Hi all fellow photographers,

last time I sent a recruit msg about Rodeo searching talented photographers. After that there were some discussion and doubts about our business since its purely for finnish customers and in finnish language. So here's the update about how things have been picked up.

We finally got our Rodeo system ready for launch in last March, unfortunately over three months late. After start everything went quite smoothly and compared to last years period of March-August we were able to raise sales by over 200%. It was a big step to us and we still believe our strategy is working and we're able to develope our system and business much further in future. At the moment we have under 50 photographers and little over 100.000 photos, the ratio is very unique. We really can offer a good exposure to a single photographer.

Ofcourse we keep eyes open to recruit some more photographers but we want to keep the total amount very small if every photographer we recruit is active. What we dont want is passive photographers and try to develope our business just recruiting as much as much possible passive photographers.

Anybody interested about selling photos thru us, please contact after checking our websites.

Our website:
http://www.rodeo.fi/

Recruit page:
http://www.rodeostudio.fi/photographers/registration/contract.htm

Best regards,

Juha Tuomi
Kuvatoimisto Rodeo Oy
(Stockagency Rodeo Ltd)
CEO

As a stockphotographer myself I understand very well that all "new players" in the market can be very suspicious. Allthough we have been in our local markets for 5 (long) years, started and learned about this business from scratch. Our goal is of course to make money which means sell as many images as possible. However we want to keep our photographers happy and to get at least a decent sales means usually a very strong portfolio. We have got our new system on-line for just little over month (including short beta testing period) and don't have yet enough information how rapidly our foreign photo sales are growing.

We are lucky to have Iofoto to be one of our photographers and it is very good that he gives neutral information about the sales of many agencies. What is very surprising is our position against some much bigger international agencies. I have to emphasize that we do our business in just local markets at the moment. That is one point I think our strategy is working quite well, which means not taking just everybody who wants just carefully selected photographers and their portfolios.

There isn't any need of knowing Finnish language since our system translates Finnish keywords to English and searches those from all English keyworded photos. Clients can also choose do they want to search from all (domestic and international collections) or just from one.

Thank you for interest and very good questions. My intention was just to raise some interest about us and then who thinks that meet those requirements we have set asks directly more by email. We have some key points why to join us, one is that its totally free and you don't have to play with the website to get your portfolio on-line, just uploading English keyworded files with the ftp or in dvd, simple as that. Our contract also doesn't tie you up for years and its non-exclusive.

I cant yet publish the renewed site, which is naturally much better than current Kuvakori, which has been online for 5years and has a very solid customer database. That is also why we limit intake of new artists, that everyone has better chance to get decent profits for their portfolio.

We accept only model released RF, we don't have editorial collection. We have already made contracts with some known stockphotographers. We accept isolated studioshots. Kuvakori has now winter-sale going why the prices are cheaper. There isn't option to buy photo as digital usage, that will be possible in Rodeo.

Yes, we have categories, customer survey told us that those just have to be there.

Today it is hard to convince photographers and new stockagencies pops up like every month. Our requirements are also very different compared to others but  we ain't looking for thousands to join. We try to make those few happy. We also looking mostly for photographers and artists who does this for fulltime or part time work, in that perspective requirements are easy to meet.

I just hope no one judges before asking more details from me. Thanks!