|
MicrostockGroup Sponsors
This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
Messages - Pickerell
51
« on: March 08, 2014, 10:22 »
I took a look on GettyImages to get an idea of which third of their images they're allowing users to embed (35 million of about 105 million was what one article stated).
It now seems to me that being embeddable means Getty considers you the "low rent district" - if you look at the hover previews for an image you will see the </> icon at the end of the row for images that are embeddable, so you can quickly scan results to see what is.
Having noticed that things like National Geographic were excluded and Flickr included, I started with their Collections page
http://www.gettyimages.com/creativeimages/imagecollection
And saw that huge chunks of the creative stuff is not embeddable - Rubber Ball, Digital Vision, Tetra, Images Bazaar, Dorling Kindersley, Yuri Arcurs, Blend Images, Ingram,
But Vetta, E+, Flickr are embeddable. Photodisc is interesting in that only a portion are embeddable and it appears that the search (not for a term but browsing the collection) puts all the embeddable images up front - half way through page 4 the images are no longer embeddable (I only spot checked a few pages after that, so there could be something I missed)
http://www.gettyimages.com/Search/Search.aspx?p=image&family=creative&contractUrl=1&b=PDI#4
My assumption is that they're only taking a risk (offering for free) with things they don't value very much anyway...
Like Jo Ann, I found a lot of collections that are not embeddable. However, I have been told by senior management at one of the Image Partner collections whose images so far are not embeddable that they have been told that none of the Image Partners can Opt Out. They expect their images in their collection to be embeddable in the near future. My guess is that Getty has to go through some process to turn embedding on with each collection and they haven't got around to it yet. I suspect that if we wait a week we'll find that it will be possible to embed nearly all the images in the Creative Stock Images and Editorial collections. This certainly sounds like something Getty would do. Instead of having one simple switch in their software that they can turn on or off they have 500 different switches, each of which has to be individually turned on or off.
52
« on: March 07, 2014, 12:14 »
I asked Getty public relations a couple questions. They supplied me with the following answer that can be attributed to Getty Images. 1 Are customers able to embed images that are on iStock and Thinkstock? Right now the embed feature is only for images on gettyimages.com. It is not on the companys master delegate sites. It is not on iStock or Thinkstock. Getty Images will see how it resonates and then make decisions about iStock and Thinkstock. Of course the iStock images that are on gettyimages.com are available for embedding including Yuris image 2 I asked, if a contributors image is downloaded using the embed tool will the contributor be informed of the image number that was downloaded and hopefully of the site where the image will be found (Getty will capture that information). At launch, we will not be sharing information of this manner with contributors, but we will explore data sharing options in the future. If and when we earn revenue associated with an embedded image (e.g., ads placed in the embedded viewer), we will report that revenue to contributors through existing royalty reports. Last August Getty partnered with Stipple.com. Stipple embeds ads and other kinds of information in images. You can learn more about it by going to www.Stipple.com.
53
« on: March 05, 2014, 13:01 »
If an image has to be used within a month or 12 months, or as long as you have a subscription what happens if you post an image on the Internet within the allowed time period and then drop your subscription? Nobody removes documents once they post them on the Internet. Are all those images in violation if the poster doesn't keep an active subscription forever?
54
« on: March 04, 2014, 13:17 »
It is hard to see how the royalty rates that have been announced will work in the long run.
Non-exclusive: All Collections: $0.28/download
Main (exclusive): $0.34/download
Signature (exclusive): $0.75/download
Signature+ (exclusive): $2.50/download
The customer will be paying a flat fee for a subscription. If they buy the higher level subscription they will be able to download as many images from any collection as they want. Effectively, the customer is paying the same price per image regardless of which collection it comes from.
If the customer downloads all images from the Main collection Getty makes out, but if all the images they choose are from the Signature+ collection Getty takes a big hit because they have to give up 7 to 9 times more money in royalties than they would have if all the images came from the Main collection.
Assume that a customer has an all collection subscription, but downloads all the images they need from the non-exclusive main collection and Getty pays just 10% of the subscription fee in royalties. If those same customers downloaded the same number of Signature+ images Getty would payout over 90% of what they collect.
