STOCK IMAGES – MAKE THEM WORK FOR YOU

Back in the day, an art director would thumb through a glossy catalogue from a stock image provider and pick an image that might work in their client’s campaign. If they didn’t see exactly what they wanted, they could either hire a photographer or illustrator to make it, or get the aforementioned stock agencies to research other images in their library for a fee. The photographers in their respective stables were the elite, and pricing reflected that.

Enter the Internet age, and most of that has changed. While you will still see the big names and their exclusive arrangements with top-notch photographers, they have been joined online by many others. The consequence of this new competitive arena has, of course, created significant downward pressure on pricing. It has also created a vast increase in choices for buyers of licensed images.

Licensed Images

In most developed countries, when an artist creates an image, the copyright automatically belongs to them. In order for someone else to use that image on their web site or literature, permission must be obtained and a fee agreed upon. In return, the artist provides a license for that use.
Because the type and term of use varies widely, the fees for licensing can be wide-ranging. For example, if you were only printing 5,000 brochures, the license fee for a particular image would be much lower than if that same image was used on the cover of a best-selling romance novel.
The term “licensed” applies to both traditional and royalty-free arrangements (defined later). The difference is that with traditional licensing, the seller generally knows who the customer is and how they are going to use the image. In royalty-free licensing, this relationship doesn’t exist.

Traditional Licensing - Rights-Managed vs. Rights-Protected

Rights-managed images are licensed for a defined end use, and a license fee is determined by the terms of that use. They can be used in either an editorial or commercial context.
In an editorial context, that is, in a newspaper, magazine or television news piece, the artist is not required to gain permission from a person or property owner to use their face or their building (although there have been challenges to this concept). Editorial shots may be photojournalistic in nature (ie. current events) or simply scenes of people and places to support a story.
Commercial use means that the image will be used in advertising or brochures. Because they directly support the sale of a product or service, the fetching price is much higher than for editorial stock. If faces or other recognizable features of a person appear in the image, a model release must be provided by the artist. Why? The end user may be exposed to a lawsuit if they don’t. For commercial shoots, it is generally understood that the model will be paid if they are helping to promote something, even if it’s only for a dollar. In return, a photographer would receive a signed release, a copy of which would be provided to the end user. Similarly, if you want to use someone’s castle in your ad, you’d better make sure the photographer gets a property release.
This is not to say that rights-managed images used for commercial purposes are too scary or expensive for the small business owner to use. Depending on the size of your print run (or magazine circulation), how many countries it will be seen in, or how long an ad will run for, you may be able to score a model-released image for just a couple of hundred dollars.
But what if you find a unique image that you don’t want any other company using during your campaign period? Be prepared to pay 20 to 30% more (given the same run parameters) for the exclusivity. This is called a rights-protected image.

Royalty-Free Licensing

Royalty-free licensing has been the subject of much debate, and has typically been scorned by professional photographers. The end user pays a one-time license fee and has the right to use it however and for as long as they like. Remember, though - releases still apply for commercial use. Some royalty-free image sites have model releases for their entire collection, so they can be used for either commercial or editorial purposes without concern for liability issues.
The royalty-free concept has spawned a new kind of stock image portal referred to as microstock sites. Prices are down to $1 or less per image, a far cry from the $250 and up that traditional licensing typically costs. Quality and creative values can be all over the map, although this can also be said of some sites that sell both traditional and royalty-free. It’s interesting to note that those same big, established stock agencies with their exclusive libraries and high prices are actively buying up the microstock companies.
While buyers salivate over the choice of images they get for chump change, there is a dark side. Consider this - you cannot negotiate exclusivity for royalty-free. This may not matter to the Mom 'n Pop shop looking for something cheap and cheerful for their flyers, but should be a real concern for larger organizations. Stories abound about competitors using the same royalty-free image in their national advertising campaigns!

Summing Up
A caution about any online stock image collection. If, for instance, you search for “Jack Russell Terrier”, the volume of images you’ll have to sift through may be a staggering waste of your time. Narrow down your search by using quotes to indicate an exact phrase, or connect phrases and keywords with Boolean operators such as AND to ensure your results contain all of these attributes. Example "Jack Russell Terrier" AND playing AND water.

