Free Stock Photos

Most stock photography websites offer free images. I wanted to display the information about free images from each website all in one place. So I did. See the table below.

There seems to be a trend where all of the larger stock photography websites offer free images, while the new and smaller players don’t.

Could this be due to the economics of scale where larger organizations can afford the cost of offering a few free image, or does it reflect some internal strategy that’s responsible for the organization’s success?

It can’t cost a lot of money to offer a few free photos, so the explanation is unlikely to be simple economics. Could there be an impact on sales if free images are offered? Given how specific each image is - any image - it’s unlikely that people seeking an image for a particular purpose are going to find what they’re looking for amongst a handful of free images. Although Dreamstime’s free image model may come close to fitting this explanation.

Many of the top microstock websites use their free images as an advertising hook. Just Google “free images” and check who appears in the Sponsored Links. This tends to indicate it’s a marketing activity. Given what’s involved in producing a competitive microstock website, I imagine marketing activities receive more attention in the larger and more established market players. This is a possible explanation, and the best one I can come up with. Let me know if you have any alternative ideas. Anyway, here’s the table:

123rf’s free images program was introduced in March of this year (2007) and on April 4 they released some early result information in their contributor forum. They reported a 20% increase in traffic, higher account signups and longer visits. They also drew connections between the contributors who offered the most free images to the most-viewed portfolios. They follow this through to the logical conclusion and assess how increased profile visitation converts to increased sales. Without citing specific data sources they report that contributors “can expect to receive sales increases of a minimum 40% to 2500%”.

I realize Alexa’s data is a statistical sample, but it concurs with the 20% rise over the month of March, but then reports an even bigger and sudden drop before the end of the month. See 123rf’s traffic chart at Alexa. I’m inclined to believe their reports of the free image section being a marketing success, even if they’re making the statistics match their story. Given almost all the other successful microstock websites have a free section, it seems obvious that it works.

Update 10/05/07: Article updated to reflect Shutterstock’s new free image service.