What about online price calculators?

YOU ARE SEEING THIS MORE AND MORE and they can be very helpful, especially for budgeting purposes as a project is in its initial planning stages. Photo agencies' websites will provide you with a series of entry boxes where you can describe the nature of your project, the specifics of your use, and then hit a "calculate" button and a price will appear.

However, there are two very important things you need to know about these online calculators, including ours, so that they do not work to your extreme disadvantage-- which is a distinct possibility if you're not careful.

Important issue number one:

It will be helpful if you understand what the agencies are trying to accomplish with these online price calculators, because it isn't as obvious as it might at first seem.

Always remember that "traditional" rights managed images are in competition with royalty-free images. The primary difference between the two is price, but that is not the only difference. There is also something that is generally referred to as "The Hassle Factor". Since royalty-free images are sold on a "one price fits all" basis, none of the negotiating efforts described in this document is necessary.

Now, we hasten to point out that despite that, quite often there are many good reasons to opt for a rights managed images instead of royalty-free images. In fact, we have a whole essay on this very issue at The Real Differences Between Royalty-Free and Rights Managed Stock Images.

Nevertheless, agencies that sell rights managed images understand that if they can make the "process" easier, less hassle-intensive, it reduces somewhat the advantage of royalty-free images: The "hassle factor" becomes a little more even.

The problem is that it can be an illusion. While an online calculator can seem to make things easier for you, in some respects -- very important respects -- it can actually make things harder.

Which leads to the second important issue ...

Important issue number two:

Understand this: When you are filling out an online price calculator form, the questions that are being posed to you are exactly the same ones we've described in this document for exactly the same reasons. In an "automated" way the agency is trying to address the umbrella issues: How important is the photo to your project, and how important is the project overall?

And the form will provide them with that information in an extremely crude way that is ultimately unhelpful to you. Why? Because it completely eliminates your opportunity to provide them with the "Yes, but..." information that can, should, and will work in your favor.

In other words, if the job of the process is to charge you a price for the image based upon how you are going to use the image, you want that price to reflect how you are actually using the image, not on some broad pigeonholes programmed into an online calculator that leave no room for subtleties, mitigating factors and the other things described in this document that should, indeed, be taken into account.

Use online calculators for "ballpark" budgeting, and nothing else ...

For rough budgeting purposes, for getting the "lay of the land", and for seeing what happens to a price, generally, as the scope of your project moves wider or narrower, online price calculators are fine. If you are looking for "ballpark" figures (as opposed to a final price) online calculators can be a real time saver. [Beware, however. See the next section of this document for how to avoid one of the biggest mistakes you can make: comparison shopping based upon "ballpark", as opposed to "final" price quotes...]

But you are dealing with an agency that insists on the immutability of the prices generated by their online calculators and refuses to engage in the human interaction described in this document, understand that you are dealing with an agency that has decided to address its own interests at the expense of yours. They are saying, in effect, "We're interested in knowing all the things that can tell us how much we charge you, but none of the things that might tell us how little we can charge you."

Find another agency for your rights managed transactions. Rigid adherence to an online calculator makes things a lot easier for them, but completely obliterates your ability to have factors in your favor taken into account. The very nature of a rights managed transaction cries for "custom fitting". If you're not getting it, go elsewhere, or turn to royalty-free images.