So where can you do your online stock image shopping? Here is a small sampling:

Photographer and Buyer Negotiate Directly
Photographers Direct– This UK site gets buyers and sellers together and allows them to negotiate directly anywhere in the world.

Traditional and Royalty-Free
Masterfile - Toronto based
Alamy - UK based. Largest online collection of images (over 15 million in Jan. '09)
Corbis
Getty Images

Microstock
IStockPhoto
Fotolia
Shutterstock
Dreamstime

© 2007-2009 Gordon Wood

How Do We Rate?

How much to charge for work is always an uncomfortable subject for vendor and client alike.
Fortunately, there’s plenty of precedence on the Internet to help establish fair rates to charge for writing work. While rates are typically stated in dollar ranges, depending on the type of task, and to an extent, geographic region, both vendor and client can get a feel for whether a quotation is fair or not.
But there are different ways in which work can be quoted. By the word, by the hour, by the page or by the project come to mind. For this newsletter, though, we’ll look at the first two scenarios only.

By the word
This method is usually employed by freelance writers and editors of periodicals to negotiate (or dictate!) the price of an article. Now, articles may not be of much interest to Task Partner clients, but there may be cases where the client prefers to be charged by the word.
For instance, if copy is needed for a short brochure, and a rough estimate of the amount of text is known, the client can budget for it. The onus is on the writer to produce the copy to a ceiling price, regardless of how long it takes them to write it. Keep in mind that this price will be for a first draft only. Rewrites at the client’s request means further negotiation.
Where this method does not work (for the writer especially) is the creation of tag lines for a company’s branding program, or smart one-liners for advertising. The number of words can be 5 or less, so the client would pay only $5 to $10 for the tag! “Think time” needs to be covered, so hourly charging makes more sense in this example.

By the hour
In addition to extremely low word count assignments, such as the tag line example, charging by the hour is particularly suited to large projects. This could be a technical manual or copy for an entire web site. The client should have a reasonable idea of the scope of the project, so getting a budgetary estimate from a writer before commencing is recommended.
Break the project down into measurable milestones. That way, the writer can provide time and cost estimates for each. For instance, a web site can be broken down into pages. Keeping the project bite-sized means you can part company after a milestone is reached without a great deal of commitment (on both sides) if things don’t go as planned.
Clients with continuous writing needs may want to consider putting their favourite writer on retainer. In this scenario, the client guarantees that they will pay the writer for a specified number of hours per month, regardless of whether or not the writer provides any or all of those hours. The benefit to the client? They are guaranteed to get that writer’s services for up to the agreed number of hours. If the project goes beyond those hours in that month, the writer is also paid for the additional hours. This isn’t for everyone, but it works well where a busy client and a talented writer have a trusting relationship.

By the way, be prepared to be asked for a deposit before a writer starts a project. Given that the client and vendor may not have a prior relationship, it only makes sense that the vendor wants to be covered for their time if a payment history doesn’t exist. This may be 25% to 50% of the project cost, or it could simply be the first milestone payment.
OK - so we started talking about rates. Here’s a guide (only) as to what rate ranges you can expect to be quoted in southwestern Ontario and nationally. This is largely based on the Professional Writers Association of Canada (PWAC) website, but is also influenced by actual rates charged by local writers:



Remember - rates are negotiable, and some writers may quote rates outside of these ranges.
Finally, these hourly rates may seem high compared to what you pay your employees. Consider, however, that your employees were probably hired for their special skills, one of which may not be writing. If you add CPP, EI, WSIB and EHT contributions you make on their behalf, plus the cost of medical and dental insurance to their hourly rate, you’re better off subcontracting to a writer specialist.

Good luck with your negotiations and your writing projects!

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Welcome to Task Partner's new blog!

This is the place where all of our newsletters can be accessed. We hope they will inform and interest you. Our intent is to tell you as much as we can about the writing business and how we can help you fulfill your technical and business documentation needs.

Keep checking in here for updates, or visit our website at www.taskpartner.ca