online purchase process on rights-managed photo site like this one above, or even worst, the bureaucratic procedures of signing an agreement with a stock agency or a photographer, it all makes me very skeptic regarding the future of rights managed photography.