Quote from: PhotoDude on February 29, 2016, 09:05

In other words, do you think it is impractical / challenging for individual US/EU contributor to sign up directly (not through Western representatives) with Chinese agencies?

I think it will be challenging, the local agencies doesn't have the motivation to deal with all the things you mentioned.  But it is not impossible.

Quote from: w7lwi on February 23, 2016, 02:14
How would the new censorship rules, just issued by the Chinese government, impact the sale of foreign images over the internet in China?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/20/business/media/new-chinese-rules-on-foreign-firms-online-content.html?ref=topics&_r=0

I can't open the link you posted.  But yes, there are regulations and laws for the published content.  So it's better be creative, not political, not religious, even sexy images are acceptable, I mean sexy, not pornographic.

Quote from: PhotoDude on February 22, 2016, 10:39

Quote from: williamju on February 21, 2016, 14:36
...
Major players in China market

    Creative: VCG(Getty distributor), Quanjing, Gaopin, DFIC, 1tu, HelloRF(ShutterStock), Fotolia, and etc.
    Editorial: VCG, DFIC, Xinhua, Quanjing, 1tu, and etc.

...

William, thank you, it is very interesting indeed! Could you tell us a bit more about Chinese stock photography market? I think many Western based contributors would be interested to know:

Is it possible for foreign photographers to contribute to Chinese agencies? I am particularly curious about "true" Chinese agencies, because I assume Chinese SS/iStock/Fotolia distributors already have our content anyway. Do you have to be Chinese national/resident? How do they handle taxes for foreign contributors? Do you have to keyword images in Chinese? Could you submit images with English keywords? What are the typical ways to get payout money, especially for foreign contributors? Can they use PayPal (or any other service available to Western photographers) with automatic CNY>USD/EUR conversion?

Some of these questions I tried to research myself, but I would really appreciate if you can tell us more. Specifically, I went to check out one of the agencies you mentioned (Quanjing). They seem to have English language, but the registration page is still in Chinese. However, they did show images of Sydney, when I entered "Sydney" in English as a keyword in the search box. That is encouraging.

I believe there are some foreign contributors working directly with local agencies, but most are via distributors, because there are many things to deal with like you mentioned above.  As most of the contributors are local Chinese, I don't think local agencies have the motivation to allocate their resources for a few foreign individuals.  But they do have staff like channel relationship for companies.  And yes, most of them can work with English, but Chinese is preferred.  International payment is not a problem, as you can see Chinese are buying all over the world and still the US government owe China a lot of debt.  We can use Paypal, Visa, WesternUnion, bank transfer, and etc., but I doubt they will do it especially for a very small portion of foreign contributors.

Quote from: Kasper Ravlo on February 22, 2016, 09:59
Hi Williamju,

Thanks a lot for sharing, this is very interesting especially considering what is currently going on with VSG in our end of the world (Corbis sale, $100 mil investment in Getty). I clicked your links - do you have options to change the language to english? I'm looking forward to your final piece about the asian market.

Kind Regards,

Kasper Ravlo.

sorry, so such function at present.

Quote from: MarcvsTvllivs on February 21, 2016, 15:25
Thanks a lot, very interesting to read!

Do you have any insight into why it seems like Western stock companies are not doing that well in China? Is it lack of local sales and marketing? At least from what I can tell from the Shutterstock map widget, I basically never get sales on the Chinese mainland, and that's even though many of my best-selling images in both RF and RM are either Asian-themed (Asian models, Asian travel images) or internationally-recognized landmarks that sell everywhere else.

Very different situation for Taiwan by the way, where I get a quite a few RM sales. My Asian model imagery also sells well in the U.S. for diversity marketing / marketing to Asian-Americans.

On the contrary, western companies are doing quite well here, but it is via distributors.  VCG is the sole distributor of Getty Images, HelloRF is the sole distributor of ss, and I guess most of their sales are western content.  I assume you are referring to the sales map of ss which never shown any sales in mainland China, that's because the official website(www.shutterstock.com) was blocked here, so ss doesn't have any IP from here.  But instead, ss show them in the Atlantic I think.  As for the RM content, I don't know, maybe it is because Asia is very big, although you are using Asian models but they are obviously different from authentic local Chinese people.  And another reason is the market trends here is very different from yours, the commercials and designers here are left behind from western market, people with white background are selling well here.

