MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => iStockPhoto.com => Topic started by: silksatsunrise on June 05, 2014, 18:39
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Chinese Market Now Accessible to iStock via Fotomore.com
There is no doubt that the potential for images sales in China is immense, but until now, there was no outlet available to us for selling iStock content in China. A new partnership with long-time Getty Images Master Delegate in China, Visual China Group (VCG) changes that.
iStock exclusive and non-exclusive content is now being made available through Fotomore.com. Fotomore royalties will be paid monthly through Getty Images, appearing in your stats under the Partner Program royalty category for content that is available on Thinkstock and GI sales royalty category for other iStock content. Royalties will be calculated based on the royalty rate schedule for GI sales. You can view the rate schedule here.
Looks like all Getty and IS content is being offered by this site.
Good, Bad, Indifferent?
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IMO -
Good:
It's a new market.
Bad:
We only get 15%/20% flat rate.
It's a subs site.
No RCs
Whenever a photo is bought from Alamy and put on a newspaper website, it's on at least 20 Chinese blogs within a very few hours, max., and there seems not to be much notion of copyright protection there. I have no idea how well Getty's team deal with that.
This is quite an old article and I have no idea about its authority or current relevance:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2009/10/bootleg_nation.html (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2009/10/bootleg_nation.html)
Don't know:
How much the current content will appeal to that market, but clearly that's what the Hong Kong lypse was aimed at - producing material for the market, and signing up local contributors.
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Maybe Yuri was right about iStock taking over Shutter in 3 months 8)
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Uh, isn't the internet worldwide? If China wanted iStock content they can already get it.
Of course this probably halves any royalties.
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Uh, isn't the internet worldwide? If China wanted iStock content they can already get it.
Not really: http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/04/how-internet-censorship-is-curbing-innovation-in-china/275188 (http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/04/how-internet-censorship-is-curbing-innovation-in-china/275188)
Chinese isn't one of iS's languages.
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if it makes them lot's of money Chinese will become iStock native language ;D
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if it makes them lot's of money Chinese will become iStock native language ;D
There's still the Great Firewall to consider, which may (or may not) be why they chose a distibutor partner rather than go the translation route.
But hey, doesn't SS have some sort of geographic gizmo to tell you which country you sold files to? Do you (or anyone else) get sales from China?
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Yes, according to the map I get sales in China. Also, SS has contributors in China.
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Uh, isn't the internet worldwide? If China wanted iStock content they can already get it.
Of course this probably halves any royalties.
Chinese government controls the internet and restricts content its people can see. I only know this as I used to handle the website of my previous employer. Their Chinese office had to have a local hosted site separate from corporate as anything outside of China is heavily censored and what does get through is painfully slow. They used to use the analogy of a blocked pipe.
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I've no idea how the search is ordered, but I've just tried a few searches, and the money-saving they did on inspecting keywords is biting them on the bum.
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Uh, isn't the internet worldwide? If China wanted iStock content they can already get it.
Of course this probably halves any royalties.
Chinese government controls the internet and restricts content it's people can see. I only know this as I used to handle the website of my previous employer. Their Chinese office had to have a local hosted site separate from corporate as anything outside of China is heavily censored and what does get through is painfully slow. They used to use the analogy of a blocked pipe.
There goes my plan to sell images about the Tiananmen Square protest on IS. Communist China and the IS Forum, and Getty/IS in general, strike me as a good fit.
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Uh, isn't the internet worldwide? If China wanted iStock content they can already get it.
Of course this probably halves any royalties.
Yes and iStock has a Chinese version.
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Uh, isn't the internet worldwide? If China wanted iStock content they can already get it.
Of course this probably halves any royalties.
Yes and iStock has a Chinese version.
Huh?
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Uh, isn't the internet worldwide? If China wanted iStock content they can already get it.
Of course this probably halves any royalties.
Yes and iStock has a Chinese version.
Huh?
Maybe he is referring to language where we can select language from the international drop down in the upper right.
