Microstock News

Microstocki agency Pixmac have announced that they are now reselling Dreamstime images and have added a new ‘luxury’ collection of macrostocki priced content from image source. This in addition to their own microstock collection, celebrity images and reselling of images from Fotolia.

The site now features a series of tabs that allows buyers to easily select from the various collections.

Being able to buy images from two of the biggest microstock agencies in one place is by far the most interesting news here. I know from my own limited experience in buying that I sometimes have to visit several microstock agencies to find the right image and in some cases then go to alamy if desperate… Most buyers don’t know or don’t care where the images came from, what matters is that for their search terms they find a result and from there it’s easy to pay and download the image; this is especially true for microstock buyers many of whom have never bought a stock photo before or do so quite infrequently.

The new ‘luxury’ collection is not another premium microstock, it offers access to a macrostock priced collection of 100,000 images from one agency, but conceivably could be used to resell a wider range of macrostock content. We can contrast this with veer offering microstock images to their existing macrostock client base.

We don’t yet know how many Dreamstime images are available from Pixmac, as with Fotolia I expect the number to grow over the next few months, it took many months for ’several million’ FTi images to be included.

The History

I’d be the first to say I was not always a fan of pixmac, by their own admission they launched too early before everything was quite ready and in doing so caused some confusion and upset to parts of the (easily upset?) microstock contributor community. Over the past 12 months they have been continually improving their site and their marketing, a pixmac blog post from August outlines some of the improvements and answers photographers concerns.

Pixmac have introduced several features to make them stand out from the start-up crowd, the ability to buy an image in three minutes without need to register being I think one of the biggest innovations. Time and again in e-commerce we learn that the easier it is to buy the more sales are made - signing up for an account, confirming emails, in some cases adding the image again to a basket then going through payment to finally download is something that microstock could get away with because of the dangled carrot of a cheap image. Now that lots of agencies offer similar prices, and often the same images, the differentiator is search and ease of use. Pixmac offer the price concious a credit based option, and those a hurry the ability to solve their image needs without questions like "how many credits would you like to buy".

Is this the Future?

Future of buying any image conveniently from just one location might be many years away in a seemingly utopian internet of semantic tagged self organising photos, this is clearly only a tiny step there. There is currently no standardisation in the APIs used to resell stock photos, and despite how modern and great we might all think IPTCi data and controlled vocabulary’s are, searching images with words is still incredibly difficult in a world where search engines simply scan page titles and the ‘words located somewhere around an image’. Yes there are various services that search several microstock agencies like cyclo.ps and the picniche search bar but they hardly make the buying process more convenient, you still need accounts at each of the agencies.

Having everything in one place has lots of advantages but also some disadvantages and so still leaves plenty of marketplace for niche agencies and (something I’ve been waiting to see for some time) niche collections of pre-selected images sourced from one or more microstock agencies then sold via a specially targeted conduit (that conduit being a niche website, or built into an application).

The Effect

Microstock is nothing without the buyers and nothing without the photographers or artists who contribute. For me and a lot of other photographers pixmac asks questions none of which this announcement answers, in fact with my images already on dreamstime and fotolia do I even continue to upload? For the present, yes, submission is easy; I can make a larger cut of the sale if my image is sold direct from pixmac and any that are sourced from FT and DT are icing on the cake at those agencies. Sales for me are still slow and I’ll continue monitoring my pixmac sales - I currently only have 125 images with them so at present the Jury is out.

From the buyers aspect this is great news, a single site that offers coverage of two of the biggest agencies in one place, a taste of macrostock if you want to get something special and the bold move of including a free images tab along side the paid photos I think will work well at attracting new customers and making the ‘one stop shop’ effect even more complete.

Fotolia have announced the launch of their ‘operation level ground‘ to attract new photographers. The program is open to both existing contributors at other microstock agencies (e.g. quit your istock exclusivity and come join us) and also to photographers who are currently outside of microstock selling their work elsewhere i.e. macrostocki prices.

Instead of starting at the bottom of the fotolia ranking system (an important factor that fotolia uses to calculate commissions based on previous sales history) the ‘operation’ allows new photographers to immediately jump to a higher level hence earning higher commissions from day one. Existing photographers at microstock agencies have to prove their downloads at another agency and will be credited with the same rank they would have received if those images were sold through fotolia. Photographers from outside of microstock need to prove their income from selling images is at least $15,000, more for higher rankings.

Some existing fotolia contributors are upset by the move, many of them who have also been uploading to istock where they have received more downloads now want to have their rank bumped up. A quote from stockastic on microstockgroup (quite an interesting thread going on there…) summing up some of the sentiment:

Another example of how the ‘microstock’ industry is being rapidly re-configured into a channel for big shops and established pros.
All you small players who’ve been dilligentaly chipping away, slowly building a portfolio and looking to the future - guess what, a whole bunch of big guys were just let in the side door and shoved in line in front of you.

 
For existing microstock photographers who understand the market then this could be the perfect opportunity to quit exclusivity as it eliminates the stumbling block that keeps a lot of photographers exclusive with a single agency: "lower earnings while you go through the process of submitting to another agnecy". We might be likely to see more press releases like this.

Because photographers need to have at least 1000 images in their portfolio we are not going to see huge numbers of amateurs ‘jumping the queue’. According to istockcharts there are only just over 1000 photographers at istock with more than 1000 images, so from a microstock point of view the only people likely to move on this are seasoned microstockers who feel trapped by their current exclusivity or for some reason decided to only upload to a single site.

But some traditional photographers might be in for a culture shock, and it’s these photographers that I think fotolia is especially interested in. Those who can prove they have had $15,000 in sales won’t be testing the water and calculating an RPI for their images using a small sample, it looks like (?) they will have to dive straight in with more than 1000 images which in some cases will be "permanently written off to micro", many macrostock terms I’ve read prohibit portfolios containing images previously offered at micro prices.

