Microstock Celebrity – Lise Gagné
Posted by Lee Torrens
Lise Gagné is a celebrity microstocker and another top performer. She is reportedly the first contributor to become a full-time professional microstocker. She has over 5,000 photos in her iStockphoto portfolio, where she is an exclusive artist, an inspector and a site administrator.
Lise is the jewel in the publicity crown at iStockphoto. She’s often cited in their press and was the subject of a formal iStockphoto press release when she passed the 500,000 sales milestone in June this year.
Known For
Highest selling photographer at iStockphoto and community leader
Websites
lisegagne.com | iStockphoto profile
Personal Details
Born 1964 | Canadian | Lives in Quebec
Background
Leaving school at 14, Lise worked in boutiques and traveled until eventually becoming a French-English translator in her 20’s. At 36 she switched to graphic and web design which finally lead to her finding her passion in microstock.
Signs of Success
- over 500,000 downloads at iStockphoto
- 33,000 results at Google for search term “lise gagne“
- earns in excess of US$100,000 per year (link to PDF)
Press Mentions
Lise Gagné in New York Times | Lise Gagné at Black Star Rising | Lise Gagne at Crowdsourcing | A dated case for how Lise Gagné could earn more
Posted July 28th, 2007 by Lee Torrens
Actually, with the money I typically get on istockphoto (an average of 60 cents a download), and considering that she has a Canon 1DS Mark II capable of making larger photos that can be sold much more expensively than mine, and considering that she’s exclusive which means she makes double of the nonexclusives, I’d estimate that she makes $1.50 a download, and right now she has about 20,000 downloads a month (thus, 240,000 downloads a year).
Do the math: $1.50 x 240,000 downloads a year = much more money a year than most other photographers except maybe the top 1% of photographers in North America.
Lise Gagne is earning much more than you estimated. You say $100,000 but the press release says six figures. I agree with DaveofCali’s estimation, the earnings per image can be even higher. I earn over $1 and am shooting with 10mpix camera and far from diamond (but exclusive).
In fact Lise could be beating Yuri on sales or is close to his numbers.
Hi Boris,
Yes, I expect it’s much higher too, but when they say “six figures”, $100,000 is the most one can ‘assume’. I’d be interested to see a more accurate figure from an authoritative source.
I was told Yuri sold 3,000 more photos on iStockphoto than Lise last month (I don’t monitor this myself). The achievement is even more impressive when you consider he has a lower upload allowance than Lise, and receives less advantage in search results from being non-exclusive, having less total sales, and less time registered.
But then, I believe Lise still works alone while Yuri has created a team of assistants. The comparisons are difficult given the different situations.
I never knew someone could make so much off iStock, wow this is an eye opener.
well i’m also amazed as well as inspired by the fact that someone could make such an amount of money from freelancing and selling photos to other sites. Real cool man.
There’s a video about Lise Gagne here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNMqdWWs7GE