iStockphoto has been selected as the “Best Place to Buy Stock Images” in the
About.com 2011 Readers' Choice Award. Now in its fourth year, the About.com Readers' Choice Awards honor the best products, features and services across more than a dozen categories, ranging from technology to hobbies to parenting and more, as selected by its readers.
One of the great benefits of the Microstock marketing strategy is that
distributors have always offered customers a variety of ways to organize
search returns. In particular, sort-by-downloads has been a very
popular option. A “Redeemed Credits” option would get more of the best selling images of
the higher priced brands near the top of the search return order. This
method of searching would allow customers to see all the various brands
in a single search and still see more of the expensive images in the
early pages. See explanation.
The White House has proposed sweeping revisions to the U.S. copyright law, but the changes discussed in the 20-page white paper (
PDF) do very little, if anything, to help still photographers.
The
THP Photo & Video Services has announced that its members will distribute video with the same ease with which they have been distributing images for over 10 years. The THP now hosts close to 100,000 video clips along with its slightly over 13 million high resolution image files. The THP is a software platform developed and administered by age footstock.
Stock Footage Online (
www.stockfootageonline.com) has launched a new site with links to 80 leading stock footage specialist libraries. Currently, visitor figures for this site are headed toward 100,000 per month.
Despite declining photo budgets, and instability in the stock photo
industry due to the availability of microstock, automated digital subscription
services, and the increased accessibility of advanced digital
technology, Alaska’s premier photo collection, Alaska Stock Images, is
celebrating 20 years as Alaska’s largest agency providing unique
professional quality Alaskan Rights-Managed and Royalty-Free stock
photos.
Recently, I posted on the “Stock Photography: buy and sell photos” group
on LinkedIn.com some of the information about photography revenue
relative to printing revenue that is found in this
story. Peter
Dean came back with a related question that deserves some careful
examination. He asked, “Approximately how many more images are used
these days in print compared to 10 years ago?” He also wanted to know
whether print revenue is Static? going Up or going Down?
Two companies have announced new video offerings.
age fotostock is promoting its
THP Photo & Video Services (Technological Hosting Platform) that consolidates imagery from many suppliers and hosts it for distributors around the world. Stock Footage Online (
www.stockfootageonline.com) has launched a new site with links to 80 leading stock footage specialist libraries.
At ASMP’s recent Strictly Business 3 education weekend in Philadelphia
four photographers explained how they had reinvented their businesses in
the current challenging business environment. Here are their stories. There will be more success stories at the last Strictly Business 3 conference in 2011 which takes place in Chicago April 1st through 3rd.
According to
WhatTheyThink?, a leading research organization serving the printing and publishing industry, January 2011 commercial printing shipments were $6.7 billion, up $270 million (+4.1%) compared to 2010. Adjusting for inflation, shipments were up +2.5%. Shipments for 2010 were also revised to be $86.7 billion. “Despite a dreadful first quarter in 2010, the remaining months were up +3%, to finish the year slightly higher than 2009,” explained Dr. Joe Webb, director of WhatTheyThink's Economics and Research Center. “January's shipment rise benefited from an easy comparison to the first quarter of 2010, but it continued a string of 10 months of positive comparisons to the prior year. We hope it continues.”
WhatTheyThink?, a leading research organization serving the printing and publishing industry, has just estimated that the value of printed materials shipped in the U.S. in 2010 was $86.7 billion. Based on my analysis I estimate that the worldwide sale of still stock imagery in 2010, most of which is used in some type of printed publication, was about $1.45 billion. Previously, we have estimated that in the range of 43% of the total worldwide sales of stock photography are licensed for use in the U.S. market. Thus, the comparison would be something in the range of $625 million for photography compared with $86.7 billion for printing.
In an effort to recognize and support emerging photographers, the Editorial Photographers trade association [EP] has announced its Third Annual EP Education Grants student photo competition. For details go to:
http://www.editorialphoto.com/epedu/ The Grand Prize winner will be chosen from among the finalists by internationally-acclaimed Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt. More than $5000 in prizes will be presented to the Grand Prize winner, and more than $2000 each for the other five finalists!
In January of 2011 Yuri Arcurs was interviewed by John Lund and gave the
following account of where his business is today. Yuri is the world’s
best selling microstock photographer, has a staff of more than 50 and
the overhead for his stock operation exceeds $200,000 a month.
Corbis Images has announced a new worldwide distribution agreement with London based
Demotix , the multi-award winning source of “Street Journalism.” Later this month, Corbis Images will begin offering an edited selection of breaking news photography from Demotix through
corbisimages.com.
iStockphoto has announced plans to introduce a new higher priced Vetta
collection of video clips. Video producers are rebelling over the
proposed royalty split for this higher priced product. Clips in this
collection will be handpicked for their art direction, conceptual
execution and rarity and will be made available at higher prices than
other exclusive content.
The Image Works has announced
the addition of imagery from Green Stock Media to its archive. This
collection visually promotes a broad spectrum of environmental and
sustainability issues with an extensive array of imagery representing
environmental problems, contemporary ecological solutions, and the
beauty and importance of nature.
Recently the U.S. Copyright Office launched a pilot program that enables
photographers to use the Electronic Copyright Office (eCO) system to
complete group registrations of “databases that predominantly consist of
photographs" or “published photographs."
In a previous story I said that Flickr photographers receive 20%
royalties when their images are sold on the Getty Images web site. In
fact, Flickr photographers receive 20% of RF image sales,
BUT if their
images are licensed as RM they receive 30%. Also, there will be
no change in royalty rates in the new contract.
In a recent talk at the Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts at
Columbia University as part of a program titled
Collective Management of
Copyright: Solution or Sacrifice Eugene Mopsik, Executive Director of
American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) outlined the general
state of the photo licensing business and offered some possible
solutions.
Getty Images has announced that as of April 1, 2011 they will have a new
contributor agreement. For American photographers the date may have
some relevance. We call it April Fools day and it is usually celebrated
with practical jokes and hoaxes on family, friends and work associates.
However,Getty’s move may not be a joke.
Corbis Images (
www.corbisimages.com), has entered into a partnership with ZUMA Press (
http://www.zumapress.com), an independent press agency and wire services capturing news and documentary images.
I just returned from ASMP's Strickly Business 3 weekend in Philadelphia.
There is another in Chicago April 1st to 3rd. It was absolutely great
for laying out where the industry is today (not particularly great) and
offering ideas as to how to re-invent your business for the future.
Check out
http://asmp.org/content/strictly-business-3.
Getty’s move to sell some of its royalty-free images on both
www.gettyimages.com and www.istockphoto.com is presenting some problems
in pricing usages and is sure to drive more Getty Images customers to
iStockphoto.
Many Western stock photographers are beginning to wonder if it isn’t
time to explore the potentials of the Chinese market. I asked Jerome
Lacrosniere, CEO of ImagineChina in Shanghai for some information about
the state of the Chinese stock photo industry.
Picnache.com has put together a list of the top 1000 keywords used by customers to search for stock photos in the last 6 months to 2
years. This dataset was compiled from about 500,000 searches and
prioritized according to which words were used most frequently.