There would be an incentive for Getty to push images from the non-exclusive Main collection to the top of the search return order. But they will want to keep the high priced images at the top of the search return order so their single image buyers can see them first and maybe spend more for the images they want to use. This may be another plan that has not been well thought out.
It can't be long before Getty changes the royalty rate to one flat price regardless of which collection the image comes from.
55
« on: February 26, 2014, 15:07 »
Does anyone know the percentage of Shutterstock downloads that are illustrations or vectors? Every week I get Shutterstocks Trend Report that shows the top 12 images downloaded during the week. Every week it seems to be dominated by illustrations. This week 10 out of the top 12 are illustrations or vectors. Only 2 photos.
Last year Shutterstock said that a total of 39% of downloads were illustrations (29%) or vectors (10%). Does anyone think that percentage has increased?
56
« on: February 25, 2014, 10:53 »
Jo Ann. Is only 40% of Shutterstock's revenue coming from Subscriptions? A little over a year ago they said that in a conference call that 60% was from Subscriptions, but recently I've been hearing that it is "about 50/50." If the subscription business has really declined to 40% that a much more rapid transition to "Image On Demand" than I thought. In the recent conference call they said Enterprise was about 15% of revenue and Video about 5% to 6%. That would make Image On Demand 40% of the business. Does everyone agree that the way the revenue breaks down based on the royalty statements they are receiving?
Thanks for all your comments.
57
« on: February 24, 2014, 15:05 »
I'm not saying agencies shouldn't be allowed to download comps. But given that Shutterstock is primarily a subscription company, I think they should develop some way to compensate the contributors for every download instead of saying we'll compensate you for some downloads and not others.
58
« on: February 24, 2014, 11:23 »
Thanks for the information Scott.
It seems to me that a lot depends on how frequently these comps are downloaded, Im well aware that RM agencies supply free comps for layout and evaluation purposes. Of course those companies are not also offering a companion subscription product that could be used as an alternative to giving free comps.
In your case I dont understand why the buyers who want comps are not required to also purchase a subscription. In that case they could download as many full sized images as they want for comp use and any other use they might want to make of those images in the future. In such a case the people whose images were only used for comp purposes would receive some compensation.
When agencies first started providing free comp images, it was usually pretty much guaranteed that once they showed the layout to the customer the image would eventually be licensed unless for some reason the whole project was killed.
It is my understanding that today when advertising agencies present their designs for a project they often present 5 or 6 different versions, using different images, to give the customer a choice. Customers love choice. Customers love to think they know more than the agency or designer about what will sell their product. In such situations everyone knows that many of the versions presented will never be used. They were created solely for the purpose of giving the customer options. From the photographers point of view those whose images are not eventually licensed are just helping the one whose image is licensed for free.
It is also generally believed that a high percentage of the images downloaded through subscriptions are never actually used in a project. They are used for comp purposes, or planning purposes, or sometimes just reside on a hard drive in case they might be of some use to the art director in the future. As far as I know no one has any idea what percentage of total downloads these images might represent because there is no tracking of uses.
The big question is the percentage of comp images given away for free compared to the number that are actually licensed. If 50% of the comp images that are downloaded are actually licensed for the big money you are talking about then maybe it is not a big issue. At least the people whose images were not used had a reasonable chance of making a big sale.
But, if only one out of 100 free comp images delivered actually result in a sale then it seems to me that a lot of photographers are being treated unfairly by allowing their images to be used for free without any reasonable chance of compensation.
I dont understand why you feel no need to compensate image creators when their images are downloaded for comp use. It would seem to me that once you make one of these big sales you could set aside a portion of that number to pay the $0.25 to $0.40 to all those whose images were used for comps on the project before you calculate the portion of the remainder that should be paid to the creator whose images was actually used. That use would not have existed if the comp images were not also available.
If, in fact, there is no end use in a significant percent of the cases where comp images are downloaded youve got a bigger problem.
According to my calculations if just a little over 50% of your 2013 revenue came from subscription then well over 90 million of your total 100 million downloads were subscription sales. The royalties may be small, but to the contributors the volume is very important. Another 7 million or more downloads probably came from Image On Demand sales leaving very few unit sales for enterprise and video. Jon Oringer says that enterprise may end up being 20% to 25% of your total revenue. The odds of making an enterprise sale are very long for the contributor. Rather than focusing on the chance of making enterprise sales most contributors will count on volume for their continued growth.
