StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

Fotolia V3, Changes of Subscription Plans

In the light of the upcoming V3 of Fotolia´s website (and the competition) some major changes were announced:

1. There will be only *one* subscription plan left in the future, instead of the Standard (L size) and the Premium (XXL size) subscription. This is for many reasons very interesting, the Premium subscription was alive little over 2 years.
   Changes with respect to contributor commissions below (without absolute re-/progressive values between percentage differences):
   
   
   
   
   
2. Videos in HD will no longer be offered in the subscription plan (like earlier in the Premium subscription), "but web resolution vids are available", in M size, counting now as five downloads.
   HD vids need to be acquired separately in the future, as single downloads.
   
   
3. Vectors, counting earlier as 3 DL, are counting now as 1 DL, and commissions for contributors were cut way stronger than for images, being in RPD now equal to images. Do your own math.
   
   
4. Further Details on Image Pricing, Vector Pricing and Video Pricing.

 

Related:

• Contributor Royalty Changes@Fotolia (Jan. 21, 2011)
• Fotolia launches Premium Subscription (July 07, 2009)
• New Fotolia Microstock Subscription (May 31, 2008); Act II; Act III.

 

A Few Words With Professional Image Buyer Alexander Karst on Microstock in The German Speaking Countries

Alexander Karst is an old stager in the picture business.

He started his career in 1998 as Web & PR Manager at PhotoDisc where he first met his now partner at Die Bildbeschaffer, Michaela Koch, worked later for Getty Images and Digital Vision, and co-founded Strandperle in 2002.

In 2008 Alexander founded "Die Bildbeschaffer" in Hamburg, again together with Michaela Koch: a new venture which offers the outsourcing of the complete process of buying RM/RF/MS/CC images, rights clearance and pricing as a service to ad agencies and corporates. Now, "Die Bildbeschaffer" not only do the fulfilment – but also do pre- & after-sales jobs: image databases, filling images into the databases, trainings and seminars for all purposes.

As an image buyer, Alexander has been involved from Day One in buying and using microstock. I wanted to know more about Alexander’s buying experience with microstock since the beginning and how it and also his perception about microstock have changed over the years.

 

Fotolia Offers Free Microstock Subscription To Bloggers

How many times in the past years have people puzzled around with their excel sheets trying to create and calculate the free blogger flatrate for microstock images?

Those excel sheets all went Jamd fubar, and even PhotoXpress does not offer any free images to new users anymore.

Fotolia´s new offer to some bloggers (a few selected ones of course from the design and media world) instead now gives to these bloggers the possibility to download up to 5 images per day from the Standard Subscription (not the Premium Subscription) in L-Size - limited to a full month nota bene.

The images are coming from Fotolia, not from PhotoXpress.

[Update Apr. 10, 2011: To make things clearer for some, I extended the 3rd paragraph]

[Update Apr. 11, 2011: Related: "Amazing free photo subscription offer for Bloggers"]

 

Dreamstime: New Level, Features and Licenses

"Three new weekly subscriptions are added today for designers with short-term projects to complete. With the weekly option, subscribers are able to download up to 10, 25 or 50 images per day. While the product is almost identical to our current monthly subscription, the abbreviated subscription is available at a lower cost."

And while Serban excpects that "most files continue to sell at better pricing under the new level, while any additional downloads will bring better revenue to the contributors", Dreamstime decided "to offer all our imagery free of charge for" this "day", today: "Designers or simple members will be able to download any images for free ... This is available only for a 24 hour window on April 1st 2011 and should allow everyone to adjust to the new price structure."

- Remember, today is the day for the April Fool's joke. 

 

More details below (also on increasing subscription royalties - click on the image below to enlarge), the rest over there and on the Royalty Chart.

See also this thread here on the new Geotagging feature.

 

QuickLinks For 2010-05-06

• Cutting out the middleman in microstock:
  Money Business Images and their low priced subscription with roughly 20,000 images.
  Compare the images, see who contributes.
  
  

125 Million Image Downloads

Shutterstock announced in September 2008 that 60 million image files had been downloaded since 2005, roughly three months after a high-risk but finally lucky analysis presumed a similar approach then.

In their recent press release with respect to the 10-million-images milestone, Shutterstock mentions that it "has delivered over 125 million image downloads to customers since its founding in 2003", which would result in a very high number of downloaded files in this relatively short period (September 2008 until February 2010) of only 18 months. -One of the last official numbers, iStockphoto achieved 17.55 million downloads in 2007.

