2008 Survey of Self-Employed Photographers, Illustrators or Graphic Designers

March 5, 2009 by pmelcher.

How was 2008 compared to 2007? What are industry trends in the production and sale of stock images? Selling-Stock has launched a survey (http://www.jimpickerell.com/surveyshared.aspx) to gather information from photographers, designers and illustrators concerning their 2008 income and cost of doing business.

Go to http://www.jimpickerell.com/articles2/admin-article-view.asp?id=2022 to review our 2007 Income Survey results. The 2008 survey asks the same questions and will provide comparative numbers enabling creators to make informed decisions about trends.

In this rapidly changing and challenging business environment, many image creators are adjusting their business strategies. Some freelance stock photographers are turning to assignments. For others a staff position, possibly even in a non-related field, is their primary source of income and the revenue earned from freelance work is only a secondary income source. Conversely, amateurs with no expectations of ever earning a living from photography are finding that selling stock can be a lucrative and rewarding supplement to their income.

Many freelance photographers sell into multiple segments of the photography industry. To understand the importance of each we ask photographers the percentage of their gross photography revenue that falls into several segments of the industry. This will help us understand the changing relationships between freelance newspaper and magazine assignment work, advertising and corporate work and pure stock sales.

Selling-Stock encourages every photographer, graphic designer and illustrator who licensed rights to images in 2008 - be it for a few hundred dollars or tens of thousands - to respond to the survey’s nine simple questions. The survey will remain open until April 15, 2009. An in-depth analysis of the results will be published in Selling-Stock.

The survey is designed to gather data from individual creators, not agencies or other organizations that represent creator’s work. However, organizations engaged in licensing images are asked to encourage their image suppliers to participate. Image production companies that produce images specifically for licensing as stock are also asked to respond. Those interested can respond to the survey by going to: http://www.jimpickerell.com/surveyshared.aspx. The more data we can collect, the greater the validity of the results.

All individual responses will be held in strictest confidence and no attempt will be made to identify specific individuals.

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