New Keywording Service

It came to my attention by a comment from Mahroch to this other post that a new keywording service is available.

Here's the link: Find Photo Keywords

It works by allowing searches on Shutterstock, Fotolia and iStockPhoto, choosing similar images and then extracting the existing keywords on those images. You can then select the 50 that best apply to your image. (a bit like photokeywords.com that I referred on the other post).

The advantages of this new service are:

- Search in multiple sites
- Search in multiple languages (for Fotolia and iStock only)

The only thing I noticed that photokeywords allowed was to add new words after you made the final selection.

Hope you feel it's useful and thank you to Mahroch for the tip.

Crestock Best Image of the Day

It's not a great achievement but it made me happy nonetheless. One of my photos was nominated Best Image of the Day on Crestock.

StockXpert Steps Back

After what seemed a Submitters revolution, StockXpert decided to step back on their policy changes announced last week.

StockXpert had announced that subscription sales would stop being optional and that the site photos.com (a subsidiary of Jupiter Images) would also represent the full collection of StockXpert images.

The problem is photos.com EULA (User License Agreement) allows the use of subscription images for resale with products such as posters, mugs, pads, prints, etc, and this usually requires an Extended License on the microstock world.

A heated discussion took place on SXP forums and many people deleted their portfolios and many other suspended uploads to the site. The trust on SXP seems to be pretty shaken and only time will tell how this will end.

So, to avoid an exodus of submitters, StockXpert (or should we say Jupiter Images) had two choices. Give an opt-out to the program or modify the photos.com EULA not to allow resale products on subscription sales. I (and I believe most submitters) would obviously prefer the EULA revision. They've decided to give everyone an opt-out.

Many people have voiced their concerns and announced they will opt-out on subscription sales on SXP. Some are going for the wait and see approach and will stay opt-in and see how things go.

It's the second time this year (after the Fotolia subscription plan announcement) that submitters have joined and forced an agency to review their offers. This would never be possible if we, as submitters, were commited to only one agency (on an exclusive plan) or if there weren't at least 5 or 6 solid sites to submit to. For now, the strenght seems to be on our side... Let's wait and see what the future holds.

Shutterstock On Demand

ShutterStock announced yesterday two new products in their subscription plans. They've called it Shutterstock on Demand and it's basically a credit package that a client can use for a year, instead of having a limit of photos to download per day.

There are two packages, one for small/medium images and other for full size images.

The measure seems to be very welcome by the microstock community and finally puts ShutterStock on par with it's competitors in terms of buying solutions.

The comissions will be higher than the usual subscription sales. As in the normal subscription plan (now called "25 a day") the comission will vary with the submitter's total earnings (lifetime) in Shutterstock. Here's a table with the values:

Small/Medium Package
< $500 in earnings - $0.81
> $500 and < $3000 - $1.07
> $3000 and < $10000 - $1.17
> $10000 - $1.24

Any Size Package
< $500 in earnings - $1.88
> $500 and < $3000 - $2.48
> $3000 and < $10000 - $2.70
> $10000 - $2.85

The referral earnings and cd backup program comissions stay the same, with $0.03 and $0.05 respectively.

Kudos for Shutterstock for allowing these new options to buyers.

Oh, Paris!

I've just come back from a small trip to Paris. To my surprise, I found one of my images in use as part of a poster of "Fête des Tuileries" spread all over the city. Just for fun, here it is:



And here's a link to the image used

Dreamstime Comission Update

Just like in November last year, Dreamstime is updating it's pricing/comission structure.

Changes in image levels:

Level 1 - 0 to 4 downloads

Level 2 - 5 to 19 downloads

Level 3 - 20 to 49 downloads

Level 4 - 50 to 99 downloads

Level 5 - more than 100 downloads

Comissions:

Image Size	Size	Base Comission (Level 1)
Extra Small	480 pixels	$0.50 USD
Small	800 pixels	$1.00 USD
Medium	3 to 5 MegaPixels	$1.50 USD
Large	5 to 8 MegaPixels	$2.00 USD
Extra Large	8 to 12 MegaPixels	$2.50 USD
Highest	Over 12 MegaPixels	$3.00 USD

Each image level increases comission by $1 USD. This means:

Comission = (Comission at Level 1) + (Image Level - 1)
( Ex: An image on L size, level 4 will earn $2.00 + (4-1) = 5$ )

Subscription sales: $0.35 USD (up from $0.30)

Exclusives get a 20% increase in comissions.