Both annoncements from Shutterstock as of 2008 and 2010 exclude footage.

While Shutterstock added "40,000 new images a week" in 2008, it´s now up to "80,000" per week in 2010, with a rejection rate of 60%.

The rest about the "industry of imitators" over there.

Shutterstock: 10,000,001 microstock subscription images and counting

News about yet another newly achieved millions-of-images-count-milestone appeared from most of the well-known microstock agencies in 2009 about every second month. So generally no big thing.

But now for the first time it´s up to numbers with eight figures. Though already an old number a day later, Shutterstock, the inventor of the subscription model and as the first of the Big Four* microstock agencies, completed yesterday shortly before midnight local time NY its next milestone of 10,000,000 microstock subscripton images.

As known all over the place, the absolute number of images can, but must not necessarily be connected to the financial success of a microstock agency: iStockphoto currently shows roughly 6,3 million, Dreamstime 7,7 million and Fotolia 7,4 million - the latter surprising because Fotolia announced 8 million images two month ago in December 2009.

(Screenshot exclusively and courtesy of Shutterstock)

*I have excluded microstock newcomers like PixMac which predominantly distributes external content from Fotolia and Dreamstime and reaches 10,185,000 images this way.

Update Feb. 16, 2010:

• Fotolia´s image-/file count:
  So while on the topic whether or not Fotolia shows 8 million image files, Fotolia´s EVP NA Garth Johnson added: "Our count is over 8 million now. We separate the Photos and Illustrations from both Vectors and Videos."
  "All together, we have well over the 8 million mark."

"StockXpert is ceasing regular operations"

From the newsletter:

We are sorry to announce that beginning today, StockXpert will no longer sell new credits or accept new members. On February 11, 2010, searching and downloading at StockXpert will cease. This will be the end of image sales at StockXpert.

All SXP members have the opportunity to transfer their remaining credits to iStockphoto. iStock offers the highest quality affordable microstock imagery in the industry. Come and see for yourself. SXP credits will be honored 1 for 1 at iStockphoto.

Thinkstock, iStockphoto´s second Subscription Service

(Edited 02-05-10) For apparent reasons I can´t hardly comment whether the pricing of Getty Images´ new subscription website Thinkstock/Thinkstockphotos (does anyone remember?) or that 25-images-per-day thing are innovative or not.

The idea for the announced image packs, despite the different number of image downloads (5, 25, 100 and 250), was apparently copied from the mother-of-all-subscription-plans, Shutterstock, and their On Demand subscriptions with 5, 12, 25 and 60 downloads.

Doing some comparing searches on Thinkstock with only one keyword and different sources of images, the pure number of images from iStockphoto on Thinkstock seems to be impressive: from 38% over 44% and 54% up to 58% in various seach results. -You might of course get different results when searching.

More details here and here.

Related:

• Getty Images Begins Rolling Out New Subscription Formats (PaidContent):
  "The company plans to roll out a variety of subscription formats over the next five months that aims to capture customers with small budgets, such as individual bloggers ... Klein said: "This new subscription service brings together 3.5 million images."
  Getty is still wrestling with ways to make money from mobile. Klein sees potential there, but “nothing immediate.” Getty considers gaming to be a particularly lucrative area. “The gaming space continues to grow and developers have an insatiable appetite for images."
• Getty Images launches subscriptions (BJP)
• Did Getty Just Repackage Its RF Dregs? (PDN)

Running a microstock business from Romania can be a tough challenge

... like elsewhere in Europe where many things are not working in one of - if not the - toughest winters since decades.

QuickLinks For 2010-01-27

• Changes at Veer Marketplace:
  Veer Marketplace content will now be front and center in our search results, along with RF content Veer has from macro photographers and partners. We will streamline our web site so that there is a single search grid (rather than the two separate RM/RF and VMP grids that we currently have). [...]
  We will simplify the customer experience on Veer by only offering easy-to-license RF imagery, including all the imagery from our Veer Marketplace contributors. We will continue to have a wide variety of images from premium-priced images to value-priced images, all offered under the RF licensing model.
  Translated: RM will be removed from Veer.