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That's Japanese.
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That's Japanese.
Lolololol shows how much I know.
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Mmmmmm I anticipate an increase in Chinese models in business styled images against white.
Ah so :)
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Uh, isn't the internet worldwide? If China wanted iStock content they can already get it.
Of course this probably halves any royalties.
Yes and iStock has a Chinese version.
Huh?
It wanted to be ironic, because most of the Chinese people don't read or don't understand english, so I don't see how somebody can use a site in a language he does not know…
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Oh, and as noted on another thread here, it's a subs site, so nothing much to cheer about. (my reply above amended).
Looks like the highest price per full-sized image would be 90yuan/image, or £8.56 / $14.40 of which we'd get 15% or 20%. As usual, the bigger the package, the lower the price.
And even that payment rate isn't fully clear in the email we got, nor in Lobo's OP, and I see others have interpreted it differently.
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Oh, and as noted on another thread here, it's a subs site, so nothing much to cheer about. (my reply above amended).
Looks like the highest price per full-sized image would be 90yuan/image, or £8.56 / $14.40 of which we'd get 15% or 20%. As usual, the bigger the package, the lower the price.
And even that payment rate isn't fully clear in the email we got, nor in Lobo's OP, and I see others have interpreted it differently.
Content being available to buy officially is better than content only being available unofficially.
Pricing also needs to reflect local pricing. Eg - so the ratio of the price of an image vs the price of a restaurant meal would probably want to be roughly about the same whether you are in China or Manhattan. Everyone who travels knows that US and European prices for everything are arbitrary and reflect a legacy of now unsustainable wage levels and property prices.
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Oh, and as noted on another thread here, it's a subs site, so nothing much to cheer about. (my reply above amended).
Looks like the highest price per full-sized image would be 90yuan/image, or £8.56 / $14.40 of which we'd get 15% or 20%. As usual, the bigger the package, the lower the price.
And even that payment rate isn't fully clear in the email we got, nor in Lobo's OP, and I see others have interpreted it differently.
You also have to remember that Fotomore will take it's share of the pie first, then Getty (80%), then the contributor. So your 20% might really only be 10% in the end. It seems Getty "forgot" to tell us that. Funny how they always get kind of fuzzy when it comes to full accounting of royalties whenever they make these announcements.
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Oh, and as noted on another thread here, it's a subs site, so nothing much to cheer about. (my reply above amended).
Looks like the highest price per full-sized image would be 90yuan/image, or £8.56 / $14.40 of which we'd get 15% or 20%. As usual, the bigger the package, the lower the price.
And even that payment rate isn't fully clear in the email we got, nor in Lobo's OP, and I see others have interpreted it differently.
You also have to remember that Fotomore will take it's share of the pie first, then Getty (80%), then the contributor. So your 20% might really only be 10% in the end. It seems Getty "forgot" to tell us that. Funny how they always get kind of fuzzy when it comes to full accounting of royalties whenever they make these announcements.
Indeed.
I wondered that myself. Lobo fuzzily said (to an indie) "You'll be getting 15% of the royalties(due to your non-exclusivity) that are generated from the sale of your images on the fotomore site."
He didn't say whether that was the total generated royalties (which his sentence implies) or the more likely (as you say), 20% of the remainder after fotomore has creamed off its share. They are really good at that sort of seemingly-innocuous statement.
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Uh, isn't the internet worldwide? If China wanted iStock content they can already get it.
False, iStock is not accessible from China. You cannot connect to the site unless you use VPN.
Others sites, like SS are accessible without problem.
Chinese are smart, like me they think the big iStock's crap should be avoided;-)
Seriously, I think you shouldn't be excited with this deal. The commission will be ridiculous after Fotomore and Getty cut, sales low. In addition your images will be available for free or sold on pirate DVD in the street.
Chinese don't understand our 'problem' with copyright.
