Luc Latulippe

Well yes, if I were you and I had them stockpiled and they were just snoring on my hard drive, I would at least check the options. The biggest problem would be finding a reliable reseller with a good price policy. I wouldn’t go below 75%.
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I picked 50%... mostly because my main source of illustration income can’t be reproduced in this way, regardless. So for me… currently… it’s all gravy.

Thanks guys!

It seems pretty rare to find anyone who’ll even give you 25%. My font-designer buddy makes 40% for his fonts. Most stock houses only give 10% for illustrations, but with no setup fees or annual dues either. You just prep your images and upload them to their site. Ten percent of sales doesn’t sound like a great deal, but it’s 100% more than those old illos are making you now, and you’re not out a penny to set it up.

With the average stock house paying you 10%, if you sold 50 images at $300 in the first year, you’d make $1500.

Theispot (most of you already know how I feel about them) lets artists keep 75% of royalties, but not until charging you a setup fee of $15/image, and an annual fee of $250/yr. So, 1000 stock images managed by theIspot would cost you $15,250 for the first year (I assume after this, the $15/image fee is not reapplied). To this, I can only exclaim “Holy fucking christ!”

You’d have to sell 68 stock illos at $300/ea. just to pay for that first year. Even just uploading 100 images (offering less than that is simply not worth it) would still cost you $1525.00 the first year. Saying you let artists keep 75% of sales revenue sounds like a great sales pitch, but theispot good at nothing if not a sweet, sweet sales pitch.
http://www.theispot.com/register/index.cfm

FolioPlanet’s stock tool (basically a simple PHP search script, hosted on their site and served onto yours) allows you to keep 100% of your sales, after a setup fee ($489, which includes 350 images), a quarterly fee of $87.50, and then $0.25/quarter/image. So 1000 images would cost you $1026.50 per year(?). This is about 7% of the cost that theispot screws you for, and sounds like a very reasonable amount to charge (you spend more on promos, and probably get fewer results).
http://folioplanet.com/product/foliosearch.html

FolioPlanet’s option also means you will have to handle each sale manually. There seems to be no automation to the process, other than the search function. As I understand it, once a client has picked out what they want, they email you the details using a form. You then get the email results, contact them, send them an invoice (with your terms attached!), they sign the agreement, pay the invoice, and then you send along the images to them.

It all sounds far more complicated than it needs to be, when in fact you could hire a web programmer to put this together for you and just host it from your own site yourself.

I continue my quest.

Luc,

25%, 50%, 70% of what? I think that is missing in the poll

Id prefer 5% of $300
rather than 70% of $1…

if you license your work, as royalty free or rights managed via a Reputable Traditional Stock company, that will license an image starting at $100 and up I’m sure you will do just fine.

I know pro illustrators licensing through high end stock companies…. that’s why I say.

—steer away from the companies that work on the low end, and license your images for $1 or $10 bucks…

thats my opinion…

hi Rose

While this is by no means a scientific poll, I did think it was clear that I meant a percentage of royalties. “Royalties” meaning: your cut of the sales.

I realize I’m not polling people according to actual dollar amounts per image, but if I had combined dollar amounts WITH percentages, it would have made for quite an overly-complex poll.

My point here is more one of fairness rather than how big a cheque I’d be happy with taking for my work. I also haven’t mentioned anything here about how some of these places have additional charges before signing a cheque over to you.

Hi Luc,

I got your point now…
Wow, I didn’t know theispot and folio were so expensive…

You are right..

Having said that, you make a good point about how much money per image we’d be comfortable with as a minimum.

I’ve always thought selling illustrations as stock or the worse tag of “clipart” cheapens the product as a whole. I am surprised your poll shows so little votes for that category. I feel more lonely in that position than ever now!

Of course, I am all for any illustrator maximizing their earning potential any way they can in any way they deem right for them. It’s all personal choice and I don’t mean to sell my personal convictions as the right way. Just wanted to chime in.

For now I’d rather work with Art Directors rather than Art Downloaders. Am I alone?

Good luck with your quest Luc and thanks for taking the time to put together the poll. Talking tough about this stuff on your blog helps raise the awareness level for all illustrators to get the best deal for our hard work. There are far too many illustration leeches out there just waiting to suck the earnings out of people who don’t do this kind of exhaustive research.

