The problem, of course, was this: How do you spend $5,000 producing a picture, sell it for, say, $300, and make a profit?
And the answer is: You sell the same picture to more than one person. That’s right: There is no way this business model could work, no way the stock photo agency (or photographer) could hope to make a profit, unless they were selling the same picture to more than one person. If you spend $5,000 taking a picture and then sell it for $300, you go broke. But if you sell it to fifty people for $300, you make a profit. It’s that simple. That is the entire financial “engine” of the stock photography business model.
