You Get What You Pay For...

The average price of stock image licenses has fallen drastically in the last few years. At one large stock agency, Alamy, the average price of a royalty-free image is down 21 percent in the last year.

Online competition is driving prices down. Images similar to those that once sold for hundreds of dollars are now available for a few bucks on micropayment sites. Making matters worse for photographers and stock agencies, amateur Web publishers commonly copy images they find on Google Images or Flickr—often without without permission.