Nice, I never checked Fotolia API. Maybe I can have images from my portfolio displayed and available for sale on my WodrPress blog easily.

Looking at the links it says partner=xxxx, so they must have some sort of % deal going with Fotolia, the only negative I can see is Photographers will not be sure about entering thier Fotolia account details and password into an eastern european third party product, look at the caution of photographers towards ProStockMaster and Isyndica, I think this would work better as a new service or as a stocksites developed plug-in.

David   

Yes, it's much better for a CEO to spend his time wisely! (insert sarcasm) Apparently John Griffin should be spending his time devising a scheme to raise prices on buyers while lowering commissions for contributors like so many other CEO's are doing these days! What were you thinking Mr. John Griffin coming up with a tactic to drive people to your site and get everyones attention?!?!? (end of sarcasm)

Snaprender

Hold that thought and when you see another artist has copied your image or illustration, almost identical same composition keywords and title, just remeber it is a smart move as they are only trying to drive customers to thier images.

Bless them all!

David 

yep, you can still buy it

but its not as good, doesnt have the range etc.  if you have the money you still buy the original 'tm' lego

but if it was as good it may have been a whole different story.  bit like macro vs micro. micro wasnt as good so you still buy macro. Now the quality is there and so people just buy the micro and the original lego / macro is struggling.

Macrosites shot themself in the foot, as the market changed they did not respond, microstock's success is not to do with how many customers they took from the traditional agencies as the value of the market was far lower that today, microstock was a whole new concept and model that attracted a mass of new buyers with an acceptable price point, the bread and butter of microstock is 'not' the people that were buying images before from traditional services, but the new customers microstock created and the macrosites chose to ignore.

It is not another website but a new model that will be needed, new collections and libraries only dilute the existing markets and do not generate a new market of buyers.

David  

Agreed.
When I was a child, there was a product 'similar to' Lego called Betta Builda (or possibly Betta Builder).
Has anyone heard of it?
I rest my case.

Added - well, there you go. I Googled and it was made by Airfix and was called Betta Bilda. You can still buy boxes for it nowadays. (my Mum threw mine out because I was always leaving it lying about; nothing changes)
http://www.bettabilda.com

The whole 'copy another product' outcome is summed up nicely in your link.

in the early 60's they went head to head against Lego and produced their own building kit series.
Betta Bilda (often mistaken for 'Better Builder' or �Betta Builder�) it was essentially a cheaper version of Lego.

Forward 30 years and you might read:

in the late 90's they went head to head against Vetta and produced their own collection.
Betta (often mistaken for 'Better' or �Beta�) it was essentially a cheaper version of Vetta.

My personal experience as a child was getting a 'Lima' train set, it worked but was never in the same league as the Horby 'OO' Scale Railway I wanted. 

David  

Adeptris & Digital Web Logistics just to confuse things my twitter name is DMAA_Group

Thanks Noodles ... I just went and took a look at my payout details and you are right - I ended up paying out basically 7% as most - by far -was not US sourced. I am still very unhappy about this though ... it just does not seem right. But there we go ... not a lot we can do about it suppose ...

Have you asked your local tax office about 'Double Taxation Relief' and offsetting any withheld tax against your own liability?

Most tax authorites should allow tax offsetting against non treaty countries, worth a country specific Google search, a call to the accountant or a chat with the local tax office if not anything else.

David  

Because their friend would be happy to email them the images for free of course. Friends are always happy to help each other out whether it's professional advice, plumbing, mechanics, DIY or in this case pictures __ I'm kind of surprised that it is being questioned.

It could be the buddy is a designer that is not buying for themself, but for a paid job or their company so it would be approriate, I worked in the building trade for 20 years, friends & family would get any spare materials and advice for free but that was all, I was running a business from a sole trader to employing 30 tradesmen, until the last recession hit, but any work for friends or family would be done at cost plus materials, which they agreed was correct and it stopped them from feeling they were taking advantage, so they could ask again.

David  

I guess if I was writing a blog, I'd have been there, and I'd have taken the photo.  
However, usage of RF images has very few restrictions, and from discussions on the iStock forums are very subjective (I can't speak about other sites).
Editorial would have to be much stricter, and much more carefully monitored. I can easily see why an agency wouldn't want the hassle at microstock prices.

I do write a blog and I purchase RF licensed images from Istock because they are affordable, and many standard microstock images are used in blogs already, not everyone who writes a travel blog is confident with a camera, even if they are there could well be an image that they missed or did not turn out good enough.

You are correct that RF images have very few restrictions, but they do have restrictions on use I cannot use a $2 download in a web template for instance, RF just means one payment then free of ongoing royalties for the specified use, but not free of restrictions.
RM means a payment of royalties for a specific, use, time period, sector and territory, this means any additional or repeat use should be paid for, it does not grant exclusive sector and territory use as many believe, and a history of use should be offered if asked for.

Why would Editorial need to be any stricter, and more carefully monitored, if you have licensed the image for editorial web use then that is the usage the license was issued for, the same as if I licence and download an RF commercial image, I am not allowed to sell downloads, prints, tee-shirts or any other merchandise.

Getty have included both RF and RM images in this usage, if someone purchases RM then the use is limited by license conditions, just like any other sale.

Exactly.  So how is Getty supposed to make any profit from this move??  Sure they have the resources to monitor use and deal with abuses, but will they be getting paid enough per shot to keep up those resources? Will those investigations be worth the cost?  Will the average blogger pay the prices they're asking?  And will those files sell over and over per day like they do at microstock in order to make up in volume for both the agency and contributors?  Doesn't sound promising all-around.

