09-Pricing: Royalty free

Royalty-free images are predominantly sold as collections on CD-ROM. We've seen royalty-free discs containing from fifty to several hundred images for as little as $50, although $300 to $500 is more common. Some companies also allow you to purchase individual royalty-free images from a Website, with the cost based upon the file size. (But hold on to your hat: that's probably going to change…)

So far, "royalty free" sounds like a pretty good deal, and the question becomes: Why would anyone pay a lot for one image when they can get many images for a little?

Well, there are reasons-- good ones that we'll discuss as we proceed-- but, for now, here's just one of them:

The Kicker:

It's one thing to pay several hundred dollars for 100 or more royalty free images on a disc. It's another to pay that amount when there are only one or two good images out of the 100 on the disc. (Those of you who have bought some of our competitors' discs know exactly what we're talking about.)

All of a sudden you're paying almost as much for the one or two good royalty free images as you would for rights protected images-- with none of the advantages of the rights protected side (which we'll get to in a minute…)

Is a royalty-free disc with only two or three good images on it worth the price anyway? Maybe. It depends on your situation. But if you're assessing real cost comparisons-- all of a sudden paying for a "rights protected" image doesn't look quite so expensive compared to what you are paying for a CD-ROM with lots of images-- 98% of which are unusable. [Shameless self-promotion: With Comstock's royalty-free discs we make sure all the images are great-- not just one or two.]