Things have pretty quiet this winter for me, so I've taken some time to update my stock photo library (
here's my Photoshelter page FYI).
I'd heard so much about the microstock agencies iStock Photo and Shutterstock, I decided to check them out, and was frankly shocked at their business models. Shutterstock pays $.25 per shot that gets downloaded, despite the fact that the lowest priced license they offer for an image is $3.81. That's a return to the photographer of approximately 6.5%. If they sell a shot for $9.80, then you still make the same $.25, which is only 2.6% of the selling price. iStock at least pays 20% of the selling price, but then the shots sell for as little as $.24 each, which means you earn slightly less than a nickel per shot. If you're lucky and sell a full resolution shot, then you earn slightly less than a quarter.
The line from the agencies is that the images are so cheap that they'll get downloaded thousands of times, but I checked the stats on the images on a couple of searches relevent to my area (Whistler, Vancouver, and British Columbia) that showed one image with 800 + downloads, a few with 100 to 300 downloads, and the rest being below 100 downloads. Basically, at best, the guy with the 800 downloads is going to make $200, and the vast majority with less than a 100 downloads are going to make as much as $25.00 to as little as $4.80.
My question to the contributers to these agencies is: have you so little respect for your work that you'd sell a piece of it for a nickel? Come on people, have some self respect!
Dave Buzzard 
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