Author Topic: future of stock (Read 12821 times)

Phil · « **on:** July 19, 2008, 20:38 »

had a conversion a week or so ago with a guy who claims he has over 10000 stock images and has never paid for an image, just collecting the freebies on the internet from micro and free stock sites.

he mentioned

http://www.freerangestock.com/

and reckons this is the future of stock - a share of the advertising revenue...

said quality isn't great as yet, but it is usually "good enough" (I remember that argument in relation to istock a few years ago

)

what do you think, will this be the new micrstock? people who get constant rejections, get told overabundant category etc etc will they turn to this and destroy the micro's???

tan510jomast · « **Reply #1 on:** July 19, 2008, 21:07 »

scary, isn't it?
i suppose it all depends on what you expect when you're contributing to a stock site. is it just to show your girlfriend(s) you got photos published on the web, or to place a value on your creative work.
as if 25 cents isn't low enough to get paid for the use of your work,
why would anyone give away a photograph FREE IF REJECTED ?
i remember many years as a manager in a pro photo store, we had a seminar that was FREE. no "serious/working professional" attended the seminar. the only ppl who came were expecting even more freebies.
eventually, our HO decided against FREE seminars, and charged a nominal fee. The serious AV people and pro photographers came to attend.
Naturally, the freeloaders didn't, as there were no longer freebies for them to continue their scavenger hunt.

good topic, clearviewstock. hope i added something useful. cheers

Sean Locke Photography · « **Reply #2 on:** July 19, 2008, 22:18 »

Yeah, split the adsense money. Hey, the ads are for paid stock sites. Guess who isn't going to click on those? The people at a free stock site!

"Free" is in the past. Didn't work. Serious buyers know you have to pay something for a product you can trust.

jsnover · « **Reply #3 on:** July 20, 2008, 00:13 »

Quote from: clearviewstock on July 19, 2008, 20:38

what do you think, will this be the new micrstock? people who get constant rejections, get told overabundant category etc etc will they turn to this and destroy the micro's???

The people who get constant rejections, do so for a reason. In general, the quality and composition of their images is poor. Free stock sites have been around for years and the micros are thriving anyway. Some micros - DT and FT for two, have tried combining freebies with paid. Have you ever done a search in the free stuff? It's horrible. StockXpert sprang from its free site stock.xchng but again, there's such a clear difference between the freebies and the paid stuff (searches will show you a few from the paid site as well).

if Yuri and Andres and a few others start putting their stuff on some free sites, then we will all need to worry about how to get paid for our work. I'm not expecting that to happen.

The internet is littered with wretched, useless sites with ads on them - apparently there are lots of people hoping to make money getting people to their site even though there's nothing of value on it. Perhaps they don't realize that Google gets eyeballs because it offers a useful service. I don't think free crappy pictures will pull in many eyeballs, but apparently that doesn't stop people from trying...

sharpshot · « **Reply #4 on:** July 20, 2008, 08:28 »

istock started as a free site, so there is nothing new here. Didn't StockXpert start off with a free site? It seems that people prefer to make money than give their images away and most designers prefer to pay for images than use free ones.

Karimala · « **Reply #5 on:** July 20, 2008, 10:12 »

A site like Freerange might not be so bad for all those old photos under 4 MP of dubious quality, but I highly doubt they are the "future of stock." If it was, there would be a lot more folks donating images to better known sites like SXC and the micros that offer freebies. The future continues to be paying artists to license their work, as evidenced by Getty's recent deal with Flickr.

basti · « **Reply #6 on:** July 20, 2008, 11:57 »

Well, my personal opinion is that future is midstock. Not both extremes like Getty charging huge $$ for picture or microstock like SS or IS which are absolutely underpriced.