DISCLAIMER

Everything in this article is only my point of view, and I learn my English in China, so there might be language understanding issues, or limitations of my understanding of China market.

ABOUT ME

I'm a hobbyist stock photographer contributing to several agencies including but not limited to Getty Images(traditional gettyimages.com and microstock--iStockphoto), ShutterStock, Alamy, Fotolia, VCG(local China agency), and etc. I am based in Beijing, and I've been to a few countries like USA, UK, Australia, and etc., I get to know many stock photographers all over China via my blog, which makes me heard their stories in stock photo market.

OK, let me begin my little report here.

Stock photo market in China

    like in your countries, stock photo market is a small niche market in China
    commercial photo market is big, or huge, but stock photo is quite small
    according to Canon CEO, there were over 70 million DSLR sold in China, which means a lot of photographers.
    commercial photography including wedding, convention, baby are probably most consumed here.

Major players in China market

    Creative: VCG(Getty distributor), Quanjing, Gaopin, DFIC, 1tu, HelloRF(ShutterStock), Fotolia, and etc.
    Editorial: VCG, DFIC, Xinhua, Quanjing, 1tu, and etc.

Whose works are selling here: almost everyone, all traditional,most of micro, either direct or via distributor.

Demands and best selling:

    people images: both Chinese and foreign people images are selling well
    roads: car companies are buying road images for their commercials, big demands, high prices
    cityscape: international cities and landmarks are selling well
    video: not much compare to still, but growing

Local photographers: I did annual local stock photographer survey for a few years, you can click this link to see the results of each year  http://www.tukusheying.com/info/es_t_20160122103213.html  Two points to mention: 1.two photographers claimed their income for 2015 are more than USD150,000. 2.an artist claimed he/she got more than USD15,000 from one of his content during 2015.  As the survey is anonymous, I can not tell they're true or not.

Piracy: yes, their are piracy problems, and there are a lot of cases going on each year, as far as I know VCG and Quanjing and some production companies sued many companies who use piracy copies and won most of them.

I left the picture and misc points in my blog, you can read them in the link above.

At this Sunday afternoon, after uploaded several photos to Getty Images, ShutterStock and Alamy, and before the important match between Beijing Basketball Team vs. Xinjiang, I decided to write something about China stock photo market especially for stock photographers outside of China, to help you understand the market here, and to maybe help me understnad more of you.

I'm drafting and below points come to my mind so far:

• stock photo market in China
• Major players of this market
• Whose works are selling here
• demands and best selling
• local photographers
• piracy

I'll finish my words on my blog at http://www.tukusheying.com/info/es_t_20160221050618.html and then post it here.  You're welcome to reply in this thread with any topics or viewpoints, I'll try to include or discuss it in my words as well, thank you.

according to the latest disclosure from VCG (Visual China Group): more M&A right after the purchase of Corbis Images, this time is Getty Images

file got from stock exchange http://www.tukusheying.com/info/es_t_20160129111259.html

VCG (Visual China Group), a public stock photo agency, and also the sole distributor of Getty Images in mainland China, will acquire Corbis

http://www.tukusheying.com/info/es_t_20160122063839.html

the file just disclosed in stock exchange website and I made the screen snapshot as shown in above link

Chinese version only, please use google translation

http://www.tukusheying.com/info/es_t_20150106081303.html

I've closed the survey some days ago and there were 140 people attended anonymously.

I will not do a translation but you can surely use google, as the questions are simple and the charts are intuitive, and here are some key points I'd like to share with you guys.

• income: 2.86% claimed they have received more than CNY500,000 in 2013, roughly USD83,000, and 3.57% claimed their income dropped over 50% compared to 2012
• 7.86% has a team
• over 60% are contributing to macro rather than micro here in China
• 10% contributors are buying in stock as well
• 4.29% worked more than 8 hours per day
• over 7% had more than 3000 new images online in 2013

And you can find my comments in http://www.tukusheying.com/info/es_t_20140104060253.html

And my 2012 survey if you are interested http://www.tukusheying.com/info/es_t_20121223054921.html

Quote from: fotorob on January 24, 2014, 14:44
Do you plan to release an English version?
And what's the data sources (if not mentioned in the article anyway)?