You can find the complete tables with comissions for each image level and size at this page.

The changes are in effect since July, 29.

StockTagger - Online Keywording Tool

StockTagger is a website that allows searching for keywords (tags) for your images. It works in German and English and is available for online use without fees.

Just enter the main tag you wish to search for and a list of "partner tags" will be presented. You can then select the tags or expand them to get even more tags. After adding them to the list, you can simply copy them and input them in your image(s).

This is an alternative to photokeywords that I have mentioned before. It's less visual in the process, but the results are interesting.

Here's a link for the site's help page if you want to get more information on how it works.

Shutterstock Comission Raise

This is old news, but I'm keeping it for the record.

Shutterstock announced new prices. It's based on a strutured comission plan, in which you get a raise when you achieve a certain ammount of earnings. It goes like this:

Earnings	Value per Download
0 USD to 500 USD	0,25 USD
500 USD to 3.000 USD	0,33 USD
3.000 USD to 10.000 USD	0,36 USD
more than 10.000	0,38 USD

EL sales have also been updated, going from 20 to 28 USD.

TinEye

TinEye is a new service, still in beta, that allows doing searches using images instead of words.

You have to request an account before you can make actually use it, but it's worth it. It's also free, at least for now.

They still haven't got many images indexed (about 487 million) if you think about the size of the internet and images floating around, but you may be lucky enough to find some of your images in use. Just upload an image, enter it's url or use the firefox plug-in (which allows right clicking on any image on the web) and TinEye will find sites where that image exists.

The system is very interesting as it detects variations on the image, such as crops, mirrors, color shifts, etc.

I was able to find about a dozen images from my microstock galleries in use. An example:

When I searched by this image:



I found this site:

http://www.peterboroughlaser.com/

Give it a try.

It's been a while...

... since I could update info on the blog. Some news, I'll cover on the next posts:

- Shutterstock price update;
- iStockPhoto Subscription plans;
- Fotolia Subscription plans;
- A nice little service called TinEye;
- YAYMicro Open to buyers.

The microstock world is boiling...

Shutterstock introduces Footage Subscriptions

Shutterstock has announced today the availability of a new way of buying footage through their site.
Like with photos and vectors, you're now able to buy footage subscriptions, being intitled to a certain number of downloads within a defined period of time for a fixed price.

The new product is available immediately.

Here's a link to the press release with the available plans of subscription and prices.

As for submitters, each HD download via subscription will receive a $13.25 comission and each non-HD download will receive a $8.00 comission.

LuckyOliver Closing Down

LuckyOliver is shutting down on May, 15th.

It's sad when someone that plays fair doesn't succeed. I'm sorry to see Lucky Oliver go, even if they aren't one of my top earners.

They will allow "carnies" to cash-out and/or spend their credits.

Here's the full announcement:

http://www.luckyoliver.com/blog/328/closing-the-doors

Crestock Announces Affiliate Program

Crestock has announced today it's affiliate program. Like every other microstock agency, they'll offer a percentage to members referring new buyers and/or submitters. The terms, as communicated by their newsletter are:

Recruit new customers to Crestock and we'll give you 50% of all the money they spend for the first 6 months of their membership.

When you recruit new contributors you'll get 10% commission on their sales for 6 months.

Affiliate earnings are combined with earnings from image sales, making it easy to cash in your earnings if you're also selling images at Crestock.

It's a bit disapointing that a referral plan is limited to a 6 months period. That's usually the time a portfolio takes to get some serious results. In comparison, we have Shutterstock with Unlimited Time, Fotolia with a 5 years period and Dreamstime with a 3 years time frame.

YAY Micro

A new site is coming to the microstock scene. It's name is YAY Micro and it's based in Norway.

It's already accepting images but will only be open to sales in June.

It has FTP and IPTC read. The upload process is rather simple and the site is really fast and clean. I uploaded around 500 images in little time.

They will pay in Euros and will have subsctiption as well as credit sales. They accept editorial and commercial photography as well as vectors.

Comissions will be of 1€ for each subscription download and 1€ to 30€ for credit sales so it's more of a midstock site. The team seems to have come from trad agencies and seem to have a well planned strategy for the site. If it's worth the upload as of now, only you can tell.