Just for thought: I had a meeting with my webmaster (btw. I do smaller project myself so I know exactly what this is all about) and he told me some interesting points. They did purchase time to time from SS but they quit that - why? Because it has already happened that there were another webs with similar photo and the risk is becoming too high, clients get upset about that so they rather pay more to get RM image. The second point? They pay $250 for subscription and then use 20 pics = $12 each. Is that still cheap? Yes! But is that the same price as midstock? Yes! The result is that they go to midstock agency and pick some high quality pic for $10 rather then spending half an hour browsing on SS thru all vectors and crappy and keyword spammed pics to get the same for the same $$. So I think Dan Heller is perfectly true that microstock is shooting themselves in the foot with the race of the "cheapest pics" (which means minimum money for the photographer in the result) and with keyword spaming (making clients go away somewhere else).

madelaide · « **Reply #7 on:** July 20, 2008, 12:33 »

Quote from: sharpshot on July 20, 2008, 08:28

istock started as a free site, so there is nothing new here. Didn't StockXpert start off with a free site? It seems that people prefer to make money than give their images away and most designers prefer to pay for images than use free ones.

It must be like anything in the internet. Start free for fun, then someone realizes he can make money out of it, because some people would buy it.

Regards,
Adelaide

PeterChigmaroff · « **Reply #8 on:** July 20, 2008, 12:49 »

If you can't even pay a buck or two an image for an ad or newsletter then there is something drastically wrong with you. I would suggest that there will always be bottom feeders but like jsnover suggests, if you are getting rejects at this point its for a reason. Good images, no matter how easy they are to produce cost money to make. You need equipment, lots of it to make those images. I suppose if you drive a cab and were going to buy a mediocre SLR anyway and decide you need something to do, you're not too interested in recovering your investment of time and equipment but I doubt those guys will make any impact on the supply of images to the markets. Last month I made several sales of RF images where the buyer paid as much as $800 for an RF image that I am fairly sure they could have gotten a slightly lesser one off the micros for a few dollars. Perhaps the end is near and if it is I guess I'll be the one driving cab.

chumley · « **Reply #9 on:** July 20, 2008, 14:49 »

tan510jomast · « **Reply #10 on:** July 20, 2008, 17:37 »

zeus, we will all be driving a cab , only if we continue to undervalue our photographs and celebrate everytime our image earns less than a cup of coffee.
sure, the dabblers will still give away their rejected photos for free, but
if we keep making better images and putting them where sites pay more, someone will look for us. it won't be selling as fast as with SS , but it will pay us more.
i think we all agree on that!

RacePhoto · « **Reply #11 on:** July 20, 2008, 22:03 »

basti can you please explain what you are trying to point out in this. I missed it?

Quote

They did purchase time to time from SS but they quit that - why? Because it has already happened that there were another webs with similar photo and the risk is becoming too high, clients get upset about that so they rather pay more to get RM image.

What risk if someone buys from SS causes them to pay more for a RM image?

Do you mean the risk that someone else is using the same photo? That's what RF is all about? Sellers need hundreds of sales to make anything from Micro.

Was that it?

tan510jomast · « **Reply #12 on:** July 20, 2008, 22:18 »

Quote from: RacePhoto on July 20, 2008, 22:03

basti can you please explain what you are trying to point out in this. I missed it?

Quote
They did purchase time to time from SS but they quit that - why? Because it has already happened that there were another webs with similar photo and the risk is becoming too high, clients get upset about that so they rather pay more to get RM image.

i think i know what basti is trying to say. let me try to interpret:

the buyer used to buy from SS but got upset to find that the same image were being used elsewhere. they then prefer to pay more to get an image that is not so common.

is that it, basti?

michealo · « **Reply #13 on:** July 21, 2008, 05:14 »

I searched http://www.freerangestock.com/ for

ireland -- 0 results
oil rig -- 144 results, first three were roses, the rest of the page didn't have any oil rigs

travelstock · « **Reply #14 on:** July 21, 2008, 05:33 »

Quote from: michealo on July 21, 2008, 05:14

I searched http://www.freerangestock.com/ for

ireland -- 0 results
oil rig -- 144 results, first three were roses, the rest of the page didn't have any oil rigs

Yep... not much there... just a bunch of crappy looking images on most searches I tried.

grp_photo · « **Reply #15 on:** July 21, 2008, 05:51 »

Quote from: michealo on July 21, 2008, 05:14

I searched http://www.freerangestock.com/ for

ireland -- 0 results
oil rig -- 144 results, first three were roses, the rest of the page didn't have any oil rigs

