As someone who occasionally needs to find stock photography for various design projects (stock photography is like design shake and bake), I’ve used several services ranging from free to painfully expensive (Getty Images). For some Getty Images photos, you might pay a few hundred bucks to borrow a high resolution print-ready image. Considering they might pay the photographer a couple bills and then get to resell the images as many times as they can at no additional cost, I imagine it’s a pretty high-margin business at the top end.
Unsurprisingly, as low-cost microstock photo providers like iStockPhotos.com and Stock.XCHNG have emerged onto the scene, in true reflection of the actual costs involved, they’ve been quickly snapped up by larger companies like Getty Images and Jupiter Media. As soon as iStockPhotos.com was acquired, the prices went up dramatically. With most of these microstock sites, the initial service is attractively priced and contributors are compensated adequately, then as they scale, prices increase and payouts decrease, as one would expect.