Best,
Steve

Hey Luc, I’ve been curious about this myself with my recent endeavours. Licensing can be a great tool only if you can get the work out there, it’s much like having an agent. It only works if they do. My suggestion is getting a catalogue together (electronic to keep down costs), seperating each image into five sizes (small, medium, large, XL and XXL files) which would coincide with 5 different costs, much like stock photos (stockxpert.com) to be posted on a shoopping cart site. Step two would be sending a news release to everyone possible (agencies, design houses, retail, corporate,etc.), focussing on anyone who is remotely related to the design, communications and marketing fields…secondary markets would be small business owners. My god, I could create an entire business plan before this paragraph is up. I’m trying to do something similar, maybe we should finally do some work together! grin. XXOO

I’d definitely consider selling my stuff.  I think if you whip out some artwork that’s easily adaptable as stock and it only takes you a little, can be sold multiple times… why not?  I mean, you might not want to sell your really good stuff that way, but I can’t see any downside to this if you were making images that catered tot he stock industry?

Let us know who you go with. I think you’d make a killing licensing your art as stock images!

I am curious to know how many illustrations sell on the ispot and folioplanet stock sites.

I think setting up your own stock site would be best. It wouldn’t necessarily be that complicated and you would have much more control.

Hi Luc,

I seem to recall you not having so much fun on the ispot chat board a while back….I hear you, in can be pretty vicious sometimes. I never post anything there anymore, but do stop by occasionally for a read….

I have maybe 100 stock illustrations on the ispot stock site….I make a few sales a year for anywhere from $200-$1200 per sale. I have friends that sell way more than I do, actually forming a large percentage of their income.
If you talked to John Knepper at the ispot stock site, maybe he would swing you a bulk sign up deal…..I think you would do really well with it, to be honest. Shoot me an email if you want more info Luc.

Doug

One more thing.
I think its a REALLY bad idea to lose control over the rights to your own work, which can easily happen with some of the big and nasty stockhouses. Its an equally suicidal plan to sell illustrations for cheap. Anyone doing this is undercutting themselves, and everyone else that works as an illustrator. This whole cheap stock/clip art thing is one of the main reasons that assignment fees have been stagnant for so long. I think keeping fees as close to regular assignment fees as possible, as well as retaining rights and control over your work is the only way to sell stock.

Thanks for sharing your experiences Douglas! I really appreciate it, and I know everyone reading does too. I’m also really glad to hear that theispot’s stock works for you! It’s always best to hear first-hand experiences in this area.

As for cheapening the value of our work, I’m afraid that’s already happening everywhere. Photo stock sites have recently blamed their declining revenue on “cheap cell phone photos flooding the market.” I find it a weak defense, but I will agree that the production and dissemination of digital graphics is easier today than ever before. The massive amount of images floating out there (whether people steal them, borrow them, get “inspired” by they, whatever) definitely means the market is watered down.

That said, you’re absolutely right about being able to have as much control as possible over the products you’ve created, how they’re sold, and how much revenue you’re able to make from them.

Maybe the answer is a better (or fairer?) approach to stock illustration, one that puts the control of the art and the revenue from sales back into the hands of the actual illustrators. Maybe something like FolioPlanet, owned and managed by illustrators, but with a more centralized approach, and a more modern and up-to-date look and feel.

I’d love to hear from art directors on this. (Note to self: new blog post about this!)

Hey Luc….

I agree that a lot of damage has already been done in regards to the flood of images available from numerous sources. I’m hoping that the first big wave of stock images that were hoovered up about ten years ago will start to look wildly dated soon, as illustration styles move forward. I think its important not to feed the big cheap stock companies with new fuel, thats for sure.
One thing that I’ve been more aware of lately, is that as I am in this business longer, the average age of art directors gets younger, and their taste in illustration obviously matches their age. This may seem an obvious thing, but its definitely caused me to look long and hard at my ‘style’ of illustration, and who it does or doesn’t appeal to. The whole idea of being conscious of ones own illustration style, and being aware of changing visual trends is really interesting.

Nice to chat with you Luc!