The State of the Stock Photography Business

About The Image: The three giants: stock photography consolidation An interesting piece from about the image on the state of the stock photography business. (Thanks Alan!)

Huge revenue numbers from the top three players in the stock business. Getty did $735 million in revenue last year, Corbis did $228 million and Jupiterimages did $124 million. Impressive.

One of the things we want to do at Zooomr is to help the pro/am photographer monetize their photostream within the photosharing space. Stock photography certainly represents an avenue for this. Talented pro/ams shouldn’t be paying to be a part of a photo social networking site, they should be paid to be there.

This is not something we are doing in our version 2.0 release, but it is something that we hope to build over the longer term — but we need to figure out how exactly to do this, something we hope to do in the months ahead. There is so much talent in the pro/am photography space and there is such an opportunity to bring fresh new images to market for those photographers who would like to participate.

8 Replies to “The State of the Stock Photography Business”

  1. This Sounds like a great idea… i am very interested to see how it plays out. I have been reading your blog, and think you are right on. I am also curious to see how the revenue generation works with the creative commons license.

    Michael

    flickr:michaelhilton
    michael.hilton@yahoo

  2. Thomas:

    I’ve been been formulating ideas about exactly this, especially over the last few months. Any site that is going to go heads on with not only Getty, Corbis, or Jupiter, but also Google and Yahoo, and better be poised to address very serious concerns and approaches from the outset. I’m happy to make myself available as a consultant. I constantly advocate on my own weblog and in other pro/am forums regarding new and emerging photographers, and their understanding of industry aspects that have a direct bearing on how one determines the ‘value’ of their work, be it a CC, RF, or RM License. File that comment under the banner of “If you don’t value your own work, why should anyone else?”

    I wrote an article based on the above, that can be seen at:
    http://tinyurl.com/lrqkb

    PS: This reply may come at a bad time to post, since I just blogged about the “Greenberg” issue earlier tonight. Doh!

  3. Working in the hosting industry as a product manager I’ve been approached by both fotolia and iStockPhoto to offer their services to our customers. The idea is great, but based on their prices it’s hard to realize any benefit for my company. Is there room for a more traditional pricing model to pick up the slack? We serve almost a quarter of a million customers. Surely there’s a way to share the wealth with all parties?

  4. Jef,

    Is there any way to tell if your photos on flickr have been printed by someone else?

    Under that pay structure maybe family members would fight over the right to manage and post photos so they could get a commission 🙂

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