Selling stock images - RF or RM?

[4Lmike]

I'm just starting to put some of my images on a stock site but don't know which licence type to choose, Royalty Free or Rights Managed. I know the difference between the two but can't decide which one to list them as. Anyone else have experience or opinions on this?

Also, am I right in presuming that I can't list it as RM if I then go on to put the same image on another stock site?

Edited by 4Lmike on Monday 10th January 22:02

[xrrr]

To put it bluntly, in my opinion it depends on the quality of the image. If you put them as RM then they will sell for a lot more than RF but they may not sell at all due to the price. I have a couple of hundred images for sale and they are all RF. I make around $0.65 per image per month on average as RF (total income per month divided by the avergage number of images on each stock agency).

I ummed and ahed for ages, tried RM for a few months on Alamy then after zero sales, very few views I removed all the RM images and went fully RF on Shutterstock, iStock and a few others.

RM does not mean you can't put it else where. If you put it on exclusively to one site you can't put it elsewhere. It is not a good idea to put an image on one site as RM and then others as RF as buyers will spot it and complain to the RM site and ultimately you.

Best option is to do some searches on somewhere like Alamy or Veer and compare your images objectively to the RM vs RF images and decide for yourself.

Personally I think RF is the way to go for 'casual' photographers but it depends on how sellable/commercial/unique your images are.

HTH

ETA: Corbis is a better RF/RM comparison than Veer as Veer is their RF only brand.
http://www.corbisimages.com

Edited by xrrr on Monday 10th January 22:16

[CVP]

I'm on Alamy too and my success with RF is much better than my RM images. I'm going through the process of removing some RM's that have not sold and resubmitting as RF

Chris

[4Lmike]

Ok thanks, I'm on Alamy too. Looks like I will be listing them all as RF then. Now all I need to do is take thousands of pictures!