Thanks,
Robert

Quote from: williamju on January 04, 2014, 14:10
To better understand China stock photo market, I start this public free survey today.

And so far in 3 hours there are 53 submission collected.

Some facts are like:

• 2013 income: ranges from 0 to above USD90,000
• 2013 new online content: ranges from 0 - above 5,000
• working hours per day: 0 - above 8 hours

If you can understand Chinese, you are welcome to take this survey at http://www.wenjuan.com/s/bUb6Nb

You will see the survey result right after you finish it.

If you can NOT understand Chinese, please do NOT take it, I will post the result around the end of this month.

Thank you.

For those who want to see the result, here it is: http://www.wenjuan.com/r/mmIjAv/

It's a combination of local and international stock agencies, and some comparisons like income over shutterstock, getty images and etc.

To better understand China stock photo market, I start this public free survey today.

And so far in 3 hours there are 53 submission collected.

Some facts are like:

• 2013 income: ranges from 0 to above USD90,000
• 2013 new online content: ranges from 0 - above 5,000
• working hours per day: 0 - above 8 hours

If you can understand Chinese, you are welcome to take this survey at http://www.wenjuan.com/s/bUb6Nb

You will see the survey result right after you finish it.

If you can NOT understand Chinese, please do NOT take it, I will post the result around the end of this month.

Thank you.

With some ads samples of how the stock image being used:
http://www.tukusheying.com/info/es_t_20130911083804.html
(Chinese version)

Quote from: Xanox on August 27, 2013, 14:34
they're very optimistic considering the incredible level of piracy and impunity in China.

their stock price has more than doubled since listed

They go public through buying a shell -- ticker symbol is 000681, listed in Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

Getty owns 20% of its share.

FYI I posted some related information in my website(Chinese): http://www.tukusheying.com/info/es_t_20130817025441.html

So far there are staffs from 11 local and international stock agencies in this group, including Getty(China), Corbis(China), TPG, EastPhoto, BJI, 123rf(China), and etc.

And many stock photographers from China.

You are welcomed to join.

For those who are interested in communicating with Chinese stock photographers as well as local agencies, I just set up an instant messenger group, using the most popular software QQ (you can download it at http://im.qq.com/qq/2013/), English version is provided.

The group number is 327188259.

刚刚建了一个QQ群，群号：327188259，欢迎大家过来一起交流。申请入群请写明自己正在做的图库，入群后请将自己的群昵称更改为--"图片库名称+自己的网名"，谢谢！

Quote from: williamju on May 07, 2013, 14:21
it's online now, and it will be translated into Chinese by a volunteer

Chinese translation is online now, please refer to the end of the Chinese translation to see original English version.

it's online now, and it will be translated into Chinese by a volunteer

will soon be online at
http://www.tukusheying.com/info/es_t_20130506102659.html

Hi Tyler, I think your site is the best one I've seen based on ktools, they should list your site on theirs as an example.

My question is, you must have spent a lot of time on the modification and coding, have your?  How much will I invest if I want to create a stock photo website like yours?  I will outsource to someone else as I really have little knowledge about making a website.

Thanks and looking forward to your reply.

Quote from: leaf on February 13, 2013, 19:43
I changed the language file to make 'Products' into extended license, then priced it as I saw fit.  That puts the extended licenses on a separate tab.  The problem with this solution is the digital file has to be created manually when they purchase.  I think in the latest version of the software they had an extended license solution but I haven't looked at it yet.

my site: http://www.realstockphotos.com

Quote from: sjlocke on December 07, 2012, 16:48
"Currently my main source of income is the revenue generated by Microstock Diaries, though in some months the income from private consulting adds up to more."

Is this a recent interview?  I never visit the blog any more because he doesn't seem to update it much, although I wish he would.  How would you generate much income from the blog?

Yes, it's a recent interview, I received it on 30th Nov 2012.

It's very long, Lee gave me very serious detailed answers

Here's it -- http://www.tukusheying.com/info/es_t_20121204093127.html

I'm editing the layout...

As I promised, I'll post it out first and then do the translation to Chinese.