The coolest Freesite is sxc.hu in my opinion worth a try!
I have 15 Images with them since about a little more than a year and achieved over 140000 Downloads so far!!

grp_photo · « **Reply #16 on:** July 21, 2008, 06:01 »

Quote from: michealo on July 21, 2008, 05:14

I searched http://www.freerangestock.com/ for

ireland -- 0 results
oil rig -- 144 results, first three were roses, the rest of the page didn't have any oil rigs

sxc.hu http://www.sxc.hu/

Ireland -- 1000 results
oil rig -- 19 reslults 18 images are showing an oil rig

Please considering also that on free sites you normally don't have any keyword spamming (very,very few images have more than 10keywords) so you have less results but the results are more exact.
Actually Ireland are more than 1000 Images but sxc.hu just searching for only the first thousand i think this is similiar to istock.
The default search at freerangestock is "Match any terms" this equal to OR if you change the search to "Match all terms" equal to AND you get three results.

PaulieWalnuts · « **Reply #17 on:** July 21, 2008, 06:18 »

Quote from: grp_photo on July 21, 2008, 05:51

The coolest Freesite is sxc.hu in my opinion worth a try!
I have 15 Images with them since about a little more than a year and achieved over 140000 Downloads so far!!

I've seen mixed opinions on if this helps stock sales. Some feel it helps get exposure and more sales. Others feel it just contributes downward slide of micro pricing. What's your opinion?

grp_photo · « **Reply #18 on:** July 21, 2008, 06:29 »

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on July 21, 2008, 06:18

Quote from: grp_photo on July 21, 2008, 05:51
The coolest Freesite is sxc.hu in my opinion worth a try!
I have 15 Images with them since about a little more than a year and achieved over 140000 Downloads so far!!
I've seen mixed opinions on if this helps stock sales. Some feel it helps get exposure and more sales. Others feel it just contributes downward slide of micro pricing. What's your opinion?

I have still regular sales on this pictures. If it helps i don't know but i have very good and steady results at StockXpert despite the fact that i optioned out for subscription.
From my long-term experience i can say its often much better doing something for free than for too cheap (this is not only related to stock but from my experience as a fulltime Freelancer)

tan510jomast · « **Reply #19 on:** July 21, 2008, 09:25 »

as a freelancer too, from fashion to photojournalism, to business port.,
i feel it's counter-productive to give away too much to too many.

giving away free photos is like giving away business cards to people who don't need your services, or will never pay for your services.

lisafx · « **Reply #20 on:** July 21, 2008, 16:50 »

I'm happy to give away A FEW older or less successful photos from my portfolio on the sites I sell on - namely DT and 123RF. I don't know if it drives in traffic to my port or not, but it helps promote the sites that pay my bills so I don't mind.

I can't see any benefit to giving away photos on completely free sites that are in competition with the micros.

And I really can't see why anyone would be excited about the number of free downloads they get. Sure the free stuff gets downloaded in high numbers, but so what? It doesn't feed my family or even my ego.

When people pay for my images, that feeds both

Graffoto · « **Reply #21 on:** July 21, 2008, 17:47 »

Quote from: tan510jomast on July 20, 2008, 17:37

zeus, we will all be driving a cab , only if we continue to undervalue our photographs and celebrate everytime our image earns less than a cup of coffee.
sure, the dabblers will still give away their rejected photos for free, but
if we keep making better images and putting them where sites pay more, someone will look for us. it won't be selling as fast as with SS , but it will pay us more.
i think we all agree on that!

Totally agree and that is the reason I quit SS.
Oops, coffee break time is over...I need to go put gas in my cab

grp_photo · « **Reply #22 on:** July 22, 2008, 12:12 »

Quote from: lisafx on July 21, 2008, 16:50

I'm happy to give away A FEW older or less successful photos from my portfolio on the sites I sell on - namely DT and 123RF. I don't know if it drives in traffic to my port or not, but it helps promote the sites that pay my bills so I don't mind.

I can't see any benefit to giving away photos on completely free sites that are in competition with the micros.

