Keeping up with Jack Hollingsworth is a challenge. In the middle of April, he announced the three-day Photographer Makeover conference, originally scheduled for June 1. This event has since been cancelled due to lack of interest, but never discouraged, Hollingsworth has launched a new series of interactive online conversations called toginars at the much more reasonable price point of $19.99 each.
The Long Tail describes a new way of looking at, and approaching, markets in the Web 2.0 environment. The term was first coined by Chris Anderson in a Wired magazine article in October 2004. It is illustrative of the business strategy of Internet companies like Amazon.com and Netflix which sell a large number of unique items, each in relatively small quantities, to a very large base of customers. This buying pattern creates what is called a "power law distribution curve" or long tail.
In addition to credits-based pricing, traditional sellers need to consider several technological adaptations. These include letting customers organize search results, helping photographers with research, providing a more varied offering and speeding up royalty payments.
The second insight came as I was reading the business section of the
Washington Post and noticed that a photo used as part of the lead
illustration was credited to iStockphoto. This got me thinking. In the
past I’ve seen a lot of photos in the Post credited to Photodisc. Now
we may be seeing the beginning of a move from the more pricey Photodisc
images to those of iStockphoto.
Microstock sellers have introduced a number of strategies that traditional agencies and distributors should be considering, if not rushing to adopt. One of these is pricing based on credits, which transfers money to the seller before product delivery, makes it simpler to conduct small transactions, appears simple to the buyer and gives the seller more flexibility in adjusting prices.
Recently I was trying to explain the stock photo business to an investment
analyst and making the point that there comes a time when a
photographer can no longer afford to produce stock images because his
costs are greater than his income. The analyst was under the impression that a “stock
photo” was one that had been produced, and paid for, while the
photographer was on assignment for someone else. Thus the image was
“expense free” to the creator. And, in theory, the only “additional
costs” the photographer might have to make the image available for
secondary licensing would be the cost of packing it up for shipping it
to his stock agency.
As the stock industry changes, traditional stock agencies and distributors are losing ground because they have failed to adopt new technological efficiencies. Granted, constantly keeping up with the latest technological changes can be expensive, and most agencies have already invested huge amounts to get where they are today. But, microstock sellers have introduced a number of strategies that traditional agencies and distributors should be considering – if not rushing to adopt.
Many experienced professional photographers have been watching image prices fall but just cannot bring themselves to license their images for $1. Yet the truth is that at today's microstock prices, it does not take all that many sales to match what a photographer would earn from a single rights-managed sale, and there are a currently a lot more microstock sales than rights-managed ones.
The Washington Post reports that it is taking an average of 18 months for hard-copy copyright-registration applications to be cleared since the U.S. Copyright Office implemented its new electronic application system last July. It takes six months to process an electronic application, despite the fact that the system was supposed to be able to do it in one month.
Many traditional sellers want to believe that all microstock is doing is stealing traditional customers. However, there is a lot of evidence that disproves that theory.