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Written by Richard Weisgrau
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Thursday, 30 March 2006 |
 In the early 1990s a stock photography model we called clip art (a pejorative term) was introduced. If you recall my first article in this series, it was introduced as stock for those who could not afford regular stock. It was to be an opener of a whole new market as a supplement to traditional stock. Today we call it royalty free, and it is the predominant stock photography model, and it continues to gain market share over rights managed stock, the very thing it was not supposed to harm.
Microstock has the potential to have the same effect on royalty free that royalty free had on rights managed stock. Will it? I don’t know for certain, but I think it will because, as happened with royalty free, microstock is inexpensive and the quality of its offerings is increasing rapidly. In another decade, the period it took royalty free to dominate, microstock could be the way most stock photography is licensed. That would kill off royalty free and would further choke rights managed, which could survive only by licensing images that cannot be easily mass-produced or are supplied by semi-professional photographers
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 08 April 2006 )
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Written by Richard Weisgrau
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Wednesday, 22 March 2006 |
The name Royalty Free ought to give anyone buying it pause because it is a gross misrepresentation of the truth. I have sometimes wondered whether it is a violation of the truth in advertising laws. A royalty, is a sum of money paid for the use of intellectual property that is protected by patent, trademark or copyright law. Since users are paying to use any photograph in a royalty free collection they are paying royalties. The naming of the royalty free stock model only demonstrates one or both of two things. These who did it intentionally decided to mislead the user, or they are not too educated. You pick!
OK, now that we have established that I don’t like the royalty free licensing model, let me say that it is here to stay until a new model replaces both it and rights managed as I wrote about in part 3 of this series. So, the question is what strategy can you adopt, if you choose to participate in royalty free? First, get it into your head that participating today in royalty free is not contributing to the decline of the business. Royalty free has already done that without your help. The business is what it is. Next, decide whether your situation is a good fit with the royalty free model. Let’s look at who fits with that model.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 30 March 2006 )
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Written by Richard Weisgrau
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Friday, 17 March 2006 |
Once upon a time it was the only stock photography model. Over a period of thirty years it became traditional. Then in 1992 a new stock photography model was introduced. Unfavorably, most photographers called the new model Clip Art. Today, it is called Royalty Free. Once legitimized, royalty free forced the renaming of traditional stock to Rights Managed. It is an old model, and one that is under constant pressure from its less expensive competitor, royalty free. Should a photographer participate in rights managed stock when each year it loses more ground to royalty free? Yes, a photographer should.
I have a simple reason for advising a photographer to engage in rights managed stock in spite of the fact that it is losing market share every year. People are buying it. While 60 to 70 percent of all stock sales are reported to be royalty free, rights managed is reported to be generating the same level of revenues as royalty free. So market share and revenue share are different gauges monitoring different statistics.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 23 March 2006 )
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Written by Richard Weisgrau
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Friday, 10 March 2006 |
The preceding article in this series outlined a long-term strategy for the stock photography business. That strategy is not one that an individual photographer could adopt, it is only one the individual could support, if and when agencies have a mind to adopt it. It requires a sea change in the stock photography marketplace.
I also promised to offer individual photographers some strategies for making more revenues from their stock photography. This article and the next three articles will each deal with one of the four types of stock photography: rights protected, rights managed, royalty free, and micro stock.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 20 March 2006 )
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Written by Richard Weisgrau
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Friday, 03 March 2006 |
In part 2 of this series I pointed out how stock photography has become less and less expensive over the past years, and how that trend is likely to continue unless some intervention is made. In the past advocates of rights managed stock and opponents of royalty free stock suggested that impeding the growth royalty free stock was the best way to improve stock photography prices.
That was true a decade ago. Today, it is as failed strategy. Royalty free stock dominates the market place. With that domination has come a situational reversal. Today, rights managed stock is impeding the growth in the prices of royalty free. Let’s look at that reversal.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 16 March 2006 )
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