I attended the Business of Microstock Panel, held in NY this evening and sponsored by iSyndica alongside Veer Marketplace. It was a star studded panel hosted by Jack Hollingsworth.

Andres Rodriguez, Garth Johnson and Ellen Boughn provided great insights on the past and future of stock photography. The audience was no less stellar with Tom, CEO from Pond5, Cathy Yeulet from Monkey Business Images and Shannon Fagan, president of Stock Artists Alliance present. And many more.

Ellen Boughn

Ellenin her efforts to paint the historical picture highlighted how many of the top contributors in the past have now turned into producers. She cites Yuri Arcurs and Andres Rodriguez who both employ tens of people. If you are a top contributor today, maybe you should think about scaling your business and hire individuals to reach the next step.

On the industry, several trends were identified: Image quality is rising, image variety is dropping and image chasing is rising. The last two being directly correlated. Succesful images get copied, ultimately reducing variety: everyone shoots the same content.

The chasing part is particularly interesting, because in a global world, people in less developed economy are able to replicate shots at much lower production costs. Combined with an increase in non US/UK buyers, there is an increased demand & supply from individuals in Asia, Eastern Europe or even South America.

Garth Johnson

Garth Johnson, from an agency point of a view - he is EVP at Fotolia, shared one memorable quote: "Distribution is King... Price is Queen". This is the challenge and opportunity for stock photo agencies: reaching buyers through better distribution.This includes educating new buyers about licensing. Pricing isn't as important as people are led to think.

Andres Rodriguez

Andres is a top contributor and needs no introduction. Many at the panel were adamant about video being the next big thing, and Andres is getting into it. a good rationale for him is that if you setup a whole shoot complete with models, it really makes sense to take it a step further. Shoot video and offer a whole collection: Stills + Footage. With advertising needing to become more engaging, stock footage is on the verge of skyrocketing.

Andres does have high production costs, which require him to generate a large RPI. A typical payback period for him is 2-3 months. To provide a little bit of perspective, he has a portfolio of 18,000 images and while the industry average is $1/image per month, he generates significantly higher numbers than that. This is crucial for him as his production costs average $14-$20/image.

He goes on to emphasize that creating and maintaining a signature style is very important. "You only have a small thumbnail to express your identity" - he wants people to recognize his photos instantly. His recommendation was clear: photographers should aim for a style: themes and subjects they like to shoot, but also those they are good at.

Tyler Olson from Microstockgroup can be seen on the left, with the panelists in the far right