iStockphoto Revenues Hit $71.9 Million in 2007

Congrats to my former partner Bruce Livingstone and the rest of the team at iStockphoto for shooting out the lights. As Bruce mentioned on iStockphoto.com yesterday, the numbers are big across the board, including the amount paid to photographers. The scary thing is, there's still more room to grow. Did I mention we sold iStockphoto to Getty for $50 million 2 years ago? sigh . . .

 
For the first time ever, we're breaking our long-standing silence
on the numbers and giving you a few facts and figures. There is one
number that makes us most proud, and it's not the
$71.9 million in revenue we generated last year (although that is
really, really exciting). The amazing thing is that we paid out $20.9 million to contributors last year. That's one h*ck
of a lot of money, and doesn't include the $110,000 we gave out on
Punctum Day. We are now selling an image every 1.4 seconds through this
industry changing marketplace. It even gives us pause every time we
look at these stats.

 
That our revenue and payouts have eclipsed those of many
traditional stock photography companies confirms that microstock is a
viable and profitable business model for contributors and clients. We
wanted to share the sheer scale of how viable and profitable we've all
become together. The supercharged growth we had in 2007 was
orchestrated by an astounding management team that helped make
iStockphoto the envy of the industry. That same iStock/Getty team is
sticking together and adding some new faces to help execute on all the
new super-wicked stuff we have coming this year.