And I really can't see why anyone would be excited about the number of free downloads they get. Sure the free stuff gets downloaded in high numbers, but so what? It doesn't feed my family or even my ego.

When people pay for my images, that feeds both

I'm not sure if this was directed to me but i will answer it:
The first reason for this post was that people compared a bad freesite with good microstocksites. I just pointed out that very good freesites exists and they have good results, good pictures and a HELL LOT OF TRAFFIC you can compare the traffic of sxc.hu with likes like shutterstock,dreamstime,fotolia,gettyimages,corbis at alexa (guess who wins ;-)).
I don't get excited at all about the downloads but i think its funny and very interesting.Neither i get excited about my downloads at Microstocksites. If you look at sxc.hu you will see the last row are premium results from StockXpert so sxc.hu is in fact drifting a lot of traffic to StockXpert. But nevertheless i don't care if they are in competition with the micros i actually don't care about the micros at all i could live from photography without them maybe even better who knows.
If there is one thing that will hurt the contributors of microstock-sites its the microstock-sites itself mainly by offering subscription and a lot of other things which are too many to list the all here.

MikLav · « **Reply #23 on:** July 22, 2008, 12:38 »

Quote from: grp_photo on July 21, 2008, 06:01

Quote from: michealo on July 21, 2008, 05:14
I searched http://www.freerangestock.com/ for

ireland -- 0 results
oil rig -- 144 results, first three were roses, the rest of the page didn't have any oil rigs

sxc.hu http://www.sxc.hu/

Ireland -- 1000 results
oil rig -- 19 reslults 18 images are showing an oil rig

You know one thing Peter Hamza said in Moscow StockXpert conference about sxc.hu? He said most new customers come to Stockxpert.com from sxc.hu. This is why I started uploading (just a few) pictures to sxc.hu.

lisafx · « **Reply #24 on:** July 22, 2008, 16:23 »

Quote from: grp_photo on July 22, 2008, 12:12

I'm not sure if this was directed to me but i will answer it:
The first reason for this post was that people compared a bad freesite with good microstocksites. I just pointed out that very good freesites exists and they have good results, good pictures and a HELL LOT OF TRAFFIC you can compare the traffic of sxc.hu with likes like shutterstock,dreamstime,fotolia,gettyimages,corbis at alexa (guess who wins ;-)).
I don't get excited at all about the downloads but i think its funny and very interesting.Neither i get excited about my downloads at Microstocksites. If you look at sxc.hu you will see the last row are premium results from StockXpert so sxc.hu is in fact drifting a lot of traffic to StockXpert. But nevertheless i don't care if they are in competition with the micros i actually don't care about the micros at all i could live from photography without them maybe even better who knows.
If there is one thing that will hurt the contributors of microstock-sites its the microstock-sites itself mainly by offering subscription and a lot of other things which are too many to list the all here.

Thanks for taking the time to clarify.

I agree with you that the micros are running the risk of hurting themselves and losing contributors if they continue racing to the bottom with subscriptions prices. Already some big contributors in the micros are making the move to mid-stock.

basti · « **Reply #25 on:** July 22, 2008, 16:34 »

Yep, I ment clients do not like to see exactly same picture elsewhere. Eg. they pay $2000 for their website and they dont mind to pay another $50 for RM image rather then saving $49 and risking their competitors could accidentaly produce something with the same picture. With microstock becoming more and more popular this "danger" increases dramatically.

I think microstock is great for what it was at the beginning - exchange of cheap material between designers. Logos, textures, backgrounds, simple vectors... The problem started when pro level photos came to microstock, because those are really extremely underpriced.

tan510jomast · « **Reply #26 on:** July 22, 2008, 16:45 »

agree basti here...(though i disagree with you on the other topic)

in trying to make ourselves popular, we ( the photographers ) can find ourselves expecting too little , or nothing, just to see our pictures everywhere on the web.
i am not sure if that is a good idea.
before, you were unknown with no photos on the web or magazines,
now, you are well-known, with photos everywhere , selling for pennies.

RacePhoto · « **Reply #27 on:** July 22, 2008, 20:40 »

Nothing wrong with freerange. It's one of those sites that's trying to make money off the "FREE" photos and ad clicks, not the photos.