More info : YAY Micro

iStockPhoto to announce Subscriptions

iStockPhoto has announced in their forums they're going to offer subscritpion plans. After StockXpert and Dreamstime, iStock will enter the subscription game and offer plans starting at 96$ a month.

Here's a link to the announcement on their forum.

96$/month means about 3$ a day. This will most likely correspond to 5 to 10 downloads a day (even though at this time, this is pure speculation). This corresponds to a value per download of 30 to 60 cents. Being an independent (i.e. non-exclusive) you get a 20% comission, which means 6 to 12 cents a download. Fortunately, you can opt-out of subscription sales (even on a "per image" base).

UPDATE: Actually, iStock's solution seems to be rather interesting, as they seem to guarantee a minimum comission value equal to the "pay as you go" sales. iStock is implementing a "subscription for credits" comission table, where a subscriber is intitled to a certain number of credits (instead of a certain number of images) and different image sizes will be purchased for a different number of credits.

Unlike other subscription plans, iStock will actually reward submitters depending on the size of image purchased. I defend this kind of approach for a long time and it's good to know someone finally decided to put it to work. Kudos for that!

Also, if a buyer spends a partial number of his credits with a single user, iStock will credit the comission of the full number of credits to the user. Example: if a buyer is intitled to 20 credits a day and in one day spends only 5 credits with one of your images, you'll get comission for those 20 credits. Sounds good!

IS seems to be willing to take Shutterstock. For agencies, this is a win-win solution. For us, contributors, not so much...

I'll update this thread with more info as it becomes available.

123RF Comission Changes

Right after SXP, here's 123RF announcing changes in the comission structure.

Basically, there are 3 main changes:

1 - Credit discounts will be lower (hence, prices will be higher) and there are new credit packages available.

2 - New Extended Licenses (2 new Multiseat Licenses and 3 new Extended License version)

• Multiseat Limited (5 only) 25 credits
  
• Multiseat Unlimited 50 credits
  
• Print Use only – per 10,000 copies 50 credits
  
• Electronic Use only 75 credits
  
• Full Extended License 100 credits
  

3 - New sizes. A bit like Fotolia and SXP, 123RF is introducing XS as an option and a higher resolution size.

• Blog 400 x 300 1 credit
  
• Web 800 x 600 2 credits
  
• Print 12 MB RAW 3 credits
  
• Ultra High 28 MB RAW 4 credits
  
• Mega High Above 28 MB RAW 5 credits
  
• TIFF Download Highest resolution in TIFF 10 credits
  

Changes 1 and 3 will take place on May, 1st. The new ELs are available immediately.

More details on the 123rf blog.

StockXpert new Price Structure

StockXpert has announced today it's new price structure for "per image" sales. It is as follows:

XS (new 400x300 format) >> 1 credit
S was 1 credit >> 2 credits
M was 2 credits >> 3 credits
L was 3 credits >> 5 credits
XL was 5 credits >> 10 credits
XXL was 10 credits >> 15 credits

There's no notice on changes to the subscritption sales. Changes will take place next week (March, 10th, 2008).

Credit price is U$1 and artists get a 50% comission.

This structure is very simmilar to the one announced by Fotolia a while back.

StockXpert is my #2 site, right before Shutterstock, so this is very good news.

All major sites but 123rf have announced price changes for 2008, even though Shutterstock will only announce the actual values in May.

Shutterstock comission raise starting May 2008

Shutterstock announced in their forums that there will be a comission change in May.

In March/April they will try the new price points and set the comission raise value. In May, they'll announce the new price structure and submitter comission. A bit late, in my oppinion, but late is much better than never. They're the last of the big sites to change the comission plan.

Here's the official thread on their forum.

Getty Images to be acquired by Hellman & Friedman

Getty Images (hence istockphoto) announced today that it agreed to be acquired by Hellman & Friedman for a value of $2.4 Billion.

Here's the Press Release.

iStockPhoto also filed a statement on the transaction, guaranteeing nothing will change for iStock users with the new owners.

StockXpert Footage

From today, you can upload and sell your movie clips on StockXpert.

StockXpert joined the RF footage world. As usual, you have to make an application and, if you're approved, you can either upload via FTP or send your clips via regular mail on CD / DVD.

Comissions are set at 40% and and prices vary between 10 and 50 US$ (4 and 20 US$ comissions) depending on resolution. You can request a payout once you get to US$100.

Here's a link to The rules of footage submission at StockXpert.

