There can be a number of reasons why a contributor might see a decline in sales revenue. Some of the most common are listed here, so you may want to compare those to your specific situation.
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Age of the images. If most of your images are relatively old, that could definitely contribute to reduction in number of licenses. For one thing, depending on the subject (especially if they involve people and/or technology) they may be starting to appear dated. The technique (lighting, etc.) may also contribute to that perception. If the subject matter is relatively commonplace there may simply be more newer images from other contributors that are either more appealing or come up higher in search results. Recency is not at all the only factor in search results order but it is one of them -- and in fact some users choose to give it a higher weighting. The best way to achieve more sales in this case is to be sure you are constantly updating your coverage of your subjects and adding fresh images to the collection.
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License model. There is a definite downward trend, both here at Getty Images and across the stock industry, in the number of Rights-Managed images being licensed. Most users prefer the simplicity, and generally lower cost, of licensing some form of Royalty-Free image. Rights-Managed images do still get licensed of course, but in general they are tending to be more premium images for more high-end uses. If you have a lot of images in a Rights-Managed collection that are essentially interchangeable with images available via Royalty-Free, you will see a decline in sales of those images. As you may be aware, we have recently taken steps to move RM images that are not being successful under that model into RF collections to try to increase their chances of selling. However some photographers have specified that their images may not make that move. If that is true in your case, and you are seeing a continued decline in sales of your RM images, you may want to reconsider that position. If so, please let us know.
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Supply and demand. The number of images available in stock has seen a huge increase in the last few years, as barriers to entry for photographers have fallen. The demand for images has also increased greatly, but is still outweighed by the supply. So depending on where your images fall on the supply/demand line, you may simply be getting a smaller share of the number of licenses of similar images. The way to combat this is to take a close look at your images and compare them to what else is available on the same subjects. If you find that there are a lot of images available that are comparable or superior (in style, execution, freshness, etc.) then you can see that your share is likely to drop. In that case you need to take steps to produce images that are either on subjects where the market is less saturated or (and) update your imagery so that it is now the best in the marketplace on that subject.
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Relevance and need. Sometimes a subject that was once in demand no longer is or, as above, is simply saturated in the market. So if you are going to produce new images in hopes of being on the positive side of the supply and demand curve, you need to know what kinds of images are now in demand. Fortunately, we have a number of resources available to you to help you do just that. The following URL will take you directly to our Needs section on the Contributor Website where you can find information pertaining to what Getty Images is looking for at any given point in time:
http://contributors.gettyimages.com/NeedsHome.aspx There you will find a variety of suggestions and briefs for images that are in demand and needed, both in terms of broad subjects our Creative Research team has identified and also lists of specific needs we have heard from customers. Also, if you haven't already, if you use an Apple (iOs) mobile device you should install our app:
Getty Images Moment. While that is specifically geared to phone-captured images, there are briefs and needs sent out through that on an almost-daily basis that call also help guide you to what images are in shorter supply and needed in our collections.
I hope that helps. I'm sorry we can’t give more detailed personal reviews of your images at this time, but the above should give you a good basis for going forward.
Sincerely,
The Getty Images Team