For the last 6 months I’ve been trying to license my work directly to customers and not just using microstock agencies. This has worked very well. I sell less images of course, but the price is a lot better, and it’s far more rewarding for me as a photographer to have the dialogue directly with the customer, and to know what use they have for my images.
As every other day I received today notices from stock agencies about photo sales. A commission of impressive 21 cents for a high resolution image! This is insane. The price is getting lower and lower each month. With a commission like this I have to sell 300 copies of each image just to pay my expenses and give myself a reasonable salary for the hours spend. That’s simply not possible when doing niche-photography like I do. And I can assure you, that I’m not going to make mainstream stock photos of happy families jumping on a trampoline just to increase my sales!
How long will photographers be willing to deliver images to be sold for a price less than a piece of chewing gum?
I know I’m not. It ends here! I will now remove my portfolios from all microstock agencies and concentrate on direct sales.
Goodbye istockphoto, fotolia, shutterstock and the rest of you.