59
« on: February 22, 2014, 14:11 »
Can anyone tell me if creators are compensated for the images provided to enterprise customers for FREE comp use?
Shutterstock announced that it had $68 million in gross revenue in Q4 2013 and that approximately 15% (approximagely $10 million) was to large organizations they refer to as enterprise customers. They believe that enterprise customer sales may eventually generate 20% to 25% of gross revenue.
When asked during the investor conference call what causes these large organizations to pay more than the standard subscription rate Thilo Semmelbauer, President & COO said, it's a combination of the license and the rights they get, the indemnification, the service, as well as the functionality that we provide. So as an example, agencies use a platform where they can download what's called comps for free. Comps are sort of full resolution files without watermarks that they can use in their discussions with clients in their workflow. And until their clients decide yes we want to use this image they're actually not paying for that.
So now, when they do license that image it's going to be in the hundreds of dollars per image. So that's a very different type of workflow that's very suited to the agency market. And I won't go through all the other categories but it's an example of how we've customized our offering for publishers, large corporations, agencies. And the price point for the image varies based on some of those suites of things.
Shutterstock says they had 100 million paid downloads in 2013. Are the images that were downloaded for free comp use included in that number, or are they on top of that number?
If they are in addition to the 100 million does anyone have any idea how many were downloaded for comp purposes?
Assume that a big advertising agency downloads 1,000 images for comp purposes and eventually pays a license fee to use 50 of those images.
Assuming that the normal subscription download royalty is paid for each free comp use download, how is it determined what percentage of the total fee paid by the advertising agency is allocated to the 50 images that were actually used?
Shutterstock says it pays out about 28% of gross revenue in royalties, but is a lower percentage paid to those whose images are only used as comps and a much higher percentage to those whose images are actually used?
Does the enterprise licensing become more of an RM model rather than a pay-per-download RF licensing model? Will the business move more toward an Alamy model with the fee charged enterprise customers is based on use?
One of the advantages for creators of the subscription pricing model was that customers were encouraged to download a lot of images because they didnt have to pay extra for each image downloaded. Thus, creators received a very low royalty, but made it up in volume. With the enterprise system customers still get to download all the images they want, but the price they pay depends on who they are, how they use the images, and how many images they end up using.
Will there be any way to track those images that were downloaded for free comp us, or do we trust that customers will tell us when they make any future use even if it is months or years down the road?
60
« on: January 07, 2014, 13:33 »
Jo Ann: Most of my original list came from people who were at the top of the iStockcharts list when they were still publishing their numbers. I have certainly missed those who were below 45,000 downloads two years ago and have had a dramatic rise in downloads since then. I doubt if I have any of the people whose collections were moved from Getty Images to iStock. If you want to see exactly who was included you can go to my site at http://www.selling-stock.com/Article/downloads-at-istock-12-lower-than-2012Sean I did not include you because I didnt have a full two years of data on you. Hope you are making up for the iStock loss with Stocksy sales. To All. The 70% and 75% came from investors considering investing in Getty debt. Maybe they were blowing smoke at me. Maybe they have another agenda. Take it for what is worth.
