The best stock media website for you depends on the type of media you seek (photos, illustrations, vector art, audio, or video) and the type of license you require (where you plan to use it: print, digital, commercial, etc.). There are dozens of stock photo sites to choose from, but all have slightly different pricing and features. Compelling images make your marketing and business stand out from your competitors.
If you don’t want to control who contributes or tell people that their work isn’t good enough, it’s pretty hard to charge a premium price for crap content.Royalty-free (or stock-free) media is an affordable way to get high-quality, professional photos or videos without a big budget for a shoot. On the other hand, if Adobe is committed to a mass market product, they had to keep Adobe Stock open to everyone – which means very low acceptance criteria – the hallmark of microstock.
What differentiates boutique stock agencies like Stocksy United, Offset, 500px Prime and Image Brief from the hordes of cheap-ass microstock is that their collections are all highly curated and tightly controlled. To Be Fair – Adobe Stock Is The Lowest Common DenominatorĪt the risk of sounding a little too much like that grumpy internet guy so far – I can understand where Adobe might be coming from. Stock agencies such as Stocksy United, Offset, 500px Prime and Image Brief have all risen out of the microstock ashes to offer a high quality product with fair commissions paid to their contributors. I guess that’s why I’m so disappointed with Adobe – they had a chance to do something that would not only benefit their client base of creative professionals but the entire creative industry as a whole – but instead we got just another blood sucking content leach that is designed to do nothing more than syphon the work of creative professionals into a system that gives little to nothing back to the artists that worked so hard to create it.Īnd if you’re thinking “well, that’s just how the creative industry works in the internet age” – it doesn’t have to. It’s no secret that microstock agencies have been fighting each other in a bizarre death spiral to the bottom of the barrel for years. Successful Stock Agencies Sell a Quality Product At a Fair Price I’ll leave it up to you to figure out how many times you will have to sell an image through the generosity of Adobe Stock just to pay for your monthly Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. If you want to know exactly how much Adobe Stock values your time and creativity as a creative professional, here is the link to the entire commission structure. In other words, you’ll literally earn pennies more per sale…
If you’re new to the microstock micropayment business model – this is how Adobe’s generous new pay structure will benefit you:Ĭommission = 0.25 (original sale price) / 0.20 (assumed original commission rate) x 0.33 (new commission rate) = 0.41 (new sale price with Adobe Stock!!!!!!!!!!!!) *Well they have raised subscription payouts to from 20-25% to 33% – golly gee wow – 33% of almost nothing is still almost nothing. The worst part is that Adobe has maintained Fotolia’s existing microstock micropayment business model*. Yes, you read that right – the maximum amount Adobe is willing to pay a creative professional for licensing their work is $3.30.ĭoes that sound fair to you? Does that sound sustainable to you? How many times would your work have to be sold just to break even? If you’re lucky and sell an on demand image through Adobe Stock – you’ll get paid $3.30 whole US dollars! Adobe Stock Will Pay You Whole Pennies For Your Work!