Which Stock Photo Agency?
Photo libraries, commonly known as stock photo agencies, provide photographers a channel for sales. You can expect to be paid 30%, 40%, 50%, or even 90%. Most agencies, today, pay 50% of each sale of your photos.
When I first began selling ("renting" is the better word) my photos, only a dozen or so stock agencies existed. Today there
You can start with a stock photo agency in your closest major city. Consult a website (e.g. Google, Alta Vista, etc.) or the Yellow Pages of your local telephone directory to locate a regional agency, and call or e-mail for their "Photographer's Guidelines."
If you're just breaking into the field, it's sometimes easier to get started with a smaller start up agency. But at the same time there is a drawback: the files of a local agency usually hold "general" categories of pictures. Big buyers of such general pictures tend to prefer to deal with the larger national "supermarket" (Corbis, Getty) agencies which can provide a wide selection of photos on-line immediately (or next day) by carrier services. The local Ma 'n Pa "general" agency usually loses out to these giants who have tremendous depth in many categories. The result is that when you have your photos with a smaller regional agency, you won't experience as many calls for your work.
The secret to successful sales through the stock agency route is to place specific categories of your photos with highly specialized stock agencies. When photobuyers need a specific, specialized photo, and very often they do, they search out the specialized agencies. If your photos are with one of these agencies, that handle specialties ranging from rodeos to Civil War enactments, you have an excellent chance of scoring.
In contrast, the law of probability is not on your side with your general pictures (scenics, sunsets, hot air balloons, etc.) in a general agency. They might gather as much dust there as they do at home; but not because they aren't good quality photos. There's a huge demand for these kinds of photos. But there are enormous numbers of them out there in the marketplace, making the chances yours have to be used, quite rare. You'll make the now-and-then sale, but not consistent sales with regularity.
How much can you earn from your pictures in an agency? The generally-accepted time-tested rule according to photographers, is that it comes out to $1 per year per picture. For example, if you have 2,000 pictures with agency, you can expect to earn approximately $2,000 each year from those images. And of course you can have different groups of images in several agencies, according to category.
The guidelines you request from the stock agency will let you know how many pictures to send to them in your periodic submissions. Agencies dealing with "general," generic photos (scenics, etc.) like to see 200 - 300 images at a time. Specialized agencies are happy to see submissions of 40 to 80.
Edit your photos carefully.
Should you pay an agency to include your photos in a catalog? Yes and no. It depends on the distribution plans of the stock
1.) How many catalogs do you expect to distribute to photobuyers? 2.) Are these active, everyday photobuyers?
3.) Do I pay the charges up front, or pay from receipts from the sale of pictures through the catalog?
4.) Will the catalog also be accompanied by a CD-ROM disc? How will the scanning be paid for?
Finally, remember that you are already a member of the largest stock agency in the world when you put your individual images on-line on either your own website or a site similar to our www.PhotoSourceFolio.com where traffic is heavy.
Photobuyers, these days, also search by "text" through a search engine (it's faster than image searching when you are looking for a highly specific picture) so be sure to include keyword text descriptions on your website to capture those photobuyers looking for the source of a particular image.
How safe are your pictures with a stock agency? In my 30 years of experience with stock agencies (in my own case dealing with at least three at any one time), I can count on one hand the number of negative stories I've come across. The reality is that for the categories of your photos that are appropriate for agency submission, it's a greater risk to keep these photos at home. It's a financial risk. Your photos are going nowhere but out of date if you let them lie around safe and sound in that shoebox.
Rohn Engh is director of PhotoSource International and publisher of the webpage www.PhotoSourceBank.com .
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