July 6, 2007
FeaturePics Surpasses 300,000 Images
The stock photography Web site FeaturePics.com has an image collection that just passed the 300,000-image milestone. At the same time, the site began offering credit terms to image buyers.
Although FeaturePics is a community-driven business, it is not a microstock site. In addition to royalty-free photos and illustrations, FeaturePics sells images under rights-managed licenses and offers extended and editorial-licensing options. It also allows image owners to set their own prices and provides promotional space to individual contributors.
Prices of images prices vary from $1 to several hundred. Buyers purchase images using credit cards or PayPal. FeaturePics' contributors retain 70% of sales, which remains the highest creator cut in the stock-image industry. Photo-sharing newcomer Zooomr has promised to launch a licensing service with a 90% author commission.
Established in 2004 by Web developer Elena Orel, FeaturePics hit the 150,000-image mark last December. In the following six months, it doubled its inventory. The 300,000-image portfolio exceeds many traditional stock brands and is catching up to top 10 microstock sites, such as CanStockPhoto.com, which is nearing a half-million images.
FeaturePics expects continued growth of image inventory and sales. The site reports that more than half of the images it sells are purchased by buyers with an ongoing need for stock. Orel says that the largest volume of sales come from customers in the news and entertainment business.
To accommodate such clients, FeaturePics moved even further away from the microstock business model - which typically involves buyers purchasing site credits in bulk - to offering payment terms. "Making images easily accessible to these agencies is an integral part of FeaturePics's [marketing] strategy," said Orel.
AP Adds Medical, African-American Imagery
By: Julia Dudnik Stern
AP Images and the German specialty picture agency medicalpicture finalized a distribution arrangement. A database of 100,000 medical photos, graphics, illustrations, animations and videos will be added to AP Images' 3.5-million-photo inventory.
In May, AP Images came to a similar agreement with the Johnson Publishing Company, which owns Ebony and Jet magazines. Published in 1945 and 1951, respectively, the photographic archives of the two publications represent the most definitive collection of visual content depicting the lives of African Americans.
AP Images, an online distribution platform, licenses content for editorial and commercial use. The two recent agreements enhance a collection that includes work by AP photographers and multiple content partners, such as the UK Press Association and Women's Wear Daily.