61
« on: January 06, 2014, 16:58 »
Based on the downloads of 420 of iStocks most productive contributors with a combined total of at least 50,777,000 downloads, the number of downloads in 2013 were down about 12% compared to 2012. This group of contributors have approximately one-third* of all iStock downloads since the companys founding, Since early in 2009 I have been tracking downloads ( http://www.selling-stock.com/Article/downloads-at-istock-56-lower-than-2010) of 192 of iStockphotos most productive contributors. At the end of 2011, I added 228 additional contributors to my tracking list for a total of 420. All the people on this list have more than 45,000 downloads and 171 of them have more than 100,000 total downloads. At the end of 2012 this group had minimum total downloads of 47,617,000. This was up a minimum of 3,780,000 from 43,837,000 at the end of 2011. Given the way iStock reports downloads the group had a possible maximum of 5,927,000 during 2012. For 2013 the minimum downloads were 3,160,000 and the maximum 5,388,000. Assuming that some contributors has just passed the minimum download number reported and others were about to reach the maximum and go to the next higher level, I averaged the high and low number for each year. The average downloads for 2013 is 4,853,500 and for 2013 it is 4,274,000. Thus, the average downloads in 2013 is about 12% lower than 2012. It should also be noted that downloads declined 46% in 2012 compared to 2011. ( http://www.selling-stock.com/Article/downloads-at-istock-56-lower-than-2010) In July iStock launched a half-price promotion ( http://www.selling-stock.com/Article/istockphoto-cuts-prices) and cut the price of all the content from its non-exclusive contributors in half in the hopes of generating more downloads. Simultaneously, they adjusted the search-return-order in a way that favored their higher priced exclusive collections that remained at the same price. At that time it was reported that 70% of all iStock sales were for exclusive images. After the end of the 3rd quarter there were reports that 75% of all downloads were for exclusive images. While lowering the price of non-exclusive images did not seem to increase sales overall, gross revenue for iStock may not have declined due to the higher percentage of exclusive sales. *As of January 2, 2012 the 38,163 contributors iStockcharts was tracking had a combined minimum total of 114,875,519 downloads since the founding of iStock. These contributors owned over 90% of all the images on iStock. Given the weak sales in the last two years, I believe total iStock downloads are below 150 million. Individual trend data can be found at ( http://www.selling-stock.com/Article/downloads-at-istock-12-lower-than-2012).
62
« on: December 09, 2013, 14:33 »
Moody's Investors Service ("Moody's") has reported that Fotolias revenues for the fiscal year ending December 2012 totaled $87 million. Moodys expects revenues to increase in the low to mid-single digit percentage range over the next 12 months. The information has become available because Fotolia is trying to raise $300 million in loans. NEW $200 million 1st Lien Senior Secured Term Loan: Assigned Ba3, LGD3 -- 31% NEW $100 million 2nd Lien Senior Secured Term Loan: Assigned Caa1, LGD5 -- 85% An obligations rated Ba is judged to have speculative elements and is subject to substantial credit risk. The 3 indicates that this obligation ranks at the lower end of this rating category. An obligations rated Caa is judged to be of poor standing and subject to very high credit risk. The 1 indicates this obligation ranks at the higher end of this rating category. Moodys has assigned a Probability of Default rating to both these obligations. The Loss Given Default (LGD) assessments are opinions about expected loss given default on fixed income obligations expressed as a percent of principal and accrued interest at the resolution of the default. In June 2012, KKR acquired ( http://www.selling-stock.com/Article/fotolia-receives-150-million-growth-investmen) a 47% stake (50% voting stake) in Fotolia from TA Associates (31% remaining ownership) and Oleg Tscheltzoff (Co-founder & CEO) in a transaction which valued the company at $455 million. At that time KKR Capital Markets put in place a $150 million senior financing for the company. Proceeds from the new debt instruments are expected to fund the refinancing of existing debt, a $161 million special dividend, and transaction related fees. The rating outlook is stable. Fotolias sales are strongest in the French and German markets and Moodys says the company has a leadership position in these markets. It is not clear that Moodys has examined the sales of Shutterstock and iStock in these markets. Fotolia failed to make an appearance at the recent Microstock Expo in Berlin which drew top microstock shooters from around the world. Shutterstock sent 9 delegates and sponsored several events. Shutterstock has also recently opened an office in Berlin. Fotolia hopes this refinancing will provide more flexibility for it to expand into new markets.
63
« on: November 07, 2013, 13:28 »
Sorry for a very late reply. The other 9% of Getty revenue is probably Footage.
That's 33% for Midstock, 33% for Premium, 25% for Editorial and 9% for Footage.
Jim
64
« on: October 16, 2013, 18:04 »
I have been able to confirm that Getty does include Thinkstock in the approximately $300 million that they report as Midstock revenue. It is unclear how much of that $300 million is generated by Thinkstock.
65
« on: October 10, 2013, 11:43 »
Thanks to everyone. It sounds like $25 may be a good average for Exclusive sales.
66
« on: October 10, 2013, 11:40 »
To MichaelJayFoto
I didn't mean to ignore you. The post I was referring to was the first post on this thread. I am somewhat digitally challenged. I haven't figured out yet how to copy sections of a post and include them in my post. Please forgive me.
