Photographers all over the world are making sales through
ImageBrief. While it can be a lot of work responding to briefs the photographers we talked to seem generally happy with the results.
ImageBrief reported that in October and November they negotiated sales for 168 photographers operating in 30 different countries. (See list below)
Jesse Hughes, chief marketer for
Jim Erickson Photography, has been responding to “one or two briefs” a day since April. Erickson images have been short listed (client makes a preliminary selection) 130 times and they have made 3 sales, one for $10,000.
One of things Jesse likes about ImageBrief is that they never sell an image without first getting approval on the price. Some of the briefs come in with a fixed price. If Jesse doesn’t like the price then he doesn’t respond to that brief. But, on many briefs the price is negotiable.
He has also found that ImageBrief gets him into markets he would not otherwise have known about. One of their sales was in Australia and another in the UK, a market they have had difficulty penetrating.
One issue. ImageBrief keeps a database of previous submissions and adds them to new briefs when they seem appropriate. In a few cases Erickson had been contacted directly by the client and made a submission prior to the ImageBrief announcement. ImageBrief has agreed not to submit Erickson images from previous submissions without getting prior approval.
Owen Franken says, “in a little over a year they have used four images, all at $500 each.” However, reviewing and responding to requests has helped him discover images in his archive that he had not previously promoted. For example there was a request for Il Palio, the horserace in Siena. He pulled a transparency, scanned and submitted it. It was short listed, but not used. Then he posted it on his own site and almost immediately Conde Nast licensed it for $425.
Stuart Westmorland has responded to about 50 briefs and made 2 sales, the first for 3 images. When asked if he thinks it is worth the trouble responding he said, “Good question; barely at this point. However, they often get clients with license fees in excess of 5K, something I never see from a stock agency anymore. I will continue at this point to make near daily submissions.”
Terry Wild has had 185 images short listed in about 18 months and has made 8 sales for a total of $3,600 to him after ImageBrief’s commission. He has responded to approximately 200 briefs.
“The average brief takes me 15-30 minutes to respond to from my database unless I decide to alter or create some specific images, which ends up being useful to add to the database for future searches,” Terry said.
Tibor Bognar has only been submitting for a couple months and has responded to half-a-dozen briefs. This was his first sale. “For now I'm cautiously optimistic. They seem to try very hard and their clients are willing to pay better rates than what most of my agencies are charging (and I'm working with several). On the other hand, fairly often the client ends up not buying anything.”
When shooting on location, Tibor ignores office work completely. But, he points out, “when I’m at home processing images it only takes a few minutes to respond to a brief, so for now I'm willing to continue with them. In the current depressed market situation one feels that one has to try new business formulas”
To see what’s selling and how ImageBrief photos are being used in ads check out their
facebook page.
Photographers whose images were licensed in October and November.
Argentina: Manuel Mazzaro
Australia: Kevin Osborne, Llia Kotchenkov, Rachel Cutler, Nicola Dracoulis, Martina Gemmola, Sandra Ramacher, Mauro Risch, Adam Monaghyan, James Kell, Monique ?Arrighi, Louis Allen, Free Agent, Aaron Jamieson, Paul White, Brett Edmonds, Glenn Gibson, Simon Vaughn, Brad Malyon, Dale Taylor, Mike Valigore, Daniel Trimboli, Chris Gentle, Josh Kelly
Belgium: Sage Launa
Brazil: BrazilPhotos Stock Photo Service, Ingo Rosler
Canada: Tibor Bognar, Callum Snape, First Light Design Design Pics Inc, Barry Gynp, Wally Bauman, James Scott, Mark Gribbon
Chile: Felipe Cantillana
China: Olli Geibel
Colombia: Carlos Angel
Finland: Robert Smith
France: Lina Sentici, Owen Franken
Germany: Christoph Wilhelm, Goldwerk Photography
Greece: George Atsametakis, Loukas Hapsis
Hong Kong: Stefan Irvine
India: Bhaswaran Bhattacharya, Santosh Verma
Italy: Flavio Gilardoni, Marco Destefanis, Carlos Bevilacqua, Marco Casiraghi, Susan White
Japan: Delo Projet, Keith Tsuji
Mexico: Anuar Patjane, Daniel Rodriguez
Netherlands: Paul Robert
New Zealand: Nigel Gariner, Petr Hlavacek, Sarah Sisson, Kemball Chen, Mark Watson
Peru: Marco Simola
Portugal: PH Lisboa, Ruben Vicente
Russian Federation: Vladimir Sidoropolev, Stanislav Solntsev
Singapore: Felix Hug, Boon Chian Ong, HZ Hong
South Africa: Reinhardt Hartzenberg, Catherine Sassoon, Casey Craffoord, Eric Miller, Michelly Rall
Spain: Jordi Cami, Isidre Garcia Punti, Manuel Queimadelos, Kike & Nano Calvo, Stefano Politi Markovina, Geoff Simpson, Kris Ubach, Zia Aragon, Eduardo Gonzalez Diaz, Miguel Pereira, Alejandro Moreno de Carlos
Sweden: Andres Andersson
Thailand: David Terrazas, Chris Chrristidis
United Kingdon: Tony Burns, Colorsport Images, Charlie Dailey, Mark Shenley, Piers Golden, Corrie Wingate, Mattew Williams-Ellis, John Quintero, Kevin McGarry, Andy ?Teo, Paul Sharman, Gary McParland, Steve Davey, Allan McPhail, Julian Love, Adrian Burke, Justin Paget, Sophie Carr, Rekha Garton, Jo Denison, James Goldsmith, Simon Cross
United States: Jackie Weisberg, Edward Ewert, Doug Segal, Stuart Westmorland, Steve Debenport, Ashok Sinha, Tim Clayton, Lester Ali, Ray Pila, Bill Miles, Mackenzie Lee, Stephanie Keith, Elisabeth Ansley, Terry Wild, Cole Yamane, Jordan Siemens, George Robinson, Jim Erickson, PD Artists, Charlie Bennet, Chris Schoenbohm, Kelly Fajack, Matt Dutile, Jason Gardner, Brian Jannsen, Sherry Malotte, Chris D’ardenne, Evelina Kremsdorf, Todd Powell, HagePhoto Matt & Agnes Hage, David Zanzinger, Marcia Straub, Jim West, Yelena Strokin, Mykle Parker, Verity Smith, Greg Daniels, Rebecca Akporiaye, Steve Murray, Jeff Diener, Quincy Dein, Masa Ushioda, Tim Miley, Michael Kraus, Ball & Albanese, Erin Iabelle, Rebecca Nelson, Claire Bunn, Diana Pappas, Roberto Westbrook, Leah Fasten, Sabrina Helas, Gustavo Marx, Pat Mazzera
Vietnam: NOI Pictures
For more about ImageBrief see
here and
here.