Operation Level Ground Runs until 31 December 09, visit fotolia.com/levelground to apply.

Cutcaster updated their list of image needs, thought it ‘betta’ that their premium collection be called crescendo and hired a new creative director. Cutcaster also announced improvements to their search system, providing good search is more complex than it first appears and is one of the many differentiators between the leading microstocki sites and the many turn-key start-ups.

Picscout released something interestingly vague about expanding their tracking solution into monetization, but at first it did sound somewhat similar to what they already have at picapp.com as there was little detail in the release, a week or so after the release microstockdiaries explained all…

Lookstat published some interesting analysis of aggregated sales results across all their users on their blog, some of it was no surprise / confirmation of what we can already see, but the upward trend in earnings per download is indeed nice to behold.

Crestock launched a their ‘freebie images’ wordpress plugin to insert watermarked images into blogs free of charge. Images come from crestock contributors who opted-in to the service in return for a 5% increase in royalties on images sold. The plugin can be obtained from freebieimages.com. It’s good marketing for all crestock contributors if it attracts new buyers to the site, I’m not certain that it’s the best implementation. Unlike similar services (like picapp as mentioned above) the image is downloaded and hosted on the end users blog, leaving them free (against the terms of use of course) to remove the hyperlink and the text credit from the image leaving just the watermark in place, hence defeating the goal to direct customers to crestock via direct clicks and search engine ranking. Something more like the tools tab at dreamstime that provides cut-and-paste code (watermarked and not designed for the same purpose I admit) would afford the agency more control over it’s media, and I think would be a lot easier for all to use. Wordpress is popular but certainly not the only blogging platform, keeping the image hosted at the agencies site is a more expensive option but allows better control if that image needs to be removed for any reason, and allows users of any platform or forum to post images. It’s an interesting marketing approach, clearly picapp think they can make a viable business from it (with ad support). Fotolia have also been recruiting top bloggers to use their images as part of a marketing campaign, which you can read a case study about. Community opinion about crestock freebieimages on microstockgroup.

I removed albumo from our listings, it seems to have gone to microstock heaven sometime around the end of last month, but as I wasn’t uploading to them so I didn’t notice the exact date.

More Plugins: Fotolia made it easier for buyers to access stock images directly from within Microsoft Powerpoint 2007 and Word 2007 with a ribbon add-in. news release. More information from fotolia and download the ‘ribbon’.

Fotolia must have taken some PR delight in welcoming photographer Jim DeLillo into their fold after he cancelled his istock exclusivity press release.

Dreamstime announced they would be doing some database cleaning. Images over 3 or 4 years old without sales would at the choice of the contributor be either removed, offered for re-keywording or placed into the free section. dreamstime forum.

Shutterstock joined iStock and vivozoom in offering buyers a legal guarantee for images purchased from their site, press release. Shutterstock indemnify users for $10,000 legal expenses.

NEW YORK, NY, October 14, 2009 – Fotolia, LLC is releasing a new add-in ribbon for Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 that gives customers easy access to an enormous library of easy-to-search, high-resolution images and vectors. The Fotolia ribbon provides instant image solutions to complement personal and professional projects. The downloadable ribbon is available on www.fotolia.com/ribbon and features controls that allow users to login, view accounts and search Fotolia’s library of over 7-million high-resolution files without leaving their Microsoft Office document.

Hovering over search results lets users preview the image. A simple double click inserts a free comp of the image into the document, allowing customers to try before they buy. Once members see a photograph, vector or illustration they are interested in, they can purchase it while still in their document by selecting download and the appropriate size and license.

“Connecting Fotolia’s online image library directly to Word and PowerPoint is a great productivity win for our customers,” said Rob Ashby, Group Manager for Office.com. “The add-in’s use of the ribbon makes finding and using the right images fast and easy, without customers having to leave their work.”

Fotolia is making huge strides in the online photography and image industry. Founded in 2005 in New York City, the company quickly expanded to 12 countries and represents portfolios of some of the most respected agencies and artists. A commitment to providing high-quality, affordable images expanded the relationship with Microsoft, which offers a free collection of Fotolia images and illustrations to Microsoft Office customers through Microsoft Office 2007.

“Using the ribbon enabled Fotolia to increase the services we offer to over 1.3 million members by creating an easy, integrated experience,” says Garth Johnson, Fotolia Executive Vice President, North America. “Now, Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 users have instant in-document access to Fotolia’s library of over 7-million royalty-free images and the best licensing options in the business.”

Purchasing images from Fotolia through Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 using the add-in is easy: select the size of the image or graphic and a standard or extended license option. Only Fotolia offers standard and extended licensing with every image purchase, and the licenses are free of seat restrictions and run limits.

Once the image is downloaded into the user’s document, users are free to use the Fotolia file with no limit on time, copies or geographical placements. Images on Fotolia are truly royalty-free.

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Editorial note: screenshot image available for publication on http://www.fotolia.com/ribbonimage
Credit Fotolia, LLC for use of images on this site.

Over 1.3 million people prefer Fotolia, LLC for affordable, royalty-free images, graphics and HD videos. With the introduction of the Infinite Collection, Fotolia became the first worldwide microstock organization to offer both crowd-sourced and professional images on one site. Founded in New York City in 2005, Fotolia spans the globe with websites in 10 languages and offices in 12 countries. With over 7,000,000 images to choose from, find it on Fotolia. www.fotolia.com

Media Contact:
Jennifer Laraway
Director of Communications, North America
Fotolia, LLC
Direct: 1.403.708.9398
jennifer@fotolia.com
www.fotolia.com
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