67
« on: October 10, 2013, 08:55 »
In my beginning post on this thread I explained how I came up with an average price per credit of $1.50. It was later pointed out to me that $1.50 may be too high based on volume discounts to big users and promotion deals so I lower the credit price to $1.20, but I still based the average sale on the Large (default) file size and thats how I came up with $48. Im getting the sense now that a much higher percentage of the images used are small to medium than I expected. Thus, $25 to $30 maybe makes more sense. I know of Vetta and Exclusive+ contributors who were getting royalties significantly above $10 last time I checked. The problem with the $25 number is that means there would have taken 8,400,000 downloads to generate $210 million and that puts total downloads counting non-exclusive at 13 to 14.5 million which is much higher than the analysis of 192 of the leading iStock contributors would indicate. (See: http://www.selling-stock.com/Article/istockphoto-download-trends). I still think my download analysis or around 10 million is fairly accurate. I would like to see more exclusive contributors weigh in to this discussion and let us know what their average sale is.
68
« on: October 09, 2013, 19:18 »
OK here is more speculation.
It is interesting that the average gross sale price for a Non-exclusive image seems to have been around $9.88 for the first half of the year and around $4.22 after the price drop. Im going to use those numbers for some calculations.
We have been told that total Midstock revenue was about $300 million in the last 4 quarters ending June 30, 2013 and that the bulk of Midstock, if not all of it, comes from iStockphoto. Getty has also told investors that 70% of the Midstock revenue is generated by exclusive images.
That means there was $210 million in revenue from Exclusive images and $90 million from other images.
If we assume all the $90 million was generated by iStock non-exclusive images and divide $9.88 into $90 million we get about 9,109,312 total downloads.
If we assume an average price of a credit at $1.50 and an average price of $60 per download there would have been 3.5 million Exclusive downloads.
But some have argued that $1.50 is too high, so assume an average price or $1.20 per credit and that would drop the cost per download to $48 and result in 4.375 total download.
Add the Exclusive and Non-Exclusive downloads together and we get 13,484,213 total downloads for the year. I have estimated that the total downloads for the period was right around 10 million. I might be underestimating that much, but I dont think so.
Gostwyck thinks that Thinkstock revenue could be included in this Midstock category and that it could be as high as $40 to $50 million. I have trouble seeing how they could argue that Thinkstock is Midstock, but I guess they can give it any name they want. I accept that Thinkstock revenue is much higher than my earlier estimate ($10 million).
Assume that Thinkstock is $45 million and it makes up half of $90 million in other revenue. That leaves the other $45 million for iStock Non-exclusive. In that event at $9.88 gross revenue per download that would be 4,554,656 Non-exclusive downloads. Add that to the Exclusive downloads and we get a total of 8,929,656 total downloads for the year. I think that is fewer than the actual number of downloads.
But, if we assume that Thinkstock is included and total revenue generated was about $30 million instead of $45 million (remember this was from July1, 2012 through June 30, 2013) that would leave $60 million in Non-exclusive iStock sales. Divide by $9.88 and you get 6,072,847 downloads. Add that to the 4,554,656 Exclusive sales and you get 10,627,530 total downloads. What do you think? All these numbers could be off, but maybe they supply some perspective.
The other interesting thing is how the price drop might affect the revenue numbers. If the average price dropped from $9.88 to around $4.22 and the downloads remained the same the revenue generated by Non-exclusive sales would have been:
9,109,312 total downloads at $4.22 each would generate $38,441,297, not $90 million
6,072,847 total downloads at $4.22 each would generate $25.617,424, not $60 million
4,554,656 total downloads at $4.22 each would generate $19,220,648, not $45 million
Getty will have to sell a significant number of additional Exclusive images or see a significant increase in Thinkstock subscriptions to make up for the revenue lost from lowering the price of the Non-exclusive images unless the Non-exclusives are seeing their downloads increase from 30% to 50% as a result of the discount price offer.
I predict that Getty saw another decline in Midstock revenue in Q3 2013.
