As a follow up to my previous post, we have a winner for the race to my first flame. And the winner is ......
the picture of the morrocan entrance.
By way of comparison, the morocan entrance is also my top seller at Shuterstock with 149 sales. The vineyard shot isn't even in the top 20 but a similar shot (shot in landscape rather than portrait about 10 seconds apart) is my 4th top seller at shutterstock with just over 90 sales.
I dont do footage so not of interest to me, but it may be for you. Have a look at their press release for details. Shutterstock Footage® to Introduce Subscription Product.
Launch is natural step for Shutterstock®, the industry leader in subscription-based access to premium visual content.
New York, NY-- April 16, 200 -- Shutterstock, a leader in the stock image industry, announced today that it will be adding a subscription product to its stock video library at Shutterstock Footage. Previously, video clips from the ever-expanding collection had been available only on a per-clip basis. With this launch, Shutterstock will offer customers the freedom provided by the subscription model, with the refreshing ease-of-use for which Shutterstock is known in the creative community. With a subscription to Shutterstock Footage, customers can download more material to inspire and fuel their creative projects without concerning themselves with per-clip charges and administration. Shutterstock Footage by subscription will be available starting April 16, 2008.
"We understand subscription, and why it works well for creative professionals," said Jon Oringer, Shutterstock's Founder & CEO. Adam Riggs, company President, added: "Shutterstock's image subscriptions provide immediate and unconstrained access to our library of photos, illustrations, and vectors; this new product will do the same for our video clip collection at Shutterstock Footage."
Subscriptions to Shutterstock Footage are available in two main types, one that entitles the subscriber to download clips in all formats including High-Definition (HD) and one that permits all formats except for HD. All subscription periods are 30 days, and subscribers choose which plan is best for them based on the quantity of footage they anticipate downloading during that period. This model gives maximum flexibility and value to subscribers: there is a plan here for someone seeking a modest number of non-HD footage over the course of a month and one that provides for more heavy usage, up to 50 clips at the highest resolution. The plans are as follows:
Shutterstock Footage's collection now contains almost 50,000 video clips in categories such as People, Animals/Wildlife, Transportation and Technology. Easily searchable by keyword, the footage library grows every day -- hundreds of clips are added each week -- meaning that subscriber searches constantly turn up fresh material.
Number of clips per 30-day subscription period
HD Included?
Cost per 30-day subscription
10 NO $269
25 NO $639
50 NO $1,199
10 YES $449
25 YES $1,059
50 YES $1,999
It looks like Luckyoliver will be closing its doors. This is a shame as this is one of the newer agencies that was trying to do something slightly different, breaking the mould, experimenting, and having fun while doing it. Appologies for anyone I referred but I had high hopes for these guys
If anyone has spare credits that they wont be using, feel free to use them on my photos - http://www.luckyoliver.com/portfolio/CJPhoto - I will repay the favour (contact me by commment - if it is a private message, I wont publish it).
A short extract from their press release:It's with great disappointment that we have decided to shut down LuckyOliver on May 15th. All Olivers who purchased tokens must use them to license images before May 15th, 2008. Please note that the user agreement will continue to be valid. Any Carny images that are waiting in the queue for Bouncers will not be reviewed. Carnies who have reached the minimum payout must request payout by May 15th. Carnies who have not reached the minimum payout can convert their earnings to tokens by contacting support.
I have just seen that Crestock has launched an affiliate program. I dont submit to Crestock but wonder whether I should be. An affiliate program shows one of two things to me - either desparation to get new photos or a desire to grow quickly into a top site. As Crestock has been around for a while it is my guess they are finally taking a stab at making it big. It might be time to join up?
Does anyone submit to Crestock?
How does it compare to other sites?
Has it been picking up recently?
If your not submitting to Crestock clilck one of the links or ads to join up.
An interetting article from the British Journal of Photography. It talks briefly about what istockphoto earns, the top earners and what the "average" contributor can expect. Extract below or click the link above for the full article:[ istockphoto has] 4000 contributors, and if that figure remained even, they would be earning an average more like $5225 last year. Then you have to calculate that against the costs of the shoots, factoring in how many images you need to hit a premium and how often you need to refresh your portfolio. Lee Torrens, who runs a blog called Microstock Diaries, calculates that each of his images at iStockphoto generates just 30 cents a year. Compared against nine other micro-stock agencies he has images with, iStockphoto paid the best return. The worst, CanStockPhoto, delivered just one cent per image.
I currently have 2 photos sitting on 98 downloads so only 2 downloads away from getting flame status (ie 100DL). They really are two completely different stories about how I get my photos for microstock.
