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With Rights Managed sales and licenses mostly heading south in recent years, it is no surprise that many Microstock agencies are now accepting and in some cases welcoming editorial image submissions. But does the Microstock model fit in with editorial? Is it worth taking seriously? Or is is better to concentrate on producing more traditional Microstock images which are mainly aimed at the commercial use market? These are of course, complicated and not easy questions to answer. Though, after several months of submitting a lot of editorial images to agencies like Shutterstock, Depositphoto, Bigstockphoto and Dreamstime, some vague patterns are beginning to emerge. Shutterstock's photo editing system is fairly efficient and notoriously difficult with editorial images, with quite a few being rejected for usually fairly spurious reasons. Though what does make it on to their servers can do moderately well as editorial stock. This is not quite the case - at the time of writing with Dreamstime (which have the largest amount of editorial stock of any Microstock agency I supply), who have only sold a few downloads. Probably due to the Shutterstock sales and marketing machine (they sell far more than any other Microstock agency I supply), Bigstockphoto roll in at number two on the best for sales agency list and in third place is Dreamstime - though a few bucks from several hundred images is not impressive. Of course, this may not be the case in the future, though early sales with a new agency can be a good way of figuring out what sort of client base they have and whether they are worth paying much attention to. Fourth place is Depositphoto, who have done just three downloads of $0.90 - however this is with under 100 images on their servers, so is one to watch in the future! Editorial images have always been worth less than commercial stock, though editorial images are - generally-speaking - much easier to produce. Although I have a contract with Getty Images Creative, it does not allow much in the way of editorial through and despite repeated requests, Getty Images have ignored any requests from my part to get an editorial contract as well. The mind often boggles in professional photography! An increasing problem with putting editorial images out is the lack of outlets, particularly for Rights Managed images. Getty's agressive dominance of this market does not leave a lot of room for smaller agencies and it is natural that - to claw back some revenue at least - many photojournalists and photographers with editorial stock will turn to RF Microstock outlets to license this work. Many image researchers and photo editors would be surprised what is on sites like Shutterstock in terms of editorial content. A few years ago, the submission process was fussy and they still cherry-pick images to some extent. Now submission of editorial images is more streamlined, increasing amounts of useful imagery are ending up on RF Microstock sites with editorial use RF Micro licenses. Having uploaded several old assignments, mostly from 2011-2014, it is interesting to see what sells and while the sums are not huge, it does show there is a slow-burn sales average on good-quality editorial stock from certain news events, entertainment and sport. This is an interesting development in Microstock and could help many editorial photographers and photojournalists, who have found market conditions increasingly tough over the past two decades and many of whom can benefit from additional outlets. Which is nice. But does it pay? Well, on what I can analyze at the moment, the answer is possibly, but it is still too early for me to say for sure. Two portfolios have been doing well of late, one is portraits of Nicola Sturgeon giving a speech to SNP supporters in Edinburgh, shortly before she became the First Minister of Scotland and another has been images from the Jarlshof archaeological site in the Shetland Islands of northern Scotland. On Rights Managed licenses, these pictures have rarely, if ever, sold (aside from the initial story I did on the site back in 2011), so it is nice to see them earning revenue and being used. So far that revenue is still low, around $10 per subject I mention above. However, if these images had been on longer, then they may have yielded more sales, which is something I can only provide conjecture about at present. The best sales have been from Shutterstock, though Bigstockphoto are also doing moderately well with my editorial and commercial stock images. My conjecture is this. If you pick the right event to photograph, then these images may have good potential after their news potential has faded, which is usually between a week or two after the photos were taken. This may work as a way of covering expenses to cover an event or something which is editorial subject matter. Thus far these two sets have clocked up a fair number of subscription downloads - which is very low revenue - and have done better from the on-demand downloads, which pay the equivalent of around 7-8 subscription downloads. Hence, while it is too early for me to say if it is a good bet, certainly editorial stock for Microstock agencies is something those who are still actively archiving their work should look at quite closely, as the market for RF Microstock Editorial looks relatively healthy and has many non-traditional clients, plus the usual publishing customer base. You can view my portfolio of RF Microstock on Shutterstock here. If you would like to submit your images to Shutterstock, you can apply here.
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AuthorMicrostock Insight is written and edited by Jonathan W Mitchell, a seasoned stock photographer and photojournalist with over 20 years experience submitting images to photo and video agencies. Categories
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