Once you have uploaded an image and the inspectors have passed or rejected it, the main supplier cost to Getty or any other website has been already meet, adding it to the database and storage is minimal, as you say the microstock model is to sell over and over again, what small percentage of the millions of images sell more than a few times 5% - 10%, the libraries need the other 90% to boast about the number of images they have for you to search through, this 90% of images have a cost but generate no direct revenue.

iStockphoto.com was founded in 2000 and many different models have sprung up based on the original concept, and now over nine years later they have changed the face of stock imaging, in doing this the enormous growth has now levelled out, there are no new microstock markets to exploit, they are the same as the photographer and need to generate a RPI, as the library and competition grows the revenue has reached a peak the RPI starts to falls.

Lets look at what they already have at no extra cost, millions of images, a customer base, infrastructure, all the tools they need to explore new markets, the first attack is on the Midstock website by creating a premium collection, these will not sell lots and lots will not impact the existing business but will have a higher RPI, now we look at the 90% of images that do not sell that much, shrink them in size and offer them all as website use, the sizes on offer will not impact existing sales, new buyers might be attracted by the low prices, and any revenue will be a bonus as there is no additional cost over what has already been spent.

Does web use including editorial come with any more risk, not really because they will clearly state the intended use, if someone infringes this it is not the websites fault as all the information about use was issued at the point of sale, anyway they already have a department that deals with infringement, this department does not actively look for offenders but responds to contributors who find an image in use where it is not licensed, vary rarely they will get to find out where a print run exceeded the license terms, so this is good use of resources and a winning situation.

Will blogger pay the Getty prices, maybe not personal bloggers, but corporate bloggers, editorial and advertorial article writers will, and with these customers any risk is again much reduced for Getty, and the whole libraries RPI is more healthy, but will another microsite look at this model we will have to wait and see.

I.M.H.O. This is one that no microstock photographer should sit on the fence with, as currently the supplier and digital asset growth is far more than the sales revenue growth, where this can only lead to a fall in RPI, new ideas and business models to open new markets no matter how small are far more important than new libraries that will dilute the existing revenue streams.       

David    

<...
>...
I know there are some real computer geniuses on this site.
If anyone here feels like running a real analysis, I sure many of us would be interested in seeing the results.

That would be hard as the top websites have stopped returning real numbers of data, and a lot would depend on the timescales, how long the image has been online / number of downloads etc:

Istock have 30420 for a generic search of African American 2.5 pages of blue flame images, but we do not know how often the phrase might be searched, but we can get some data from Alamy, they are in the UK but moving into the US market place, I searched on African American, Model Released, Royalty Free and only the Commercial Collection, which narrows the search closer to Istock and the Alamy search returned 49,627.

That does not tell us if any buyers are searching just for African American Images, so I checked Alamy Measures and 'buyer only' search terms containing African American, these were mainly looking for specific attributes like family, Boy, Girl, Couple, Group, smiling, Reading etc:
There were about 120 searches between 11 July 2009 - 9 August 2009 that included African American, search for Indian returned about the same number of people searches, not bad for a mainly UK Company.

Search terms for Caucasian returned only 6 entries for the same period, which shows buyers will filter to find the ethnic content if required for a request, adding African American as a keyword term is worthwhile. 

David         

No room for new sites for microstock. The big 6 already have it in the bag.
<...
>...
I remember when Railway Express had it in the bag until UPS came on board.
I remember when film could not be replaced until digital came along.
I remember when when Kmart was king, until Wal-Mart came along.
Things change folks! Do not ever underestimate the new guy. (or gal)
<...
>...
-Larry

Larry, these were where a new model replaced an existing one, by offering cheaper prices to the consumer and by cutting costs including squeezing the suppliers.

So there is a huge difference between another microstock website and a 'brand new model', in the examples above (excluding film v digital) there was a change in an existing service and a looser in each case, by taking the customers from one service and independants to the new service they did not generate new customers, but some of the suppliers of Kmart that surived will be supplying Wal-Mart at lower prices.

When a new microstock website comes onto the market it can only damage and further dilute the existing market if it can attract any quantity of customers from the existing services that is, as the revenue for the existing services dilutes the costs are still growing, and the affected websites will have to cut costs and squeeze the photographers still further to maintain a profit, it is just robbing Peter to pay Paul .

I will welcome any new service model which opens up new revenue streams from new customers, but any service that will dilute the already limited revenue should not be welcomed with open arms, how we turn things around and get the big websites to look at how they treat the suppliers is beyond my skill set.  

David    

but I am just curious about visit stats for my 30 images in few hours. I know that people from Dreamstime are complaining for missing views eg no views no sales problem at this time.
From port on Dream of 800 images I havent so much views and now from 30 images in few hours I have 439 views???

It is a matter of what constitutes a view, different website calculate differently, I was also wondering when I joined but the sales did happen, when you first upload your images go straight to the most recent thumbnail strip displays, maybe on each pageload a view is recorded, they also feed out via RSS and these might be recorded as views, lets not confuse views of thumbnail strips or pages with zooms to the details.
<...
EDIT: deleted comment as answered by 3DStudio in next reply
>...
If you have joined and worried about how much traffic, then go to reports and look at the last 100 searches, look at the date and time of the first and last searches, when I checked the 100 searches were carried out in around 5 minutes, so that is 24 a minute or one every 2.5 seconds.

B.T.W. after the inital rush of views they do settle, my 86 images average about 100 views a day.


David  

Did I read the date wrongly?  27 th July 2008, or is it only a couple of weeks ago? 2009.

Cheers updated July 2009