QuickLinks For 2009-12-15

• New increased credit prices at Dreamstime. As much as most contributors are understandably delighted, some see things different:
  Any news about an increase in commissions is good news, however I also feel that Dreamstime should put some effort into their marketing of the site to try and get themselves up there along with iS, SS and FT. They need to be seen to be actively promoting the site in order to get the volume of sales to make it worth while staying. If Dreamstime don't market themselves properly a price rise is pointless. (abbreviated)
  Related:
  • Dreamstime adjusts Royalties and Pricing
    (Aug. 14, 2008)

QuickLinks For 2009-12-08

• New programs need to be disruptive in order to compete with core models:
  It's the first time we had to remove a product since our inception, 5 years ago.
  No matter how difficult is to withdraw features that required a lot of work, I consider such move wiser than supporting a program that proved neither able to compete with our core model nor able to help it grow.
  Dreamstime´s Serban Enache indirectly on the sometimes ambiguous difference between managers and leaders when admitting mistakes: one man, one word, that´s it. Worth reading.
  Background here and here.

SS acquires BSP: How to get into single image sales through the backdoor

Acquire another credit-based micro agency which additionally doesn´t offer a subscription plan: more details.

Read Jon´s announcement here on the SS forum: "Though we studied the possibility of building a credit site from scratch, in the end we decided that acquiring and building upon the momentum of a solid brand like BigStockPhoto.

What we did with subscriptions - we plan to do with credits".

Shutterstock: Adam Riggs moves to Frankfurt

Here and here (german only). English release may follow later here.

Related:

• A Short Midsummer Conversation With Shutterstock´s Jon Oringer on Microstock Footage
  (Aug. 05, 2008)
• A Short Conversation With Shutterstock´s Jon Oringer
  (Dec. 30, 2007)

Dreamstime adjusts Royalties and Pricing

"Similar on getting married, trust someone after the long run not on your first date" (on page five here). In a move long expected and with respect to the highly competitive market long, long overdue, Dreamstime has revamped its royalty and pricing structure with some interesting details.

While some contribitors usually have ambivalent feelings anywhere about these changes ("credit royalties will decrease"), the "repositioning" enables DT "to attract more buyers with the extra budget": "for 5 years we've kept a royalty of 50% for all non exclusives against 20% which was the minimum of the industry. The agency awarding you 20% had bigger prices than us and lower commissions. Which means better budgets to drive traffic."

 

 

Fotolia launches Premium Subscription

Just in, and apparently aimed at Shutterstock, Fotolia launched today the full resolution Premium Subscription with some similiarites to the previous Corporate Account.

Prices start higher at Fotolia with €249/month for 25 images/day (Shutterstock: €199), but align with a 12-months subscription (FT with €2.061 vs. SS with €2049). This comparison is not valid for the US where SS starts at $249/month, like Fotolia, and 12-months subscription are $2.061 (FT) vs. $2.559 (SS). Dreamstime in comparison: $239 and $2.399.

Fotolia vector and video files now count as 3 respectively 10 downloads. -More here.

Dreamstime Stock Rank: did you try it?

Super cool and educating: Stock Rank.

OK, you´re probably all better than me, but overall not too bad for the first play. Now, it can only become worse... .

Rest of the story here.

 

 

Polylooks: Deutsche Telekom launches its new Microstock Community

Just a quick note from Day One of the CEPIC congress.

The Deutsche Telekom/German Telecom has launched its new microstock portal Polylooks - with the microstock Mediastore, a Community (beta) and the magazine Augenblicke.

Polylooks operates with credits. Photographers receive 50% commission for exclusive and 35% for non-exclusive content. The pricelist for photobuyers gives an overview about the price tags for single images and subscription images. The website is currently only available in German.

Partner of the new microstock community is Hamburg-based mid-/microstock agency Zoonar which contributes around 150,000 images to the new portal.

Related:

• Deutsche Telekom To Launch New Microstock Community
  (April 19, 2009)
• Deutsche Telekom to launch Microstock Community with Stock Agency Zoonar
  (May 13, 2009)

Fotolia raises between $50 million and $100 million Venture Capital from TA Associates

Some competitors of Fotolia have taken pride in the past months to spread the rumor that Fotolia was already or was about to be sold at that time.

