StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

QuickLinks For 2011-01-22

• Stock Photo Marketplace ClusterShot Hits The Deadpool (Unless …):
  Back in April 2009, I wrote about a site called ClusterShot, which aimed to rival Getty Images-owned stock photography juggernaut iStockphoto. Almost two years later, the company’s calling it quits – unless a reasonable buyer steps forward with a reasonable offer.
  Ironically enough, last I’d heard about ClusterShot was when they reportedly reached profitability less than a year after launching.
  TechCrunch´s Robin Wauters.
  In The End of an Era Clustershot´s CEO Dan James is looking for a buyer:
  I hate this! I want to save ClusterShot!
  Well, you are in luck. If you really, really want to save ClusterShot then please make us an offer. We are open to selling the entire site, brand, and system to someone who wants to take it to the next level1. No reasonable offer by a reasonable party will be refused.
  More details over there. Interestingly, one of the customers of ClusterShot´s parent company silverorange is Idee Inc.

Contributor Royalty Changes@Fotolia

A quick overview below about the recent changes in contributor royalties at Fotolia. Not Year-over-Year, instead based on the two-year-period 2009 until 2011 to demonstrate the development.

Still this does not fully reflect the situation of contributors since Fotolia indeed increased the prices of their credit packages from 2010 to 2011 between 5,26% and 6,67% (depending on the size of these packages), but contributors do not benefit from this because their slice is based on the credits needed to buy an image, not on the price of the image itself.

Getty´s new Photos.com

As for stock images - either high end or the WalMart way - there have hardly been any heartbreaking innovations, moving us to tears, on the supplier side lately - those worth to mention are merely PhotoXPress (1) and PixMac (2 - as the initial idea of a microstock photo portal), both are already older than 18 months, and Flickr´s "Request to License" feature (through Getty Images).

With respect to the business and product environment, the market positioning of the "new" Photos.com with 2.5 million RF images is interesting: "Subscriptions start as low as $19 per week (or $0.19 an image) for 100 downloads per week and can be purchased in 3, 6 or 12 month packages. These subscriptions are ideal for customers who need images on an ongoing basis and at an affordable price".