I stumbled across Dan’s article and it could not have been more timely with Getty’s new web and mobile image products.  In 2007, Dan wrote an interesting article about the future of photo sharing sites and agencies. I am going to touch on some key points from his article.

Dan states there are more hobby photographers than professional ones. Once digital cameras were out the market there has been an explosion of hobby photographers.  They can earn some decent money by submitting their photos to internet sites such as shutterstock and flickr.  Somebody out there will purchase a copy of their photo.  Internet business is huge.

Shutterfly use to be an online business that only provided printing services.  Their internet based business model changed to include stock licensing. Their primary goal was to dominate the wedding market.  Photographers would upload their photos and clients can buy their prints online. Flickr was right behind them.   Now both are internet consumer subscription sites.

You must include consumers in your business model.

User-generated content is the new buzz words. Myspace and Youtube are already popular and profitable selling user-generated songs and videos.  And they have proven that anything will sell. It was inevitable that photo-sharing sites would sell user generated photography.  They predicted that Getty and Corbis, both photo agencies, would move into the consumer market.

So here it is in a nutshell.   Dan says that more people have photography as a hobby than as a profession.  True.  Dan also says that photo businesses must have a hybrid of consumer/pro-photo sharing licensing business model to be profitable.  Also true.

So what are you going to do? You can start by skimming  these photo sharing stock and microstock sites and make a list.  Do you want to join in?  The business model will be the same but can you really compete.  Is it too competitive in such that as these sites grow in popularity and credibility, will it dominate the consumer and professional market.  Some things to think about!

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