TechCrunch/Erick Schonfeld, in another new article on Fotolia - and no further comment from me - emphasizes that "Fotolia Takes A Massive $50 Million To $100 Million Round" from TA Assiociates, but mentions also "there are some rumors going around in venture circles that Fotolia got sold outright for $150 million. Our source, however, emphasizes that the company was not sold. Instead, after competitive bidding from more traditional venture firms, TA Associates came in with a massive injection of capital."

Now you take your calculator and assess:

1. The underlying company evaluation, and
2. The underlying estimation of the microstock image market size.

 

iStockphoto Partner Program

Kelly Thompson has a longer update on the iStock/JIU/Photos.com issue (compiled):

• That's what we're calling it: the Partner Program. This is the program through which we give you, the iStock contributor, opportunities to make your content available through other sites in the larger Getty Images family. The first two such sites are going to be Photos.com and Jupiter Images Unlimited. Will there be others in the future? For sure. [...]
• 3. Photos.com and JIU will pay a flat royalty per download: 25¢ for non-exclusives, and 30¢ – 38¢ for exclusives, according to canister level.
• 4. Photos.com – Powered by iStockphoto. We will become the driving force behind Photos.com, improving the quality of the collection with the strength of the iStock brand. [...]

QuickLinks For 2009-05-07

• iStockphoto Subscription Update by Kelly Thompson:
  We hear you and understand you aren't happy with the royalty percentage. We'll see what we can do, but don't expect miracles. [...]
  Subscription on iStock is not good enough. Photos.com is our best opportunity at creating a competitive subscription site, and you should want to be involved. [...]
  All that being said, it's probably going to be next week before we get back to you. Given the reception, the most likely outcome will be for us to look for alternative sources of images for Photos.com/JIU.
  Over 400 replies currently on over 20 pages.
  A comment* by RapidEye:

Patrick Lor, Co-founder of iStockphoto, joins Fotolia

Patrick Lor, co-founder of iStockphoto, a Getty owned-online marketplace for microstock photography and video, has joined rival Fotolia as the President of Fotolia North America.
According to Lor, his non-compete contract expired with Getty recently, which left him available to get back into the stock photography business.
iStockphoto was initially launched to democratize photography and let all people use images, Lor says. He was disappointed to hear of iStockphoto’s aggressive price increases following the Getty acquisition and maintains that Fotolia’s prices are much more fair for consumers.
Lor hopes to launch some new services in the future but won’t reveal what those are just yet.

Sources: Leena Rao/TechCrunch (compiled/accentuation in bold above by me) and Fotolia.

Regardless of the small mistake in the TC post - iStock (since 2000) is way longer in business than Fotolia (since 2005) - it´s a strange time for iStockphoto:

QuickLinks For 2009-05-06

• Results of the Subscription Shuffle Survey:
  If you´re less interested in the emotional aspect (see this pix & the picture below)
  
  Byline: "Do you feel lucky, punk?" [The image was removed lately]
  
  ... of the discussions (1; 2) over at the iStock forum mentioned here earlier (1; 2), check the preliminary results of the unofficial Subscription Shuffle Survey.
  
  To be fair, please note that in threads like the two mentioned above the negative comments of some members might prevail which might not reflect the opinion of the majority of contributors.
  Also, and again to be fair, the results of the quoted and ongoing survey above might not be representative for the majority of contributors.
  Again, you need to read both threads mentioned above yourself for a complete and balanced overview.
  
  Either way, Shutterstock reacted quickly with a New Marketing Program to the news that "iStock contributors will have the opportunity to sell their images through Photos.com and Jupiter Unlimited subscriptions".

QuickLinks For 2009-05-05

• New Subscriptions Q & A on the iStockphoto forum:
  Quite a journey. The initial thread Subscription Shuffle (see last posting) regarding the integration into Photos.com and Jupiter Unlimited was closed after 1315 answers.
  Now this new thread New Subscriptions Q & A ("We want to see iStock and Getty Images take a bigger chunk of the Subscription market") was started by rogermexico and has already gathered over 400 replies.
  To the question "Won't that weaken our sales here at iStock?" he responds: "No. All of our research shows that the audience for these sites is different enough from our existing customer base that there won't be any kind of cannibalization. We are breaking into a new market, not re-selling to the same one."
  And later: "We've still got a lot to discuss internally about all of this. Obviously a reaction this strong from the community must be taken into account".
  Again, you need to read all the replies yourself for a complete & balanced overview.
  
  [Update May 6th: the above mentioned thread was closed after over 1,100 replies]