Stock Photography : Rights Managed v Royalty Free

For some, stock photography is a useful way to supplement income from more regular photographic work, while for others it’s a full-time career. You can operate at whatever level you want, from part-time venture to full-time business.

Maybe you’re just a hobby photographer looking to earn some extra cash so you can buy that dream DSLR camera that you have your eye on.

Many photographers new to the stock photography industry agonize in the beginning over whether they should place their stock photos with a rights managed or a royalty free agency. There are pros and cons to each method, and I'll summarize those here.

You should know from the start: some photographers hate the royalty free stock photography model. They feel that photographers devalue their work along with the work of all other photographers by licensing the photos so cheaply. This is especially true with royalty free micro stock photography.

I will try to take a closer look at the general differences, in the hopes that I can help you make a more informed decision with your own stock photography career.

If you’re starting out I recommend micro stock libraries, but if you are more experienced you should check out the rights managed libraries, and if you specialize for example in wildlife or sports photography there are specialist picture libraries you can join.

There is one more option and that is launching your own stock library.

Most rights managed stock photo agencies still require you to submit your work via regular postal mail. You must put everything on CDs usually, sometimes creating additional information files, and conforming to specific file sizes, types and a myriad of other rules.

In addition to the submission process, most rights managed agencies want hundreds of photos submitted with your first batch. Submitting hundreds of photos will not guarantee you'll be accepted to the agency either; these are needed just for the initial review of your work. Your work will need to be outstanding and top quality.

Standard royalty free stock agencies seem to be handled in a similar way.

You must have a large number of photos to submit for review. Generally, they must be submitted via regular mail, and often there's a long wait time to find out if you've been accepted or not.

Some rights managed and royalty free libraries also require exclusivity, meaning you're not allowed to submit your work to other agencies.

Now of course on the upside: rights managed stock photo agencies carry more clout, and have much higher-end clients. As a photographer, you'll earn much more money per license agreement - sometimes several hundred dollars or more for just one photo.

The catch 22 of the higher earnings however, is that you'll generally see less sales of each picture. One picture might sell once in a year, or it may sell multiple times. Old pros in the rights managed photography world say that as a rule of thumb, you can expect to earn approximately $1 per year for each photo in your portfolio.

So if you have 3,000 photos in your rights managed stock photography portfolio, you can reasonably expect to earn about $3,000 per year. And since you can earn hundreds of dollars per picture, then of course you've already figured out that most of your pictures won't sell over the course of that year.

Of course this is just an approximate figure; some photographers earn less and some make more.

Another benefit of being with a rights managed agency is reporting. Each time an image of yours is licensed, there is information logged. And that information is shared with you in the form of reports. You'll know who licensed the images and what they were used for.

These reports are usually sent along with your royalty payments, and this is one other sticking point: most rights managed stock photography agencies still pay on a quarterly basis. This means you receive checks once every three months, and that is only if you earn the minimum required to get paid that quarter. Some rights managed agencies are changing in this regard, however those are not yet the norm.

General royalty free agencies often run in a very similar fashion to the rights managed agencies, and in fact many of the biggest royalty free agencies are part of, or owned by, the rights managed agencies.

Micro stock royalty free photography agencies are, however, quite a bit different. One of the first things you'll find is that micro stock photography agencies operate almost solely online. Submissions are made via FTP or website uploads, the entry requirements are much less severe, and things generally happen much faster.

Most micro stock photography agencies don't require hundreds of photos to be submitted in your initial application. In fact, many of them allow you to start with just one photo submission. Some require three for the first submission, and at least one requires 10 pictures for your first submission.

Micro stock photography agencies do require you to prep your pictures; however the preparation work is not nearly as extensive. Images are submitted in JPG form for instance, whereas rights managed agencies often require TIFF and some even require RAW file format.

Another very big difference with micro stock photography agencies is the amount of money photographers earn for each license sale. In most cases, the photographer earns just $0.20 - $0.50 with each sale. This often sounds like an extremely tiny amount when compared to RM agencies where the photographer can earn $100 or more per sale.

The key difference, though, is volume. With micro stock agencies, photographers tend to sell their pictures a lot more often because the end client fees are much less expensive. Instead of selling just one or two pictures a year for instance, you're more likely to sell hundreds of pictures.

In fact, many photographers have reported higher overall earnings with micro stock photography agencies.

One of the biggest downsides to selling royalty free stock photography - particularly with micro stock agencies - is reporting. Generally there is none.

Photographers don't usually know who bought their photos, or how they might be used. Some micro stock photography sites do give you the name of the buyer, but most don't.

One plus point for micro stock photography agencies is they do tend to send photographer payments monthly.

That is a brief summary of the primary differences between the picture agencies; hopefully it's enough to help you decide the best route for you to take when entering the stock photography industry.

For more opportunities to sell photos online and other ways to earn money with your camera check out Photography Update, and my other hubpage.