69
« on: October 07, 2013, 14:52 »
Thanks Gostwick for your Thinkstock percentages compared to Shutterstock. Obviously, Thinkstock customers have not liked the collections I have been tracking anywhere near as well as Shutterstock customers like them. Your experience may be more representative.
The next question for me is where does that $40 to $50 million for Thinkstock fall in the overall revenue reporting. Investment analysts are being told there are 4 categories of revenue Premium Stock, Midstock, Editorial and Footage. The numbers they are being given are $300 million for PS, $300 million for Midstock, $225 million for Editorial and $75 million for Footage. Total $897 million in the last 4 quarters.
Even with a 9% drop in the last year, I have trouble believing is much below $300 million. I cant imagine they are throwing $40 or $50 million of Thinkstock sales into that box. Does anyone think that could be true?
I could believe that RM and traditional RF sold through Gettyimages.com could only be doing about $250 million and $50 million of Thinkstock revenue is lumped in there. It doesnt make much sense to lump subscription offerings with what are supposed to be Premium priced products, but maybe they are doing that to make the investors think Premium pricing still has a future. What do you think? Any ideas?
StanRohrers numbers are interesting. I agree with his point that the average price per image may be very portfolio dependent. His numbers would indicate that customers are either usually buying the small file size of his images, or there are some other huge discounts being factored in. It would be interesting to know if other with different portfolios are having the same experience.
On another point, according to Rebecca Swift, head of creative planning for iStock there are more than 30 million images on iStock. Does, anyone believe that number? Where did all those images come from? Given how tight the editing has always been I dont think they were anywhere near that number a year ago. Anyone have any thoughts?
70
« on: October 06, 2013, 14:13 »
Thanks everyone for your comments. Heres some more thoughts.
I agree that Midstock is a pricing policy that is an attempts to define a price point between Premium pricing and Microstock and tha I would say that in general there are 4 different price points Premium, Midstock, Microstock and Subscription. It seems clear to me that the higher you price the product the fewer sales you make.
The rights buyers get with Subscription, Microstock and Midstock are pretty much the same. The only difference is price.
It seems to me that with its Midstock offering Getty is saying, Were going after customers that have more money to spend and were willing to give up sales to those buyers who can only afford Microstock prices. The question is whether the higher prices will make up for the reduced volume. It is very difficult to position a brand so it will be attractive to off-the-rack shoppers and also attract buyers who want exclusive, unique and are also willing to pay premium prices for such a product.
How I get to the 10 million downloads is very simple. I have identified a group of contributors who are responsible for over 20% of iStocks total downloads and they had about 2 million downloads last year. If somehow the people who have the other 80% of downloads historically are making a disproportionally higher share of downloads today then my 10 million estimate is off. In the last year-and-a-half Ive expanded the list of people I track to over 400. The total downloads for all 400 are about one-third of iStocks historical total and the downloads for this group in the last 12 months seem to be around 3.3 million.
In coming up with my average price per credit I didnt take into account that some buyers could be paying a lot less for their credits as a result of corporate account buying and discount codes. If we assume the average price per credit is $1.20 instead of $1.50 that would mean that there would have been about 7.5 million non-exclusive downloads and 4.375. Exclusive downloads for a total of 11.875 million based on the gross revenue reported. My estimates could certainly be off by that much.
The interesting thing is that any iStock contributor receiving a reasonable number of downloads could easily calculate what their average royalty per download has been over a period of 6 months or so, factor in their royalty percentage and come up with an average price paid for the use of their images. I havent seen that kind of reporting and I would think such a number would be useful for the people participating in this group.
If the volume of non-exclusive content is on the rise that would be a good thing and mean that Getty is pulling customers back from SS and FT. However, given that a customer has to use the slider to find the non-exclusive content I would think it would be more likely that it is in decline. If people with a fair number of images can tell us that their unit sales went up in the last quarter compared to earlier in the year that would help us understand what is happening.
My guess is that most customers want to use the default search and that should mean that Exclusive sales are on the rise as a percentage of total units licensed.
Gostwycks analysis that the percentage of exclusive files is closer to 50% than 35% makes sense.
