Analysis #32--What Illustration Categories Do Best?

After figuring out that illustrations generate more revenue per image than photographs (see my previous post for details), I decided to examine which illustration categories do best.  From a previous study of Index Stock's 2400 categories and subcategories, I had spotted certain hot spots.  I expected sales by category for illustrations to closely follow the pattern of our overall library.

I was surprised to see some major differences.  (Please note that my review uses only the 11,000 illustrations in our library.  This is a relatively small set of images to study, and this collection does not have the coverage of subjects that our 1,000,000 image general library has.)  In particular, people illustrations didn't do nearly as well as people images in general and concept illustrations were quite low.  Here is a comparison of the ranking of all categories for illustrations and our overall collection.  (I've linked the top fifteen to the relevant images, for your viewing pleasure!)

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Illustration   Rank	Category	Overall Rank
1	Public Service	41
2	Garden	3
3	Couple	43
4	Holiday	61
5	Land Transportation	10
6	Foreign Travel	27
7	Bird	44
8	Environment	59
9	Americana	2
10	Occupation	48
11	Marine Transportation	35
12	Vacation	18
13	Concept	51
14	Business	33
15	Astronomy	62
16	Cat	13
17	Medical Science	36
18	Teenager	19
19	Aviation	21
20	Art	40
21	Zoology	52
22	Social Issue	15
23	Communication	28
24	Education	37
25	Botany	56
26	Flower	39
27	Woman	14
28	People	17
29	Nature &   Scenic	32
30	Miscellaneous	24
31	Shopping	12
32	Food	31
33	Road	6
34	Meteorology	11
35	Child Both	38
36	Industry	60
37	Military	22
38	Abstract	64
39	Baby	49
40	Sport &   Leisure	42
41	Historical	4
42	Religion	58
43	Entertainment	47
44	Child Girl	45
45	Family	53
46	Man	23
47	Fall	54
48	Wedding	50
49	Mature Adult	57
50	Snow Scene	5
51	Architecture	55

Some categories didn't generate any illustration licenses at all, during the period I studied.  They included some fairly popular categories in the overall collection, such as "Crowd," "Farm Animal," "Dog," "Native American," and "Toy & Hobby."  These should probably be target areas for those creating new illustrations.

When I dug down into the subcategory level, I saw a few particularly interesting areas:

Historical women.  We have some great old poster-style images, that are doing well.

Business people, outside office.  Does five times better than business people, inside the office.  Some of the classification on the latter category is suspect--could be part of the reason?

Holiday, fourth of July.  Patriotism always sells well in the U.S.  The Statue of Liberty is another popular illustration topic, but we only have one image to promote.

Nature & Scenic, desert.  Hard to convey the dry landscape of a desert, with a photo.  An illustration can put back in the contrast and colors that the eye sees, and the lens misses.

I've mentioned before that royalty free tends to undercut image pricing in the areas it has penetrated.  There is a concentration of royalty free illustrations in the popular people and concept categories.  This may be why the revenue of these categories is lower than expected.

If you are an illustrator, my information should encourage you.  There are good opportunities to license your work via the rights managed market--or via royalty-free, if that is your direction.  Go for simple images, with a central object or theme that is easily described.  Use lots of color and take advantage of the power of illustration, to exaggerate the subject a bit.  The result is likely to be a high-earning image and the envy of the mere photographers, who share space with you on sites such as ours.