Quote

freerangestock.com and all Materials are made available to you "AS IS," "AS AVAILABLE," and "WITH ALL FAULTS."... makes no representation or warranty, express or implied, including without limitation warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement.

This is why you'll find images with logos and copyrighted designs all over the site. The buyer is responsible, in this case free taker, not the website giving it to you for free.

There are free button sites, free icons, free animated gifs, free alphabets, and of course free photos.

These sites don't compete or take much from the market, they are sites that are designed to provide enough to get people to subscribe in which case you'll be getting some email soon.

You also won't find these sites growing with new materials, most of the time. It's just the front for ad revenue sites.

tan510jomast · « **Reply #28 on:** July 23, 2008, 20:18 »

clearviewstock and everybody,
after i got the link from clearview , i visited the site and thought, "wow, look at all the downloads for everyone here. i don't see any 1,2, even 5...
i see 100, 200,etc"
so naturally i was quick interested to contribute there especially my portfolio being quite niche and not "micro stock" type shots, you know.
then i got an email to say how photographers join to give away their images free.
i almost fell off my chair, literally.
no wonder every one has such good dl numbers.

but you know what? give away my images for free?
i'd rather drive a cab, (to quote one of us here in this forum)...

why bother trying so hard to get your images accepted,
or rejected , just to give away your images.

still, we're not very far away from giving all away for free;
what's 18 cents compared to zero?

STJ · « **Reply #29 on:** July 23, 2008, 22:05 »

I guess businessmen are just looking for innovative ways to earn a buck.

tan510jomast · « **Reply #30 on:** July 24, 2008, 11:02 »

Quote from: STJ on July 23, 2008, 22:05

I guess businessmen are just looking for innovative ways to earn a buck.

you mean, a penny !!!

just joking!

angel gab · « **Reply #31 on:** July 24, 2008, 13:15 »

Future, what future?

Phil · « **Reply #32 on:** July 26, 2008, 21:50 »

Quote from: angel gab on July 24, 2008, 13:15

Future, what future?

thats the question

is there a future? many of us give away a few free images, but there is a great many of us and that times by a few quickly becomes an incredibly large number of free images...

thanks everyone for replying

RacePhoto · « **Reply #33 on:** July 27, 2008, 06:10 »

Quote from: michealo on July 21, 2008, 05:14

I searched http://www.freerangestock.com/ for

ireland -- 0 results
oil rig -- 144 results, first three were roses, the rest of the page didn't have any oil rigs

The site searches some partial words. It took me a while to figure it out. Example search "oil" and you'll fOILage.

I give nothing away online. I did donate some photos to a website and have to others in the past. I have no hope or expectations that anything free will lead to something for pay. I can't see how a free image on a MS site, drives anyone to look any further. (I might be wrong?) But no one has any evidence that free images make any difference except making someone else happy.

Never tried cab driving, but I do tend bar.

Beats flipping burgers or loading trucks.

tan510jomast · « **Reply #34 on:** July 27, 2008, 07:02 »

Quote from: RacePhoto on July 27, 2008, 06:10

Never tried cab driving, but I do tend bar. Beats flipping burgers or loading trucks.

good to see you again RacePhoto, always liked your great sense of humour. (chuckle)

furthermore, never met a bartender i didn't like, esp. the ones who know how to pull the draught!

graficallyminded · « **Reply #35 on:** August 03, 2008, 08:00 »

The "free" stock sites probably make their dollars in AD revenue. How much could they make off of web banner / google adsense advertising? I'm sure it's not as much money as if the images were properly marketed and sold through multiple agencies like we sell ours.

chumley · « **Reply #36 on:** August 04, 2008, 12:00 »

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Author Topic: future of stock (Read 12821 times)

tan510jomast

jsnover

chumley

tan510jomast

RacePhoto

tan510jomast

michealo

grp_photo

grp_photo

grp_photo

tan510jomast

lisafx

grp_photo

lisafx

tan510jomast

RacePhoto

tan510jomast

tan510jomast

RacePhoto

tan510jomast

graficallyminded

chumley

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