In general, prices and revenue have been declining in the stock photo industry. To a large extent this has been due to oversupply and more and more customers finding the images they need at lower price points.

Based on the information I�ve been able to collect, I have made estimates of the average 2013 gross license fee for images in the five major price categories � RM, traditional RF, Midstock, Microstock and Subscription. My figures can be found in the chart below.

                                           2013 Downloads (est.)           Average Price
Rights Managed                          1,300,000                    $298 (my Getty est.)
Traditional Royalty Free               3,000,000                     $133 (my Getty est.)
Midstock                                    5,000,000                      $35.00 to $45.00
Microstock                               44,000,000                        $6.00 to $7.00
Subscription                           130,000,000                              $1.25

To get a broader cross section of data and opinion, I have prepared a brief 5 question survey (http://www.selling-stock.com/Stock-Photo-Pricing-Survey.aspx) to determine if these averages are high or low based on my reader�s experiences. Many readers will only license images in one or two categories. Please check �Not Applicable� for the questions where you have no data.

I am looking for gross license fee, not your gross income. Since many photographers will not have easy access to gross license fees averages can be determined by dividing your total gross income for the year by the total images licensed. In parenthesis, I have included some sample royalty percentages of the gross my gross license fee calculation to save respondents from having to make their own calculations. Photographers should look at the dollar amount next to their royalty percentage and determine if their average is higher or lower than this number.

Exclusive contributors to iStock should consider their sales in the Midstock category. Non-exclusive contributors would fall into the Microstock category. In general I consider gross license fees that range from $1 to $20 for the largest file size to be Microstock and prices that range from $10 for the smallest size to $250 for the largest to be Midstock.

Click Here To Complete The Survey
http://www.selling-stock.com/Stock-Photo-Pricing-Survey.aspx

same here - I don't separate hundreds of DLs by type, especially for the lower performing agencies (ie, anything other than SS);  to complicate further, we'd have to calculate based on the differing royalty % for each agency

In general, prices and revenue have been declining in the stock photo industry......

Not correct. If anyone has Microstock Analytics or some other software that will tell them the royalty per download for their portfolio for sites per year or month you will see that the opposite is true for micro. If you think that IStock was the first micro site and was charging .25c per image in 2001 that will give you some idea of how much prices have come up. The only exception being IStock itself, which when you include PP saw a massive drop in in RPD with the introduction of ThinkStock.

The volume of sales in micro is so huge this increase could even mean the average price per sale across the industry has come up in the last 10 years or so (after the initial massive drop when micro first appeared).

The problem is that we are seeing this RPD spread out across too many images now so RPI is what has dropped.

Exclusive contributors to iStock should consider their sales in the Midstock category. Non-exclusive contributors would fall into the Microstock category. In general I consider gross license fees that range from $1 to $20 for the largest file size to be Microstock and prices that range from $10 for the smallest size to $250 for the largest to be Midstock.

iStock Exclusive sales include both 'microstock' and 'midstock' prices. But you seem to be saying that iStock Exclusives should put all of their sales in the 'midstock' category. The potential (likely IMO) would be to underestimate the average 'midstock' price.

Quote from: bunhill on June 20, 2014, 05:33

Exclusive contributors to iStock should consider their sales in the Midstock category.

I thought Midstock was just a made up term to describe microstock with higher prices. Does it really exist in any formal capacity?

The way you have quoted that it looks like I wrote it. I didn't. If you read his site he defines his use of the terms. I think his definition of midstock goes back to the piece in which he was extrapolating iStock sales from assumptions derived from credit agency report about Getty corporate funding.

Quote from: bunhill on June 20, 2014, 08:36

The way you have quoted that it looks like I wrote it. I didn't. If you read his site he defines his use of the terms. I think his definition of midstock goes back to the piece in which he was extrapolating iStock sales from assumptions derived from credit agency report about Getty corporate funding.

My mistake. Modified. I'm not sure I remember that definition. It just seems like one of those terms thrown around a lot without many agencies defining themselves or being defined as that.

I think the term 'mid stock' is conceptual rather than being accurately definable in terms of $'s.

When microstock arrived there was such a wide differential in pricing between it and traditional stock that it was always assumed that there *must* be a market for images priced somewhere in the middle. Many sought to discover it but it was always incredibly elusive. Maybe Istock's Vetta and Stocksy have finally established it?

Counting iS exclusive as midstock, my port is hugely underperforming compared to the suggested figures. 

To be honest, I think any stats are essentially meaningless, as they are all port-specifc, and have no relevance for anyone else.
Several people here have posted that they think rpi is a better measure, but if I took out all my non/low selling files, my rpi would increase considerably for no other purpose than vanity, while negating any chances of sales down the line.

Sue - would you just separate out your Getty income from the rest to compare micro RPD to traditional stock RPD?

Ha, I've had Getty sales as low as 40c net / $2 gross. I haven't had a sale that low on iStock for years.