Unsplash's Revenue Gap
Share
Sam Parr shares a story about Unsplash's surprising revenue numbers despite massive usage.
"Unsplash is like an alternative to Getty Images. Getty Images is the best - we used them and paid them $50,000 a year as a small client. Getty's advantage is they have rights to photos of people like Elon Musk that free services don't have.
I recently heard some information about Unsplash after they were acquired. They were only doing around $4-5 million a year in revenue, even though hundreds of millions of their images were being downloaded. I was actually shocked at how small they were.
If I had that much traction, I would have been far more aggressive about selling ads on the site and getting subscriptions. This website appeared to be doing wildly well from the outside, and I imagine they were acquired for a lot of money because if the right person could get their hands on that, they could crush it. When Unsplash was giving away their stuff for free, they were only doing about $400-500,000 a month in revenue, which seems way too low for their level of usage."
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.