Photo stock agencies: are they worth it?

There's a lot of photo stock agencies on the net these days, many of them "royalty free" paying about

25c to 50c per image download (bigstockphoto, shutterstock,etc...) Do you belong to one? Are they

worth it? Is it worth joining several? Cheers, David

There's not a simple answer to your question and you do need to invest some time in getting to understand how the industry is structured and how it's changing.

Not all stock agencies are "royalty free"

Not all "royalty free" agencies deliver poor returns to the photographer.

Traditionally, agencies have been very selective both on the photographers they represent and the photographs they choose to handle. More recently a genre of agencies have developed that are not selective at all or are much less so.

The agencies that are unselective offer low rates of return to a photographer because their sales per image are also low. Many of the agencies referred to as "royalty free" are unselective and the issue for the individual photographer is simply whether its worthwhile to spend time preparing and uploading images , and to live with any restrictions they may wish to place on alternative use of the images. For me the answer would be no. There is another, broader aspect here which is that the existence of vast quantities of cheaply available variable quality images from people that are being paid peanuts adversely affects the success of a historically and potentially profitable market with agencies that are selective and sell at higher prices (whether "Rights Managed" or royalty free). Whilst I'm sure the "non selectives" do damage the industry in total, it isn't a practical proposition to expect photographers who may well not get a contract with a selective agency not to put their work elsewhere if they find the deal acceptable.

Many photographers with a strong "Rights Managed" library business seem to me to confuse "non selectives" with "Royalty Free". But there are RF businesses that pay photographers decently- I certainly earn more per image on average from a RF agency than I'd expect from a Rights Managed agency; but then the agency markets actively or through sub-agents in many countries and the rates achieved for CD collections and individual images are quite high.