PDN's Stock Income Survey Results

Karimala · #1 (**permalink**) 06-02-2007, 01:57 AM

Peiling · #2 (**permalink**) 06-02-2007, 04:37 PM

thanks for the post !

Karimala · #3 (**permalink**) 06-06-2007, 04:40 AM

More from PDN...

PDN's Photo Source

helix7 · #4 (**permalink**) 06-06-2007, 06:58 AM

Intresting stuff.

I was most surprised to see in the charts that overall stock (non-micro) photographers experienced only a 2% drop in income from 2005-2006. With all the "sky is falling" doomsday talk from the old-schoolers, I would have expected a more significant drop. Sure it's still a drop, and not an increase, which sucks no matter how you look at it. It's just not the massive decline that many people make it out to be.

Also interesting was the chart that showed average incomes of traditional stock compared to microstock, and traditional was kicking the crap out of micro incomes.

Fotosmurf · #5 (**permalink**) 06-06-2007, 12:09 PM

That is a very interesting article to read! On the average for microstock; obviously to compare it equally they should have looked only at microstockers who are doing this fulltime rather then everyone as there is a huge difference between the two.

pichunter · #6 (**permalink**) 06-06-2007, 12:54 PM

Thanks for the link, very interesting.

cphoto · #7 (**permalink**) 06-07-2007, 08:20 PM

To be fair they should have included StockXpert. They are my number #1 for average sale price per picture ($1.1 per picture sold on average). That's because they are the only one to give 50% (not including FeaturePics).

DaveofCali · #8 (**permalink**) 06-08-2007, 06:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fotosmurf

That is a very interesting article to read! On the average for microstock; obviously to compare it equally they should have looked only at microstockers who are doing this fulltime rather then everyone as there is a huge difference between the two.

But many of these traditional stock photographers don't do stock photography fulltime, or at least as their predominant source of income. Even then, there are probably only a handful of microstock photographers that make at least $20,000 a year on their stock photos and most of them probably do people / business stock photography.

IMO microstock suffers somewhat from product positioning disadvantages, in that since its cheap, and even though many buy from microstock websites, many people will still buy from the traditional stock websites due to the perception of expensive photos being superior. Another thing IMO is that the subject matter in microstock is too controlled / restricted via reviewers, not allowing for the level of variety that is found in traditional stock photography, when variety is crucial in stock photography (Example: Istockphoto will never be the #1 source for Los Angeles stock photography because much of L.A.'s popular photography subjects have logos or other supposedly copyrighted elements, when traditional stock photography doesn't really care about these things.)