I get a lot of calls from investors wanting help in understanding the stock photo industry. It is clear to them that when Getty talks about Midstock they are talking about the iStock brand and not Premium RF. If Getty was including the RF they sell on Gettyimages.com in Midstock then the total sales of Midstock would certainly be much more than $300 million. The investors are also told that Premium sales also generate about $300 million and there is no way RM alone is doing that well. It is unclear where Getty puts Thinkstock. It shouldnt be part of either Premium or Midstock, but it must be rolled into one of these categories. I cant imagine Thinkstock generated much more than $10 to $20 million annually which doesnt make it a big issue in either case.
71
« on: October 04, 2013, 21:15 »
wds
I lumping all the Exclusive images into one group. Im not trying to make judgment about the percentage of sales that are just Exclusive, the percentage that are E+ and the percentage that are Vetta.
Gostwyck
Thanks for the insight on your numbers.
I didnt say that my list is the 192 top contributors, I said the list is 192 of the top contributors. There is a difference. I know I am missing some of the top contributors. Back when we had istockcharts.de I started tracking the top 200 people and later expended it to the top 500. Some of the original top 200 have slipped down in the list and a number of the lower ones have had a lot more downloads and have moved up. I have also been able to add a few people that I have discovered from other sources as the years go by. Regardless this group of contributors has a combined total of almost 33 million downloads and I cant imagine that iStock has had more than 150 million total downloads given the numbers istockcharts was reporting when they finally stopped supplying information. Thus, I think the contributors Im tracking representing 20% of total downloads.
Bhr
I think we all have to make judgments about what to shoot, how much to invest in new production and the likely direction the business will take in the future since every stock producer is betting that there will be increasing demand for the images he shoots one, two or three years down the road. I wish we had more and better data, but I think it is worth basing our judgments on what little data we can find, rather than just hoping that everything will work out alright.
72
« on: October 04, 2013, 16:03 »
Getty has $2.6 billion in debt and that debt is traded. Getty is telling Debt Investors that iStock is "Midstock" and they are trying to make an argument that it is aimed at a different customer from those who buy Premium stock (Getty's name for what they call the higher quality stock that can be found on Gettyimages.com -- their characterization, not mine).
73
« on: October 04, 2013, 15:41 »
Getty Images is finally declaring iStock a Midstock brand given how high they have pushed the prices of iStocks exclusive imagery. I estimate that about 35% of the images on iStock are exclusive. Getty has told debt investors that 70% of iStock revenue is generated from exclusive images and that the gross revenue for the last 4 quarters was about $300 million. In Q2 2013 iStock revenue was down 9% compared to the revenue in Q2 2012. Based on my analysis of the downloads of 192 of iStocks leading contributors ( http://www.selling-stock.com/Article/istockphoto-download-trends) with almost 33 million total download (about 20% of iStocks total downloads since its founding) I believe that iStock had about 10 million total downloads in 2012. Based on first half results downloads for 2013 should be about the same as last year. Downloads are down from about 25 million in 2009 and 2010. Demand For High Priced Exclusive Images It is helpful to get some idea of how many exclusive images are actually being purchased by customers. It is unclear whether the 70% of revenue for exclusive was based on the prices before the 1/2 Our Imagery Is Now 1/2 The Price promotion, but I will assume it was before. The price of a credit ranges between $1.40 and $1.67 depending on the size of the package purchased. For the purposes of my calculation I will use an average price of $1.50 for each credit. Non-Exclusive images range in price from 4 to 18 credits or $6 to $27 Exclusive images range in price from 5 to 28 credits or $7.50 to $42 Exclusive+ imges range in price from 10 to 55 credits or $15 to $82.50 Vetta images range in price from 35 to 160 credits or $52.50 to $240.00 It is interesting to note that Midstock images are often higher priced than Premium images purchased on Gettyimages.com. And on gettyimages.com the customer is not limited to 500,000 impressions before paying an additional Extended License fee. Recently, I was able to analyze the sales figures of several of the major RF contributors to Gettyimages.com. In 2007 when Getty was a public company the average price of an RF license was about $240. In the sales of the collections I reviewed the average price per-image-licensed in 2008 was $219. In 2012 the average price pre-license had dropped to $126. (Images had been added to the collections during the period.) This wouldnt have been so bad if there were more sales, but in fact only about one-third as many images were licensed in 2012 as in 