Microstock: Royalty-Free Photos

The core of the microstock industry is Royalty-Free, without it, the microstock industry would not be existent. What is Royalty-Free? Royalty-free, to my layman's understand, means the buyer will pay the photographer a small sum for a one-time, non-exclusive use of the photograph, and the photographer retains all the rights related to the photograph. A more elaborate explanation can be found from wikipedia Royalty Free entry. The non-exclusive term enables the photograph to be sold to as many customers as possible through as many microstock sites as you wish. Almost everyone in the microstock field submit to more than one microstock site. It is a well-known fact. However, some microstock sites do provide some incentives for their contributors to go exclusive with them. Both Dreamstime and iStockPhoto offer contributor higher rates if you go exclusive with them.

As royalty-free photos are non-exclusive, the same photograph can be used by many designers. What kind of probability would the same picture appear at the same time at the same place? Great minds think alike, sometimes it does cause some embarrasment. A few months ago, two rival American banks used exactly the same photograph for their promotion campaigns. Some red faces there.

By the way, I have categorized my postings and labelled them accordingly. You can find the postings in the same category by clicking on the labels on the navigation bar on the left.