Not true.

The art of positioning is very important.

That is why not all companies make anything and everything.

Not true.

The art of positioning is very important.

That is why not all companies make anything and everything.

We call that competitive differentiation. Become good at a niche, get better and better at that niche and your business will grow for the right reasons.

And to be fair, there's always non-Australian people who need Australian stuff. Travel agents, travel blogs, YouTube channels on Australia, promo videos and the like.

The big question then is: how do you reach them?

How often do these people outside of Australia need pix of Australia?

And when they do, how can you make them thing first of Austockphoto instead of Getty, etc?

Some kind of marketing that gets the place in peoples minds would help as well.

It would. But what had you in mind?

I guess one advantage is you can at least focus the marketing on the niche rather than some general attack on the whole market. Five years ago I reckon they would have done OK but now I'm not sure but as has been said credit for trying something a little different.

I just searched on Australia stick photos and Austockphotos came up fourth, a few places above australiastockphotos.com*, so they must be doing something right.
*iS and Getty weren't on the first page.

I just searched on Australia stick photos and Austockphotos came up fourth, a few places above australiastockphotos.com*, so they must be doing something right.
*iS and Getty weren't on the first page.

If you have already connected to the austockphoto page before it is normal that it appears in the first positions (as it is recorded in the browser "history").
At me it appears as absolute first with Chrome and Google.
But if I use TOR (not registering the history) + Duck Duck Go (not tracking anything), AustralianStockPhoto is second just behind Shutterstock, and austockphoto is only in 9th position.

I suppose that the "Au" of Austockphoto is for Australia.
But if you don't know that the site is about Australia you will probably not understand it.

AustraliaStockPhoto should be more descriptive and comprehensible.

But the Au could also mean GOLD!

Quote from: Chichikov on June 19, 2017, 09:16

Quote from: ShadySue on June 19, 2017, 06:42

I just searched on Australia stick photos and Austockphotos came up fourth, a few places above australiastockphotos.com*, so they must be doing something right.
*iS and Getty weren't on the first page.

If you have already connected to the austockphoto page before it is normal that it appears in the first positions (as it is recorded in the browser "history").

As I said above, I hadn't visited Austockphoto before. By contrast, I was on iS twice yesterday using Google on my phone.

Excuse me but I did not see it.

It is probably for this reason (one of the reasons) that for me, with Google and Chrome, it appears in first position.
In fact I don't know, I just suppose that it is like this.
With Safari it appears in 5th position using Google (the 1st result is Shutterstock and the 2nd iStock, then megapixel, then Adobe).
And I repeat, using another browser and another search engine it appears in a different position, so at last your personal experience has not a great value from the statistical point of view, no more and no less than mine.

Did you try different browsers and different search engines? And did you find the same results?
Even with TOR and Duck Duck Go, using different nodes (the countries from where apparently you connect) I get different results, so I suppose that the place from where we connect can have an influence on the result too, as for the language you use in your search engine (I also get different results with google.us, google.fr and google.ua).

Just to reply as to why this agency is needed: despite there being a lot of "australian" pics on Getty etc, there aren't a lot that are actually authentic. Snowman on the beach? hahaha, we don't actually do that! But some photographers do it because you northern hemisphere ppl think it's funny, and it sells. We also don't do much flag waving, maybe on Australia Day, and even that is now becoming cringey (you'd have to be here to understand why). Australia has a certain look to it and many USA editors just can't quite understand it. Some our stuff is totally daggy (look it up) but that's part of who we are. Our teens don't wear uniforms, or make up to school, and   they have a different everyday look to USA or UK teens. Our homes look different, as do our roads (no yellow lines), cars, etc. Many designers lament the lack of actual Aussie content on the big sites, or that a search for "australian" stuff yields so much non-aussie stuff in the search. the fact that some of you don't get that "au" or "aus" is our abbreviation should also highlight the differences between us, and some suggesting what you think the company name "should" be, ha! our internet suffix is "au" and we often refer to anything Aussie as "aus" for short. It's all good.

 I confess there are many times when I shoot my life to look as bland, generic and USA as possible, because I agree the bigger market is the USA so I try to maximise my selling potential. It's so refreshing to be able to include all the little Aussie things in my images for Austock, and nice to be able to take real photos of my life here and not something that appeals to the hipster/PNW aesthetic all the time.  Also, the owners are nice people. It's a small startup and you can ring them on the phone and have a chat. Austock isn't doing the microstock thing, their pricing is high and the royalties paid are excellent.

And yes, I contribute to Austock.