Time magazine and microstock
How much Time Magazine, one of the most prestigious magazine of the world, is willing to pay for a front page cover photo?
And the photographer, who will get 20 cents from the license, seems pretty happy about it.
How much Time Magazine, one of the most prestigious magazine of the world, is willing to pay for a front page cover photo?
And the photographer, who will get 20 cents from the license, seems pretty happy about it.
Francis Vachon
Microstock was meant to help small business, the one who will spend 400$ on a web site, to have some nice pictures without spending 250$ for the license of one single photo. Not a bad idea. But now it as grown so big that you see professional quality photos, one that could sell for thousand, go for a loonie. That’s a shame, and that really hurt the business.
Microstock photographers are lured into this business model with the few success story. For instance, there is one girl, (from Quebec city!) who has made 500000$ with microstock. But the truth is, probably less than a 100 microstock photographers can make a living out of it. And who is doing a lot of profits, no matter what? Those agencies, of course.
“They” say that the volume is everything. Yea, right. Let’s say you want a 30000$ salary per year out of microstock. At 0.20$ a pop, you need to license 150000 photos!!!!
You can read a previous post I did on this here: https://francisvachon.com/blog/meejahor-and-microstock/
JF Gilbert
If I was the photographer i’d be both honored and pissed. Time is able to contribute a bit more than a dollar for a cover picture. But at the same time when you sell your pictures through a microstock site, you agree to get almost nothing for each picture sold. So i guess Time isn’t doing anything wrong…
What do you think about this Francis ? Are you against micro stock in general?