In consequence, and on a side note, StockXpert has now two different logos for photo and video.

There are now three sites selling footage: Shutterstock, iStock and StockXpert.

A market that seems to be growing in visibility and may be well worth looking into.

From LuckyOliver, with Love!

LuckyOliver has announced a new payment structure.

Starting Marh this year, the payouts will drop to U$25 (the previous value was U$100). More, the people at LuckyOliver are offering a Valentine's day gift to all their beloved contributors. From now on, if you have $1 or more on your account, you can request it on Valentine's day. Now there's an idea... Way to go!

This was my only quirck with LO. I've always thought that lowering the payout would motivate the contributors. They seem to have finally agreed.

Here's a link to the Official Press Release

Dreamstime introduces Editorial Licenses

Dreamstime announced today the acceptance of Editorial Images.

These images don't need model or property releases and should be directly connected and pertinent to current events, news and political stories, social and cultural scenes.



Read the full announcement.

Fotolia introduces new XS and XXXL licenses

Fotolia has announced the introduction of two new size licenses to it's comission structure, the XSS (300*400px - 120 000 pixels) and XXXL (4800*6400 - 30,7 MegaPixels).

The XS will sell for 1 credit (the price of an S license until now) so the prices will be reajusted for the other licenses (S, M, L, XL and XXL) by 1 credit increases.

The XXXL is clearly targeted to the new Medium Format users and will sell for 7 credits.

Vectors were also repriced, costing now 7 credits instead of 5.

This is good news to contributors, as it's basically a price increase across the board for regular sizes.

After Dreamstime, iStockPhoto and now Fotolia, let's hope ShutterStock will follow the trend and announce new comissions soon. The subscription model is more limited in options than the credit structures, but something will have to be done soon.

New Keywording Service Website

It came to my attention today a new site that offers a keywording service. In this ingenious system, the suggestions are based on a primary search and cross reference with actual searches from at least 3 agencies.

How does it work?

1 - Type a few keywords that really describe your image.
2 - Select an agency as a reference (shutterstock and Dreamstime are the options)
3 - Make a search
4 - Select the images that are similar to yours
5 - Get the keyword list

Duplicates are removed and the keywords are sorted by relevancy.

Update: I have asked the creator and know now that it will be a free service.

You can try it at http://photokeywords.com http://arcurs.com/keywording/ .

Setting it straight

iStock published a second part to it's new Intellectual Property Policy.

You can read it on their website.

It seems clearer now what will come. At a first glance, it seems reasonable also.

Dreamstime Reveals Keywords used for Downloading

Dreamstime has announced today a new and welcome feature.

From now on, you'll be able to know which keywords were used by a buyer when one of your images is downloaded.

This feature, present in some macrostock agencies, is a complete novelty in the microstock world.

In their brief presentation of the new feature in their forums, they say information about this is being collected since Jan, 4th, 2008.

A note also about relevancy. The agency revealed that in visual search features (by browsing, I believe) no information is revealed. Also, and I quote from their announcement, "In some cases (below 1%) there might be a discrepancy between what shows there and what the buyer actually used for downloading."

To access the new information, all you have to do is check your earnings page in the management area. Next to each image downloaded are now presented the keywords used by the buyer to find your image.

Kudos to Dreamstime for this very useful feature.

The Microstock Revolution?

An interesting discussion has been started at the MicrostockGroup.com forums.

Some of the main sellers are claiming drops in sales, despite the constant upload of high quality, expensive production images.

Microstock is changing and the offer of new images as immensely increased in the last couple of years. When I first joined Shutterstock, they had about 500.000 images and about 59.000 sellers. Two years gone, and Shutterstock is reaching 3.000.000 (three million) images and have now 86.000 image creators.

My personal portfolio increase in percentage (about 100% a year) is much lower than the increase in total number of images (about 150% a year) and that means my portfolio is less representative and harder to find. Also, there are plenty of offers of images of, to name a few, high-tech objects, business concepts, lifestyle, seasonal concepts, etc. To succeed you have to set yourself apart from the croud, either finding a niche (that won't be a secret for too long) or being innovative and going for high end production.

Also, as the offer increases, quality has equally grown. At a time, microstock was seen as the market for low quality, amateur images. Today, there are big productions involved and quality wise, there's not much to differenciate microstock images from other more expensive markets.

