Have you noticed that when a customer searches for “man” on some major agency sites a different number of images will be returned than if they had searched for “male.” An agent called this to my attention after hearing complaints from a number of customers about this problem when searching on GettyImages.com.
Yuri Arcurs, one of the most successful stock photographers in the world, is running another of his photographer training programs in Capetown, South Africa. This program is for 17 to 24-year-olds that are highly competitive, goal-oriented and have strong entrepreneurial and creative characteristics. Candidates must survive a two-week Boot Camp beginning February 1, 2016. (This is not marine training, but it will be an intense experience to determine what the candidates know and how quickly they learn.)
One of the big questions for a freelance photographer approaching a new client is: “What should I charge.” What do others get for doing the same type of work? What has this client paid in the past? Recently, I was made aware of a web site called “
Who Pays Photographers?” Photographers can go to this site, enter the name of a publication or organization they would like to work for and get some idea of what the organization has paid for previous jobs.
Most image creators believe that adding images to online searchable databases will grow downloads and sales. This is particularly true, when one assumes that the new images being added are better than the ones produced earlier because the image creator has improved through experience and has a better understanding of what customers want. However, an examination of the sales by iStock’s leading contributors indicates that adding images is often counter productive in terms of increasing downloads. In fact, contributors who add very few, or remove, images often show the greatest download-per-image in the collection.
To better understand the potential for an iStock turnaround it is worth comparing iStock and Shutterstock downloads. At the end of my report on
Shutterstock’s Q3 results I estimated the number of IOD (single image) and subscription downloads Shutterstock will have for 2015. For an explanation of how I calculated the iStock numbers see this
story. The following chart compares the sales of these two companies.
Previously, I have supplied an analysis (
here) and (
here) of iStock’s downloads in 2015 and the number of images 430 of their leading contributors have in the collection. While 430 is only a small percentage of iStock’s more than 100,000 contributors this small group has somewhere between 55,070,000 and 58,554.000 downloads since the company’s founding in 2002. I believe this represents about one-third of iStock’s total downloads.
An increasing number of iStock’s most productive contributors have been dramatically reducing their production of new images in the last two years.
Where is iStock headed? In 2015 single image downloads were DOWN significantly compared to 2014, and 2014 was down compared to 2013. The company
introduced subscriptions in April 2014 and that has had a major impact on the decline in single image sales.
Panoramastock has recently been listed on a small cap tech stock exchange called the NEEQ (National Equities Exchange and Quotations). The exchange is also called the New Third Board Stock. The company’s stock code is 834877.
In early January
Videblocks will begin making clips from Discovery Channel’s,
Discovery Access library available through Videoblocks
Marketplace. Videoblocks launched Marketplace in April 2015, had
374,000 clips by August and now has over 880,000. The Discovery material will quickly push them over one million clips.
More Free Articles
Other Recent Stories
Take a look at Jon Oringer’s $52 million home https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9562059/Billionaire-founder-Shutterstock-lists-oceanfront-Hamptons-home-52-million.html
in the Hamptons on Long...
Read More
The chart below allows you to easily track the growth trends of Shutterstock quarter-by-quarter over the last 11-years and see the number of images in the collection, number of downloads and the gros...
Read More
Shutterstock has reported Q4 2020 revenue of $180.9 million up 9% compared to $166.4 million in Q4 2019 and up from $165.2 million the previous quarter. Revenue per download was $3.91 per-image compa...
Read More
More from Microstock
With the decline in public sporting events due to Covid-19, and thus the need for photo coverage, many sports photographers have seen a significant decline in demand for their services. But media com...
Read More
After publishing our article “Getty’s RF ‘Market Freeze’: Expensive Customer Mess?" I received the following clarifying message from Matthew McKibben, Getty Images, PR Manager in The Americas. He sa...
Read More
I can remember when I was primarily an assignment photographer and occasionally sold outtakes from assignments on the side. Most of the income I needed to support my family came from assignments. Sto...
Read More
More from Macrostock
Stay Connected
Sign up to receive email notification when new stories are posted.
Follow Us
About This Site
This stock photography news site focuses on the business side of photography with a special emphasis on stock photography. Our goal is to help photographers maximize their earnings based on the quality of their work and the commitment they are prepared to make to the trade. The information provided will be applicable to part-timers as well as full time professional photographers. We’ll leave it to others to teach photographers how to take better pictures.
Jim Pickerell launched his career as a photographer in 1963. In 1990 he began publishing a regular newsletter on stock photography. In 1995 the information was made available online as well as in print and was gradually expanded to a daily service.
Click here for Pickerell's full biography.
Top Categories