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Why are microstock images so cheap? posted on 5th of december, 2007

Do a search on Dreamstime or any of the other major micropayment sites and you’ll find some great pictures equal in quality to anything on competitor name removed by admin or competitor name removed by admin or any of the other sites where full-time professional photographers show their images.

Search by downloads and you’ll often find more great images in the first 50 or 100 (because buyers know how to find the best images) than you’ll find on Getty or Corbis where the algorithm shows the last image posted first.

Unfortunately for a small portion of the uses microstock photographers are not earning anywhere near what they deserve, given the quality of this imagery. I know microstock is aimed at mom and pop users, who can’t afford more than $2 per image....

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Tags: cost microstock price sales stock

Comments (2)

Jim...through all our long association...and after I explained to you last month that Dreamstime DOES price based on usage, why are you still beating this dead horse? Dreamstime has opened the doors to commercial photography for nearly 30,000 contributors. And our huge traffic proves that these photographers and illustrators have found markets that the high priced traditional companies didn't care a hoot about. We remain loyal to our base and won't get greedy and thereby cut our contributors out of our market with high prices except for those uses that are worthy. Like the $5100 sale I told you about last month when we were all in Las Vegas. I suspect that you have sent this same email to all the microstocks without taking notice of the Dreamstime model. Or have you forgotton our conversation so quickly? - posted by Boughn on December 06, 2007

Jim, you are famous person in the industry and your efforts towards analyzing stock photography are respected by us. Moderators have strongly advised me that we moderate your post as this is breaking our rules. You cannot walk into a store, inviting shoppers to demand lower prices and expect that store not to take any actions. Is this post coming from an analyist perspective or a photographer? Did you ever ask an traditional collection to charge less the customers who can't afford high prices? You do have some good points that are in fact part of our strategy already. I am sorry, but you didn't analyze our site well before posting this. First, images don't sell for 2$/image. They can sell as high as $8 or $16 per RF license. The average is not that, but in any case, the pricing structure is prepared for having different prices for better images. Prices were increased multiple times in the last years. They reached the point where so many pros are building portfolios, compared to ... More) - posted by Achilles on December 06, 2007

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