The higher sellers claim drops in sales, while their portfolios have grown in quantity and quality. Agencies have now higher standards and contributors need better equipment and better/more expensive/time consuming productions. Cost of business rose up while earnings have not followed the same evolution curve.

Some voices are now pointing the finger to the subscription model and how unfair it is to image producers. But this is a numbers game and credit sales accross the board are far from the number of sales achieved by the successful subscription models. It's like saying "I don't like it, but can't live without it".

It's possible that agencies will increase prices in order to keep the best sellers to migrate to other venues. Midstock is the buzzword of the moment, where prices are placed somewhere between the actual microstock prices (dollars or cents per image) and tradicional agency prices (hundreds of dollars per image).

If the actual microstock agencies migrate to a midstock system (such as presented by Featurepics, Lucky Oliver and SnapVillage) where prices can be set higher than traditional microstock prices ($1 to $10) there will be a niche for lower priced images and story may repeat itself. Amateurs doing this in their spare time will be able to sell their images for a dollar while more productive, professional ones will have a midground to sell their images while the traditional agencies door doesn't open.

The good thing is authors seem to now understand their strength and ability to, as a whole, impose changes to this market.

What is proposed is:

1 - Opt-out any subscription program where credit sales are available. At the moment, only StockXpert and Snapvillage allow this, while sites like 123rf, Crestock or Dreamstime don't.

The question is we're probably going against the sites that really heard our wishes, like StockXpert whose subscription model was changed and turned optional by submitters request.

2 - Submit lower resolution images to subscription based sites, ie, Shutterstock.

The point here is that Shutterstock interpolates images to higher sizes. Ok, the quality is probably lower than a native high-rez file but will it matter?

3 - Give support to the sites that give better conditions to photographers and illustrators. Featurepics gives a 70% comission. It lacks the support of bigger sellers and doesn't have an advertising budget that competes with the most popular agencies.

Sure exclusive content (or at least newer content, not submitted to other sites before a 3 to 6 month period) would be an improvement, but can word of mouth effectively guarantee the loss made for not submitting to the more popular sites? Maybe in the long run...

4 - Delete portfolios or stop uploading to lower comissioned sites. iStockPhoto pays 20% to a non-exclusive seller.

The question is, how many of us can really afford cutting out a few sites from the top 6 list?

But, questions aside, the truth is the microstock community seems to be joining efforts and asking for what they think is right. That may be a very good thing by itself.

You can read the full thread here: Are things going well in microstock?

iStockPhoto tightens Intellectual Property Standars

iStockPhoto has announced in a new article that in 2008 they'll be tightening standards regarding intellectual property standards.

Basically, some images involving protected content will be no longer accepted. As an example, images taken from NASA will no longer be accepted. For what I can read, property protection will be strongly enforced as well as imaging containing well known products. There's also a mention to "abusive inspiration" referring probably to copies of other submitters ideas.

The rules are not yet completely defined, so there are not many conclusions to take from this brief presentation. I'll get back on this as soon as there's more on the subject.

One thing is clear. The microstock world is getting more rules by the day and as image creators, we have to plan more carefully than ever, in order to cope with those rules.

It can be a good thing (I never understood why people could upload images from NASA?!) but there will also be a lot of gray areas, namely in images involving some kind of property (houses, boats, cars, etc).

Before this announcement, StockXpert was already applying new rules to image approval:

- Any photo from any kind of bulding, part of a building or an object now needs a property release.
- Any person on a photo (even if not recognizable) needs to have a signed model release for the photo to be accepted.
- Any illustration/vector submitted can have no text in it (even if outlined).

Some of these measures are being taken to ridiculous proportions, where you have to get a signed property release for an image containing part of a window or a door or you can't write the word "STOP" in a stop sign illustration.

We'll see what the future holds.

123rf Implements new watermarking tool

123RF implemented a new watermarking tool. With the new tool you can basically reposition the watermark wherever you want on the image.

This is a great and welcome improvement as sometimes, the default watermark position can hide important aspects of your image. Here's an example of a repositioned watermark that, while still protecting the image, really improves visibility:



Some sites have weak watermarks, making image theft easy. 123RF's new solution is now the most flexible in the market allowing full control to the image creator.

Kudos to 123RF for a leading solution regarding watermarking on microstock sites. If you join this to previous improvements reported here in November, I think it's safe to say 123RF is making serious efforts to be among the best.