Those who think microstock is under-priced will be chagrined at today’s announcement of Fotolia’s latest offering. Today, the New York-based microstock announced the launch of PhotoXpress, an online stock-image bank offering visitors a collection of 350,000 images free of charge.
There is, of course, a catch—but compared to having to pay, it is a small one: visitors need to register, thus providing Fotolia with new marketing leads. PhotoXpress also limits downloads to 10 images per day and requires that all photos be properly credited.
Incoming Fotolia president, ex-iStock executive Patrick Lor, describes PhotoXpress as the largest free collection of high-quality images on the Web. However, that’s not entirely accurate: 8-year-old Stock.xchng, the original free pro-stock Web site, offers a larger inventory (its home page says over 350,000 images and recent news reports put it at 400,000). Following the recent acquisition of Jupiterimages, Getty Images owns controlling interest in the Hungarian Stock.xchng.
PhotoXpress inventory was sourced through a number of partnerships. Fotolia plans to grow the Web site daily, “by the thousands,” according to the company statement. All images are model-released and offered under royalty-free licenses at print resolutions. The Web site is operated from Hartford, Conn.