2008. In addition, 25% of the licenses were for prices under $25. Is the Midstock model sustainable when Gettys Premium images are being licensed at these prices? The large file sizes on each of these iStock brands are priced as follows: Non-exclusive - $15.00 Exclusive $25.50 Exclusive+ $60.00 Vetta $112.50 If 70% of iStock revenue is from images that are Only from iStock that means that about $90 million is from the licensing of Non-exclusive images and about $210 million from the three higher priced categories combined. Assuming 10,000,000 downloads, if we divide $90 million by a $15 average price per image we get 6 million downloads of non-exclusive images. If we assume a $60 average price for the various exclusive collections we get 3.5 million downloads of exclusive images. The $60 price may be a little high because relatively few customers may be purchasing Vetta images at their higher prices, or on the whole customers may be purchasing smaller file sizes. We also have to take into account that a portion of that $210 million in revenue comes from the purchase of Extended Licenses. That, or a higher average price in general, could mean that there are fewer exclusive downloads. Non-exclusive RevenueIf iStock licenses the same number of non-exclusive images in the second half of 2013 as they did in the first half their revenue from non-exclusive images will be cut to $45 million since non-exclusive images are being licensed at half price. It is hard to believe they will license as many non-exclusive images since those images now appear so much lower in the search return order. That would mean that in order for Gettys Midstock revenue to grow they will have to license a lot more of their higher priced images. But, are there really more customers that are willing to pay that much? If you disagree with my numbers, or my analysis, please let me know.
74
« on: July 26, 2013, 11:56 »
Does Getty now own Peopleimages.com or is it still a separate site that you (Yuri) own and Getty has no interest in the revenue?
I dont understand how the partner program works. Getty owns Thinkstock and Photos.com 100% . They pay a royalty to the contributors. They dont own Flickr, but certain photographers are allowed to become Getty contributors just like all other photographers that are directly contracted to Getty.
Does Getty get the gross revenue of Peopleimages.com and pay you a royalty as is the case with Thinkstock?
What I dont understand is the big price discounts customers can get on most of your images (roughly 80%) by Peopleimages.com instead of iStock. Granted that your Pure+ and Premium images are priced at about the same level as Exclusive and Vetta it seems to me that there is a huge advantage for customers to go to Peopleimages instead of iStock and I cant understand why Getty allows this if you still own, and get 100% of Peopleimages. What am I missing?
On the other hand I suspect Getty is also selling your images through Thinkstock (part of the partner program), in an effort to compete with Shutterstock. This would mean that your images are also available at much lower prices than at either Peopleimages or iStock, if customers are smart enough to go to Thinkstock to purchase the images they need. Are some, or all, of your images available on Thinkstock?
75
« on: July 18, 2012, 13:39 »
Heres some number to consider. Through 2009 Alamy was supplying quarterly sales figures and rather detailed breakdowns of those figures to the public. Based on those numbers Alamy had gross revenue of $22,864,000 in 2009 down from over $31 million in 2008. In 2008 they paid out $20.8 million to contributors and in 2009 they paid out $12.5 million.
In Q4 2008 the average license fee for an RM image was $116. If the image was editorial the average price was $100 and the average for commercial use was $298. Of course the vast majority of sales were for editorial use.
At the end of 2008 they had about 15 million images on the site. Now they have almost 32 million. In all of 2009 they licensed rights to use less than 200,000 images or a little over 1% of the images in their collection. Considering that a few images were licensed more than once, the number of unique images licensed was probably less than 1%. The number of images licensed in 2008 was about the same, but the average price per license was higher.
While the collection has more than doubled in size, based on conversations with photographers and agencies that have images on Alamy, I dont think the number of total images licensed per year has risen much above 200,000, if at all. That means that today on average a photographer would need about 160 images in the collection in order to make 1 sale in the year. Of course some photographers do better than the average and others do worse.
Part of the original question was How will historical images sell? There is not anywhere near as much demand for historical images as images of contemporary people and lifestyle, or current views of travel locations. Thus, sales of historical images would probably be much lower than the average. Alamy will probably accept images that you cant get accepted by microstock sites, but is it worth your trouble of preparing the images for the market.
|
Sponsors
Microstock Poll Results
Sponsors
|
Show Posts
