This article provides information on how to price stock photo usages for all types of brochures, catalogs, direct mail pieces, single sheet flyers and promo cards.
Projects by two German design firms use Corbis imagery.
Swiss photography agency Kursiv has released KIM Keywording, a new software package designed to speed up metadata entry for large image volumes. The application supports up to 10 languages and makes use of contextual keywording.
Alamy's annual contributor event will take place on Nov. 7 in London.
This article provides information on how to price stock photo usages for advertising in National, Regional or Local magazines.
Getty Images is continuing its foray into broader audiences and nontraditional ways of monetizing its content: Calif.-based blinkx, which claims to be the world's largest and most advanced video-search engine, now offers a Getty Images channel among some 350 others. The 26 million hours of content delivered through blinkx.com come from sources as diverse as the BBC and CBS to Real Estate TV and shoetube.
When professionals object to microstock, they are not asking microstock contributors to stop selling images. Most professionals do not have a problem with images being made available for small uses at extremely low prices. Most are also not afraid of competition on a level playing field. All professionals really want is for amateurs to stop allowing themselves to be exploited by wealthy buyers.
Jupiterimages has launched Photos.com Plus, which contains some 1.7 million images, including 1.3 million by Stockxpert contributors.
Three new licensing models from Denver-based Thought Equity Motion offer footage clips from Paramount Pictures, MGM Studios, Sony and others at prices that begin at $20--for select uses. As of this week, Web, corporate communication and presentation "stores" have been integrated into the Though Equity Web site.
It seems that every amateur who's made a few bucks selling microstock writes a blog extolling the virtues of microstock and encouraging other amateurs to try selling their images. I've got no problem with them telling their stories. But in their enthusiasm to encourage others, they often put out inaccurate information about the effects microstock is having on those trying to make a living shooting stock images.
Continuing the tradition it established last year, iStockphoto gave out $40,000 in cash and prizes. The company also let exclusive contributors keep 100% of the royalties--over $200,000--generated by their images on Monday.
Companies that previously specialized in royalty-free licensing are now asking photographers to offer their new production as rights-managed content. Photographers are questioning whether or not this is a wise idea. Photographers worry that customers will not go to RF companies to buy RM--and if they do, they may not be willing to pay RM prices.
In 2007 I proposed a pricing strategy that combines the rights managed
theory of pricing based on usage and the simplicity of microstock and
its ability to license rights for very small uses for fees of a few
dollars. The system is described in a 12 page booklet. I call the
strategy Modified Right Ready.
When discussing content piracy, industry insiders often say that nine out of 10 images are used inappropriately--that is, without payment for a license or in violation of its terms. Though the idea of educating the public on the nature of copyright is raised at industry events, such education is not often part of routine business activities for stock photographers or agencies. Perhaps it should be. An iStockphoto-commissioned survey of 1,000 Americans shows that a third use downloaded content, and practically all such users--27% of 33%--are unaware of needing permission.
A survey of major U.S. marketers, conducted by the Association of National Advertisers, found that 87% have cut back on marketing and advertising spending. Over 50% expect to further reduce spending by the end of the year.
According to PhotoShelter, which now represents 42,000 photographers from over 160 countries, image buyers frequently request the ability to purchase hard-copy photographic prints. Today, the company launched PhotoShelter Prints in response to these requests.
The Metadata Image Library Exploitation Project will conduct an all-day seminar, "Speaking in Tongues," in London on Oct. 3. The seminar will include discussion and workshops on multilingual thesauri that can make image collections widely available internationally.
The rationale for royalty-free licensing used to be to provide the customer with three benefits: a simple, straightforward price that didn't require negotiation, unlimited use of the purchased image and a low cost. As this marketing concept has matured, all of these ideas have been lost.
Rob Haggart, the former director of photography for
Men's Journal and
Outside Magazine, has launched A Photo Folio, a service that promises to build photographer Web sites from a client perspective.
Brentwood, Tenn.-based Dreamstime, originally launched in Romania, is expanding distribution in its native region. It has partnered with Prague's Imagio.cz to bring micro-priced creative and editorial imagery to the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Financial arrangements were not disclosed.
This month saw the launch of Celebrity Extra, the first of a multimillion-dollar group of new entertainment-focused news products from the Associated Press. Focusing on A-list stars, Celebrity Extra video is available now, and a photo service is scheduled to launch in September.
As image collections have grown, finding the right image quickly has become an increasingly difficult problem for customers. Back when the industry delivered 35mm transparencies, customers could call a picture agency, describe their need in detail and a researcher would delve through hundreds of images to find the few best. These selects were then shipped to the customer for final consideration. Internet search has changed all that.
As part of the process of selling Getty Images Goldman Sachs was
provided detailed information relative to Getty's operations and on
November 28, 2007 they produced a report that projected revenue for
2008 and 2012. The following are those figures. Getty Images was later
sold to Hellman & Friedman. Due to the tremendous pressure microstock is putting on the stock photo market the following chart should be sobering for both traditional RF and RM shooters.
This chart provides a list of the major sellers of stock photography worldwide. The list is broken up into three separate groups, those with revenue in excess of $20 million, those with revenue between $5 and $20 million and those with revenue between $1 and $5 million.