StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

iStockphoto Makes More Than 10 Percent Of Its Revenues with iStockvideo

• "Though stock photos account for the bulk of iStock's business, video is its fastest-growing category, and last year it surpassed 10 percent of revenue, Thompson said.
  In 2010, revenue outside North America surpassed 50 percent, he said.
  The company also expects it eventually will offer high-end "2K" and "4K" video, which has roughly quadruple the resolution of mainstream 1080p video".
  Starting today, iStock is making the shift with [the introduction of] Vetta video.
  Editorial videos will come too, though Thompson wouldn't say when.
  
  Strongly compiled, more over there in a long & smart report from Stephen Shankland.
  As of November 2010, 65% of the video files on iS were exclusive content.
  On the quoted revenue numbers above ... you do your own math.

QuickLinks For 2010-10-01

• Amid(st) an industry of imitators:
  
  Serban Enache on Facebook on new hires ("Sales Executive, International Channel Partnerships") at Shutterstock.

• Fotolia´s new Provocateur "collection" ("Affordable avant-garde"):
  If there would be more from this type of imagery (not only 100+ images) at this price, with only a few having the potential, I´d be ready to forget about Vetta.

Vetta Collection/Agency Collection

Below is a quick overview on the new prices (in credits) for iStockphoto´s Vetta Collection (without illustrations) announced yesterday, the differences to the current Vetta pricing scheme and to the new Agency Collection.

Explained later as a "technical glitch" ("both accepted and rejected files" were appearing), images from the Agency Collection showed up on the website with the latest uploads, causing a lot of discussion about the quality&prices of the images in the Agency Collection.

Especially the meanwhile famous "vacant-sign-on-toilet-door" image - it´s no longer live on iStock, but in the Agency Collection on Getty here and on fStop. Compare the different prices on all three sites. It is currently not possible in iStock´s Advanced Search to search the Vetta and the Agency Collection separately.

[Update: Agency Collection XXXLarge is 250, and the difference 67%]

[Update] Why ...

(Announced from iStock in "Important!: Royalty Changes and iStock Collections")

Somehow it didn´t work out with Betta than Vetta

More on the “Betta than Vetta cease and desist Letta” from John. -Related details here.

iStockphoto: COO Kelly Thompson Projects $200 million in Revenues, Microstock Agency launches Vetta Collection

Kelly Thompson became COO of iStockphoto in September 2008, a few months before Founder & CEO Bruce Livingstone left the company.

In his new position Kelly is responsible for the future of the world´s - in absolute numbers - economically most successful microstock agency, which employs a staff of 115 in Calgary (including contractors and the Berlin office) and additionally 110 image inspectors around the globe, in total about 225 people.

Recently I spoke to Kelly and asked him: what is the future focus of iStockphoto under the COO Kelly Thompson?

"I´m a pretty technical guy: I have a computer science degree with a specialty in UI design and worked at a major enterprise search company for a long time, so you´ll see a focus on that for me.

Bruce left the company in brilliant shape with the content we have: I might be biased, but I think we have some of the best content on the planet, micro or not - as Vetta attests to.