The first (Moroccoan Entrance) was taken in Morroco in Christmas 2005 when I was doing a tour there. It wasn't taken specifically for stock as I hadn't started that yet as I had only just got my DSLR and was still learning how everything worked. I got around to uploading it in October 2006 (I only started half way through 2006) and it has sold 5.2 times per month.The second photo (Vineyard)was taken when I was back in New Zealand on holiday (NZ is my home but I was living in London at the time. I had driven past this vineyard so many times when I was younger - it has an amazing position where it rises up a hill away from an intersection (hard to describe but it looks amazing). Anyway, I was driving past there and thought it would make a great stock photo. So I jumped out, rattled off a few shots and eventually uploaded it at the end of June 07 - it now sells about 10 times per month.
So the race is on. For the past two months I have kept my eye on them because based on averages, they should both reach 100Dl in the same month. Hopefully it will be soon.
A new feture to the microstock landscape - istock , the biggest agency has decided to offer a subscription service. While I dont think it is a good as the subscription service offered by shutterstock I am sure it will be a great success because they already have such a big slice of the market, this can only increase it.
FAQ for Contributors on Subscription
kkthompson Apr 04/08, 11:54
Is there a minimum payout? Yes. We'll guarantee the same minimum payout as we do today on the Pay-as-you-go side. … more Is there a minimum payout?
Yes. We'll guarantee the same minimum payout as we do today on the Pay-as-you-go side. So right now, the lowest priced (non-sale) credit is 96¢. You receive 20 to 40% of that. Clear canisters will receive a minimum 19¢ and Diamonds will receive a minimum 38¢. And yes, this means that sometimes iStock will be paying out more than we take in per credit.
What's the maximum payout available?
Contributors stand to make more per file than they've ever made before from iStock. Here are two examples of what a non-exclusive can make off subscriptions:
- If a subscriber with a daily credit limit of 480 uses only 10 credits that day, all on one of your files, you'd earn 480 × 20% × $130*. That means a payout of about $26 for your single file.
- If a subscriber with a daily credit limit of 30 uses only 10 credits that day, including 5 credits on your image, you'd earn (30/2) × 20% × $10*. A payout of about $1.
* These values are 'Credit Package Value per Day', and have not been set yet. They are for illustrative purposes only.
Who gets the money when no credits are used on a day?
iStock does. This will offset the times where iStock will be paying out more in royalties than was paid for the credit, because of the guaranteed minimum on these days.
Why are you doing it this way?
This way we share in the risk and reward with the contributors, and still guarantee no less than what's currently paid out.
Will there be cannibalization of Pay-as-you-go?
Some clients will migrate to the new model, but we think we'll have lots of new customers that couldn't use our services before. Remember, this was one of the most requested features by people who wanted to become customers.
How often will stats be udpated?
Because Subscription credits expire daily, we'll update them once per day after everything has been tallied (i.e. after midnight for the day before).
Is this royalty structure set in stone?
We've modeled the subscription plan on a number of assumptions. If after we have a few months data, we find we were off on our assumptions, we'll revisit the royalty structure.
Interesting article about Getties results and how they expect the microstock market to expand and traditional stock houses to shrink. Click the link below for the full article.
Getty: iStockphoto Sales Could Total $262M In 2012Link
March 28, 2008
By Daryl Lang
Getty Images projects that its iStockphoto division will more than double in size by 2012, reaching $262 million in annual sales.
At the same time, traditional royalty-free and rights-managed stock licensing is expected to shrink by a quarter, down from more than half of Getty's revenues to just 29 percent in 2012.
IStockphoto earned $22 million in 2006 and $72 million in 2007, according to figures in a document dated February 7.
A November 2007 report projected that iStockphoto will earn $122 million this year and $262 in 2012.
If counted separately from Getty Images, iStockphoto would probably be the world's third-largest stock agency this year. (The top two agencies, Getty and Corbis, each generate hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenues. Jupiterimages, generally regarded as third place, reported $108 in annual revenues for 2007.)
Sales are up this month and getting back to the highs of last year. However, this was due to a few Extended License sales at shutterstock which helped out alot. A disappointing month at a few sites, istockphoto especially which had been a top earner in the new year and I had great hopes for sales to surge forward in 2008.
Below are percentages for the month to show how I have been going:
25% shutterstock
17% dreamtime
3% Fotolia
11% istockphoto
9% bigstockphoto
5% 123RF
17% StockXpert
1% Featurepics
2% LuckyOliver
Previous results for 2008:
Feb 2008 Earnings
Jan 2008 Earnings