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Seriously, I think you shouldn't be excited with this deal. The commission will be ridiculous after Fotomore and Getty cut, sales low. In addition your images will be available for free or sold on pirate DVD in the street.
Chinese don't understand our 'problem' with copyright.
Makes sense to me. This would concern me to. Wonder if there will be a big protest over this?
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Seriously, I think you shouldn't be excited with this deal. The commission will be ridiculous after Fotomore and Getty cut, sales low. In addition your images will be available for free or sold on pirate DVD in the street.
Chinese don't understand our 'problem' with copyright.
Makes sense to me. This would concern me to. Wonder if there will be a big protest over this?
Over there, AFAICS, only one person has mentioned it, http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=361360&messageid=7019268 (http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=361360&messageid=7019268) asking much the same as I did above.
As yet unanswered.
As is ARTPUPPY's question asking, effectively, '15%/20% of what?', i.e. what's our share of the gross selling price.
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In addition your images will be available for free or sold on pirate DVD in the street.
Chinese don't understand our 'problem' with copyright.
This will make absolutely no difference to the availability of pirated content on the street either in Asia or anywhere else. Because all over Asia, and everywhere else, you can already buy pretty much all of the world's stock images in huge pirated collections. And all of that content is already available on the web unofficially anyhow.
The availability of pirated content is not the issue. That is not a battle worth fighting. The issue is about making content easily available in useful ways to users who want or need to find and use that content legitimately. And increasingly companies and organizations in Asia need legitimate content. You cannot buy a licence at the market - and this is about selling content as a service.
All of the world's content is already potentially available free everywhere today. We can all download pirated software, music, movies etc if we choose to. But, increasingly, many of us choose not to. The main reason we choose not to is that today it's much easier to have iTunes, Spotify, Netflix etc.
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The issue is relevent. In a country where copyright is taken very lightly, so that even fewer people are aware of the issues than here, why would companies care if their content is 'legal' or not?
Notwithstanding, it's a new potential market.
Time will tell.
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In a country where copyright is taken very lightly ..... why would companies care if their content is 'legal' or not?
That's kind of a slur on potential customers throughout the whole region. Movie piracy is widespread in Europe and the USA where copyright is also often "taken very lightly" - but many people in Europe and the USA are also happy to pay for content. Content piracy is certainly widespread in Asia. But in many ways, the levels of piracy are probably a reflection of the sheer amount of work which gets done. And piracy represents a potential market - eg Napster begat iTunes and Spotify.
There are growing numbers of serious professionals who will be needing properly licensed content. The same as everywhere else. And Chinese companies are trading out of the whole Asia region and throughout the world. Corporates and professionals are not going to be getting their content on crappy DVDs from the night market for the most part. The local photocopying shop is not doing their graphics and they are not all turning out rubbish for ebay. There are also huge numbers of US and European companies working directly out of China and the region. And many more represented as clients. Also international governmental organisations, NGOs etc etc. It all represents a market for legitimate content.
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In a country where copyright is taken very lightly ..... why would companies care if their content is 'legal' or not?
That's kind of a slur on potential customers throughout the whole region.
Not a bit. I was careful to say, 'in a country' rather than name any particular country.
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In a country where copyright is taken very lightly ..... why would companies care if their content is 'legal' or not?
That's kind of a slur on potential customers throughout the whole region.
Not a bit. I was careful to say, 'in a country' rather than name any particular country.
On a thread about China.
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"time will tell".
Though even time won't tell us, as any sales will be hidden "in your stats under the Partner Program royalty category for content that is available on Thinkstock and GI sales royalty category for content available on Getty Image".
The opacity is getting ever denser.
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Hahaha
I'm Chinese.
We can not open istock website since last year. I have to use a VPN to keep the conection.
God knows why our goverment block istock (and getty) outside the country.Maybe nude photos?
Anyway,chinese market is not ripe. I don't know if it's good or not to open this new site to sell istock photos here.
But what is sure is , ‘fotomore’ and its chinese name are very cheap, aren't they?