Shutterstock makes a big deal about expanding its number of Enterprise customers. The last number they reported for Enterprise customers was 36,000 and just this week they said that Enterprise customers generate 32% of their revenue ($41.6 million for Q1 2017). Getty has an Enterprise program for its best customers which they call Premium Access. We have no idea how many customers fall into this category, but based on examining photographer sales reports my guess is that it is at least as many as Shutterstock, and probably more. A few years ago Getty said that any customer that spent $6,000 a year with them could qualify for Premium Access. I suspect that number is much lower now.
Jim Erickson has adopted a new marketing strategy for selling stock video. Instead of just offering clips he has created powerful, intimate and compelling prepackaged video stories, with narration, on themes related to healthcare and seniors. On his newly
re-launched site he has 15 stories. More stories and themes are expected soon.
Cultura RM is the first RM Collection to join
PantherMedia after the company announced its new
Rights Managed licensing strategy last month.
Shutterstock has reported Q1 2017 revenue of $130.2 million. This revenue was up 12% from Q1 2016, but exactly the same as revenue in Q4 2016. Revenue per download increased 7% from $2.77 in Q1 2016 to about $2.96. Revenue per download in Q4 2016 was $3.02. At the end of the quarter there were 132 million images in the collection and 6.9 million video clips. This was up from 116.2 million images at the end of 2016.
The Mega Agency has signed an exclusive syndication partnership with the
New York Post, one of the most famous names in the American publishing world.
Here’s a way to raise prices without too much pain on anyone. Forget about raising prices on the top end sales. Instead, raise them a little bit at the bottom end. I recently examined licenses of some major suppliers to Getty Images and iStock. They received a royalty of less than $10 on 95% for the licenses. The average gross license fee of these lower end transactions was $5.12. Suppose instead of raising prices overall agencies add just a little bit to the gross license fee for their lowest priced licenses.
When most companies enter into negotiations with customers on the price of a product they usually know exactly what it costs them to product. In most cases they tend to not want to give away the product for less than it costs to produce. In the stock photo business usually have no idea what it costs to produce the product they are selling. They only know that they will have to give the creator a small percentage of what they are able to charge the customer. They have no idea if that is enough to cover the creators cost of production.
VideoBlocks is now accepting images for its new artist-friendly stock Photo Marketplace that will reward photo contributors with 100 percent commission from their sales. That 100% is $3.99 per still image download less third-party fees (like credit card charges) incurred when processing the transactions. Seeing this price many photographers may reject the offer out of hand. But, this is a very different business model from traditional stock agency businesses. Instead of paying a percentage royalty, contributors receive the full amount that the customer pays to use their work.
The Natural History Museum is showcasing its award-winning imagery including its
Wildlife of the Year content at fotofringe 2017 in London. NHM has chosen Capture Ltd as its partner in bringing the extraordinary collection to market.
If you think nothing ever happens in Congress, you’re wrong! On April 26th the U.S. House of Representatives passed
H.R. 1695, a bill that proposes making the Register of Copyrights a Presidential appointee, confirmed by the Senate. This is a first step toward modernizing the U.S. Copyright Office.