I’m talking to companies who use photography in marketing and other materials here:
When I worked at PodTech we made a mistake: we used a photograph from a photographer who was shooting at one of our parties without his permission on a sign. It’s an easy mistake to make. You’re surfing around at Flickr, see a cool photo, and want to use it on a brochure, on a sign, on a blog, or something. It’s very easy for normal people to get confused by the licensing. Just because it has a Creative Commons logo on it does NOT mean you can use it in commercial contexts.
I’m sure that lots of you are under even more pressure now to do marketing without paying much for it. Be careful, because if you use the wrong photo off of Flickr you’ll get hit with a bill for thousands of dollars, like we were, and you might face some really nasty PR on blogs like we did.
So, what should you do instead of surfing Flickr or SmugMug? Use a stock photography agency.
“But, Scoble, aren’t those really expensive?”
Not anymore. Shutterstock’s online stock photo agency, for instance, will sell you five images for $50. What’s the advantage of using those images instead of trying to use images off of Flickr, even ones that are public domain? (All my images, for instance, are totally in the public domain — you are welcome to use them for free and without attribution. My gift to you from Fast Company magazine). There’s two advantages:
1. Every image there was checked for quality by a human being. They look at 100,000 images a week and have more than five million images in their library.
2. Every image has “all you can eat” licensing so you can use that image on your blog, on your business cards, on your marketing materials, on your signs, everywhere.
They also pay all the photographers. Some of the photographers on the site are making $10s of thousands per month, although I just was talking with Shutterstock’s president, Adam Riggs, and he told me that if you are a good photographer, with a portfolio of about 500 images, you’ll probably make around $50 to $100 a month. That isn’t a whole lot, but can help pay for equipment and other stuff and as you improve and get better images that companies need you’ll increase your pay. One difference about Shutterstock is that it is a lot easier to get images accepted into their system than on other, older, stock agency sites who usually only deal with professionals with big names.
Most people who submit to microstock sites submit to more than one. For example, Lee Torrens reports his November 2008 earnings at $615.26 per month which is his combined income from submitting to several microstock agencies.
Anyway, is it worth using images from Flickr to save $50? I don’t think so. Don’t make the same mistake we made at Podtech.
Scobleizer 
That’s a great way to earn extra money for all the partime shutterbugs out there! http://myphillynetwork.com/archives/336
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That’s a great way to earn extra money for all the partime shutterbugs out there! http://myphillynetwork.com/archives/336
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Or you can understand CC licenses enough to find the pictures on flickr that are available for commercial use, as long as you give proper attribution (It’s not that difficult to search for them). Here’s a couple of you:
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Or you can understand CC licenses enough to find the pictures on flickr that are available for commercial use, as long as you give proper attribution (It’s not that difficult to search for them). Here’s a couple of you:
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Been in the design business for 30 years and the biggest offenders I’ve seen are salesmen. Unauthorized images fill all those PowerPoint presentations. That’s why smart companies let their marketing depts do the presentations (they know (or should) the rules) and the even smarter ones create a library of images (all cleared) that employees can draw from.
Most don’t realize that copyright infringement pays treble damages.
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Been in the design business for 30 years and the biggest offenders I’ve seen are salesmen. Unauthorized images fill all those PowerPoint presentations. That’s why smart companies let their marketing depts do the presentations (they know (or should) the rules) and the even smarter ones create a library of images (all cleared) that employees can draw from.
Most don’t realize that copyright infringement pays treble damages.
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I guess I should have read the whole post ;-). Thomas Hawk would probably say that this is an opportunity that Flickr missed out on, because he’s been saying flickr should have done exactly what Shutterstock did.
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I guess I should have read the whole post ;-). Thomas Hawk would probably say that this is an opportunity that Flickr missed out on, because he’s been saying flickr should have done exactly what Shutterstock did.
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@Owen Byrne: Isn’t that exactly what Flickr IS trying to do with their tie-up with Getty, making user images available for a fee in addition to the ones the owners already give away? They certainly left it a bit late, but if they do it right they have a big enough library and enough market share to be a strong contender.
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@Owen Byrne: Isn’t that exactly what Flickr IS trying to do with their tie-up with Getty, making user images available for a fee in addition to the ones the owners already give away? They certainly left it a bit late, but if they do it right they have a big enough library and enough market share to be a strong contender.
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Thanks for the link, Scoble, I’m quite a fan.
One thing – be careful of the “all you can eat” statement as the license does come with some restrictions. For example, it doesn’t permit you to print the photos on products for resale. For those rights you need to pay a little more (around $50 per photo depending on the agency) for what is known as an ‘Extended License’.
So check the license conditions carefully when buying stock photos. As you said, it’s better to invest a little time and a little money to ensure you’re getting it right and not opening yourself up to risk.
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Thanks for the link, Scoble, I’m quite a fan.
One thing – be careful of the “all you can eat” statement as the license does come with some restrictions. For example, it doesn’t permit you to print the photos on products for resale. For those rights you need to pay a little more (around $50 per photo depending on the agency) for what is known as an ‘Extended License’.
So check the license conditions carefully when buying stock photos. As you said, it’s better to invest a little time and a little money to ensure you’re getting it right and not opening yourself up to risk.
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Wow, I was about to take up photography again – very much an amateur – and never really thought that with a bit of effort and some good shot you could make some decent pocket money out of it. Even getting £100 a month would be enough to help save for better equipment. Thanks for the tip!
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Wow, I was about to take up photography again – very much an amateur – and never really thought that with a bit of effort and some good shot you could make some decent pocket money out of it. Even getting £100 a month would be enough to help save for better equipment. Thanks for the tip!
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this looks really interesting, thanks for the post, and especially for putting some numbers in it. I’m a keen amateur photographer myself, maybe I can make a few bucks out of it.
I couldn’t find anything in the ShutterStock FAQ about image size/formats, pity they don’t clarify that sort of thing up-front.
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this looks really interesting, thanks for the post, and especially for putting some numbers in it. I’m a keen amateur photographer myself, maybe I can make a few bucks out of it.
I couldn’t find anything in the ShutterStock FAQ about image size/formats, pity they don’t clarify that sort of thing up-front.
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