Articles by Jim Pickerell
Alamy has launched another “Ask James”, where customers, contributors and journalists can ask CEO James West any questions they have about Alamy, Stockimo, or the industry in general.
Get Your Questions In. Questions must be submitted via email to:
nfxwnzrf@nynzl.pbz no later that Thursday July 10th.
For most of the
431 top iStock contributors adding more images to their portfolios does not seen to have had a significant impact on the growth in their number of downloads. In fact, those who grew their collections by the smallest percentage, or not at all, seemed to experience continued growth in sales. Seems counter intuitive.
Yesterday I provided a list of the
431 of the top iStock contributors in the order of the total number of image downloads they have had in their careers. In the coming week I will explore some other ways to look at the available data. It is important to recognize that not all the people on this list are photographers. I have separated them into three groups – Illustrators (I), people with a mix of illustration and photography in their collections (PI) and photographers.
Robert Henson has provided an important perspective on the Decline of Image Licensing on
Paul Melcher’s blog. He succinctly outlines some of the key changes in the imaging business that will undoubtedly lead to a further price declines. There are also indications that fewer professional produced images will be needed as more and more customers find other ways to acquire the images they need. This is a must read for anyone looking for a future as a stock image producer.
On average, there has been a continued decline in the number of downloads for 431 of iStock’s leading contributors during the first half of 2014. I have been tracking the activity for these contributors for more than 2 year, and about half of them since 2009. Since these individuals joined iStock their images have been downloaded a combined total of at least of 54,291,100 times and a possible maximum of 56,658,200. (
See for how I arrived at these numbers.)
Since early in 2009 I have been tracking downloads of 192 of iStockphoto’s most productive contributors. At that time istockcharts, a service of multimedia.de provided a daily listing of the total downloads of most of iStock’s contributors. This list could be indexed by downloads so it was easy to determine which contributors had the most iStock downloads in their careers.
Fresh, brash and outspoken. With their uninhibited photographic style and unbridled joy of experimentation, food bloggers have conquered a huge fan community on the internet. No wonder even the traditional media are rolling out the red carpet for the new stars. Food bloggers get their own columns, produce cookbook best-sellers and operate cooking shows for an audience of millions. The most interesting among them are now at the center of a new blog where the food image agency
StockFood once again lives up to its reputation as a trendsetter.
In May AdAge reported that the New York based social media agency
Laundry Service has discovered that Instagram photos perform better than more professionally shot photos. The agency found that while regular photos achieved 2.35% click-through rate, Instagram photos achieved an 8% click-through. And even better, Instagram photos led to a 25% increase in conversion rate.
Scoopshot, reports that over 500,000 photographers and videographers from 177 countries contribute images to its service and that more than 70 leading media companies and brands including USA Today, News Corp Australia, Apple Daily, WAZ, Fiat, Finnair, Oxfam and many others use Scoopshot to gain instant access to a global pool of Scoopshooters. In the US, the Scoopshot user base has increased from 14,000 to nearly 50,000 in just six weeks.
Customers are becoming increasingly unhappy with being asked to search through tons of images and still not finding what they want. In many cases it is not that great images are unavailable, it is just that they are buried under tons of less desirable images. Curation is the answer.