Thursday 10 April 2008

Article on iStock

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An interetting article from the British Journal of Photography. It talks briefly about what istockphoto earns, the top earners and what the "average" contributor can expect. Extract below or click the link above for the full article:

[ istockphoto has] 4000 contributors, and if that figure remained even, they would be earning an average more like $5225 last year. Then you have to calculate that against the costs of the shoots, factoring in how many images you need to hit a premium and how often you need to refresh your portfolio. Lee Torrens, who runs a blog called Microstock Diaries, calculates that each of his images at iStockphoto generates just 30 cents a year. Compared against nine other micro-stock agencies he has images with, iStockphoto paid the best return. The worst, CanStockPhoto, delivered just one cent per image.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey CJ,

The 30 cents per photo is actually a monthly figure, not for the year. I spoke with the BJP editor and told him about the error, but he hasn't corrected it yet. I guess it's not in his interests to tell his readers that a hobbyist can make money with photos - it's not like it's easy to miss the fact my reports are "monthly".

-Lee

Anonymous said...

Update: BJP have updated the post now. :)