2009 RM vs RF earnings at Alamy and Agefotostock

January 10th, 2010 → 11:05 am @

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While plenty of microstock photography blogs publish earnings reports there is less publicly available information on returns and trends from photographers relating to images with traditional agencies. I don’t intend to start publishing regular earnings updates because I’m too lazy that is between me, the Missus and the tax man. However, looking over some reports from 2009 I do feel there is some worthwhile information on sales of my images through traditional agencies to share. For the purposes of this post I’m looking at sales during 2009 through two agencies; agefotostock.com and Alamy.com.

On each of these agencies I have both Rights Managed and Royalty Free images available for licensing and the comparison between the performance of these different licensing models makes for some interesting food for thought.

Here’s the breakdown of the performance of my portfolio on each site for 2009;

AGE

Portfolio size of 51o images. On agefotostock my portfolio is split RM 65% – RF 35%.

65% of revenue came from RM sales
35% of revenue came from RF sales

Average return per sale for RM images was $27
Average return per sale for RF images was $79

Alamy

Portfolio size of 1400 images. On Alamy my portfolio is split RM 74% – RF 26%.

56% of revenue came from RM sales
44% of revenue came from RF sales

Average return per sale for RM images was $44
Average return per sale for RF images was $115

The numbers reported are the net returns after the commissions payable to the agencies. Agefotostock report in Euros which I’ve converted at the rate of 1 euro = $1.44 (10/01/10) for ease of comparison.

The total amount earned from each agency was actually almost equal. While this would seem to indicate a great performance from Age the portfolios can’t be compared simply on numbers. The images concerned on Age are represented exclusively  by Agefotostock and are also probably a stronger collection given I have tended to submit what I consider my better / more commercial work and these submissions are then further edited by Age. Images submitted exclusively to Age also benefit from some in house keywording and optimisation which may well contribute to achieving sales.

It can be seen from the figures above that the average return from sales at Age was actually significantly lower than at Alamy. Given the general concerns over low fees at Alamy and in the industry generally this is disappointing. As stated my earnings from each agency were pretty comparable, so it can also be inferred that Age made up for the lower fees with a lot more sales over the course of the year.

As Agefotostock have now started to accept images on a non-exclusive basis my choice in how to interpret and act upon these results is made somewhat easier. While image exclusivity may help Age generate some sales it didn’t translate into any significantly large ones in 2009. Trading in some modest lost sales through Age for the ability to distribute future images through Alamy and other non-exclusive outlets would seem sensible. The ‘risk’, of course, is that a potential big sale through Age in the future is lost, but then it might be gained elsewhere. While I’m talking about significantly large sales I’m sad to report Alamy didn’t scoop me one either! However, it can be seen prices were better at Alamy for both Rights Managed and Royalty Free sales.

The comparison between RM and RF at both sites is also somewhat surprising given the traditional thinking that Rights Managed images command higher fees. While this is certainly still the potential with RM – the elusive ‘significantly large sale’ – the more bankable reality is in low value editorial sales for which an RM image is often cheaper than a Royalty Free shot. The figures above show that on both Age and Alamy I have favoured RM licensing. While this is sometimes dictated by the nature of the image it is also often down to a call on my part on the best licensing model for each image. My 2009 report cards would seem to indicate I may not always have been making the right choice.

On both sites average returns per sale for RF images were higher than for RM images. While on Age the two sides of my portfolio exactly pulled their weight in terms of overall revenue share, on Alamy my RF images outperformed my RM; contributing 44% of total revenue when making up only 26% of my portfolio. In the defense of Rights Managed licensing there is of course the potential of further returns from one of these sales in the form of extensions, further uses etc. RM does also have the uncapped potential to turn these results around; one big sale could make a year’s data look very different. However, given the results above I’d be wasting my time reflecting if it didn’t make me think hard about building my RF stock.

Obviously the results I’ve seen are in a large part reflective of the content of my portfolios in terms of subject, styles and quality. No doubt other contributors may have different stories to tell?

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