Microstock
Shutterstock has announced plans to launch
Offset, a new RF offering of premium, high-end stock photos and illustrations. Currently the curated collection is in private beta. A public launch will follow later this year.
Bruce Livingstone founder of iStockphoto has launched
Stocksy.com. Stocksy has been designed as a co-op and pays photographers a 50% royalty on each sale. At the end of the year, the company divides 90% of its profits equally among contributors and other shareholders.
Depositphotos has created
Clashot.com, a platform that allows image creators using mobile devices to share their images and potentially earn revenue from some of them.
Pond5 Inc. has acquired the assets of Pixmac, a leading stock imagery network based in the Czech Republic. With millions of stock photos and illustrations distributed in 17 languages and in multiple currencies, the acquisition of Pixmac accelerates Pond5’s strategy to offer a global marketplace where media makers can connect with fellow artists.
In its quarterly conference call Shutterstock reported revenue of
$169.2 million for the full year of 2012, a 41% increase over the $120.3 million in 2011. Fourth quarter revenue was $49.2 million, a 42% increase over Q4 2011. Looking ahead, the company expects to see revenue of between $48.5 and $50.5 million in Q1 2013, and for the full year revenue in the range of
$213 to $219 million. Shutterstock stock (SSTK) closed at $32.88, up 17.22% on Friday.
Most photographers are focused on how much they can charge for their images. The higher the price the happier they are. This is true, not just of RM photographers who want to retain the ability to negotiate on every sale depending on the importance and significance of the usage. It is also true of Microstock photographers as their distributors continue to push up prices. (Check out
this story.)
The
MicrostockGroup blog conducts an annual survey of microstock contributors. The survey always receives a very high number of responses compared to other photographer surveys. This year 708 contributors supplied information. MicrostockGroup has posted an
infographic that highlights some of the more interesting information from the 2012 Microstock Industry Survey.
Many photographers that license their images at RM and traditional RF prices still believe microstock images are being licensed for $1.00. For the most part nothing could be further from the truth. Consider these price comparisons for images on 7 different microstock sites with the average price for an RM or RF sale on Getty Images. You'll be surprised!
Several major image producers that license their work through microstock distributors have told me that their revenue from
iStockphoto (IS),
Fotolia (FT) and
Dreamstime (DT) was down 25% to 30% in 2012 compared to 2011. What’s more, based on current trends they are predicting 2013 revenue will be down 35% to 45% compared to 2011.
Getty has given Sean Locke and Rob Sylvan notice that their iStockphoto contracts will be terminated in 30 days. Locke is one of the 5 top iStockphoto contributors with over 12,000 images in his collection and close to a million downloads of his images. Sylvan is author of “Taking Stock,” worked on the iStock staff for many years and has helped thousands of photographers build and improve their microstock businesses.
The Global Stock Image Market Research Group (GSIMRG) in Heidelberg, Germany has just released a
report on the extensive study of the stock photo industry that it conducted in 2012. They concluded that the stock photo industry generated $2.88 billion in revenue in 2012. Based on their figures I think image licensing is much less. Their report, and my commentary in this article, is a must read for anyone engaged in the stock photo business.
Serban Enache, CEO of Dreamstime has explained in a
blog post how Google’s new image search techniques make it more likely that unauthorized use of your images will increase. Every image producer should read this story.
There is increasing dissatisfaction among iSockphoto contributors as a result of
Googlegate, and other recent moves by iStock. Many of the approximately 5,000 exclusive contributors are exploring the option of giving up their exclusive and placing their images on multiple web sites. Shutterstock is actively pursuing iStock exclusive contributors and has created a direct email address,
wbva@fuhggrefgbpx.pbz, to guide them through the signup and approval process.
Many who license their images at Rights Managed or traditional Royalty Free prices believe it is impossible to earn significant revenue licensing images at microstock prices. This article offers some comparative analysis.
Jon Oringer, CEO of Shutterstock, has written a very
interesting piece about why being exclusive with one distributor doesn’t work for microstock photographers. I agree with his conclusion, but disagree with one of his major arguments.
In the growing clamor and uproar about the free images available through Google Drive Rick Becker-Leckrone, CEO of Blend Images, made some points on the
Stockphoto blog that are worth examining. See the
previous article for more background.
This is the third in a series of articles on the image collection that is available to Google Drive users. (It looks like there may be many more articles as more details unfold.) To see the first two articles go
here and
here. This is not just a microstock issue. Hundreds of traditionally priced RF images are involved.
iStock has provided an explanation on Google Drive issues described in my
previous post. The following was posted on the iStock forum late yesterday.
Sean Locke (one of iStock’s highest earning contributors) discovered recently that some of his best selling images are now available on GoogleDrive for
FREE. There is a major thread in the
iStock forum. I’ll try to summarize what seems to be known so far.
Recently several subscribers have asked questions, the answers to which might be of interest to all subscribers. So I’ve decided to share the questions and my answers here.
Getty photographer are complaining that their images aren’t being seen because over 365,360 iStock Exclusive+ images have been placed on the Getty site and are being given search return order preference. iStock photographers are complaining because images from various Getty brands are being pushed into The Agency Collection on iStock. TAC now contains at least 58,546 images.
At the end of 2012 the 423 had a combined total of 1,601,662 images on the iStock site and had grown their collections by 216,191 images (about 13%) during the year. However, it is interesting how this uploading breaks down. The top 20 uploaded 74,399 images (34% of the total). See their upload totals here.
The number of downloads from iStockphoto may have declined by 46% in 2012 compared to 2011 and almost 56% since 2010. This story explains in detail how we arrived at this figure and provides specific trend information on 194 of iStock's leading contributors.
Uniloc USA and Uniloc Luxenburg has sued
DepositPhotos,
Dreamstime and other stock photo licensors alleging that their business models infringe Uniloc’s U.S. patent number 7,099,848 filed by Russell P. Reeder and Raymond M. Haynes on December 28, 2001 and granted on August 29, 2006.
If contributor attitudes as expressed on web forums are any indication iStockphoto is headed downhill fast. Most of the discussion seems to be taking place on the
iStock official forum and at
Microstock Group. In this article I’ll try to examine the issues and summarize some of the points being made by various contributors.