Another Licensing Questions

[Simply Ravishing]

I just received this email...


I am a developer for the City of Seattle, in the newly formed Department of Finance and Administrative Services, Business Technology Division. We are working on a web application that will be outward facing (i.e. accessible to Seattleites). My supervisor saw your Seattle skyline picture at bing and suggested we incorporate some of your pictures in our site. I browsed quickly through your pictures and they are truly breathtaking.

What I would like to know is how much you would charge us to use a couple of your pictures for the site we are building. We are expecting to get a lot of traffic through this future site so your pics would get some significant exposure.

Please let me know by responding to this email.

How would you respond? I have a few inquires about licensing some of my images before, but nothing that panned out, or got past the initial inquiry... I know it will depend on the length of use, and all of that, but I am really lost when it comes to how to charge for licensing. Any help would be great!

Thanks!

[Jimconnerphoto]

Originally Posted by Simply Ravishing

would get some significant exposure.

Do they all go to the same forum and get what to say to the photographer? there is always a "would get some significant exposure" statement in these emails. lol
I do not do spec work often but I typically have:
web only price for 1-5 years
Exclusive Web Rights (often double above price)
print price
Exclusive Print Rights (often double above price)
Full Rights (Typically based on how much I think I would make on an image if sold to multiple clients and my costs.)

What those prices are would be up to you. I take into consideration the cost I incurred while shooting and my day rate.
I do not discount for significant exposure.

[jacuff]

Well "we are expecting to get a lot of traffic through this future site so your pics would get some significant exposure" can be translated 1 of 2 ways.

1) We don't have a lot of money so we are hoping you would let us use them in exchange for exposure so that other companies will see your image and contact you about licensing similar to the way we say your image on Bing.

2) Your image will be seen by lots of people so charge us accordingly.

Somehow I think they mean one more than the other.

[Simply Ravishing]

I found this online calculator, not sure if it is any good or not... http://www.worldofstock.com/rm_calc.php

But I entered that it would be used for an

advertising/promotional/coorporate
up to 5,000 visitors per day
website/interenet
12 months
Home Page
For Profit


And it tells me $200. I am guessing that is per image. Is that reasonable? Low/High? Would you charge the same no matter how many they plan on using?

Thanks =)

[Simply Ravishing]

Originally Posted by jacuff

Well "we are expecting to get a lot of traffic through this future site so your pics would get some significant exposure" can be translated 1 of 2 ways.

1) We don't have a lot of money so we are hoping you would let us use them in exchange for exposure so that other companies will see your image and contact you about licensing similar to the way we say your image on Bing.

2) Your image will be seen by lots of people so charge us accordingly.

Somehow I think they mean one more than the other.

It is for the City of Seattle, I am guessing they have some money...

[Simply Ravishing]

More information...

We are building a website that is open to the public showing reports, graphs, text and other information about how the City of Seattle spends some of its funds – this is why I say it would have potentially lots of hits. We would use your pictures only for background aesthetics (unless you have some really cool pre-cut banner pictures). From what we developers imagine right now, it wouldn’t be a banner or sidebar but we would place controls right on top of the picture (so some elements of the picture would be obscured but it could provide the general theme for the site).

We envision this site to be and running at least for the few years that the reporting requirements for the Federal Stimulus Program are in place (for more info on that program please see http://recovery.gov). I can’t really tell you how long that will be – it could go down just as soon as we put it up depending on citizen feedback, or depending on who’s in office.

Please bear in mind that we are in the exploratory/design phase and so nothing has been made definite yet.