News

Quite a bit has happened since I last wrote, two conferences and a few changes to royalties and pricing at some agencies.

Probably the big event for me was the microstockexpo which took place last weekend in Berlin, I'd like to thank everyone I meet and all those who made it possible - you know who you are! A full report is comming soon!

Crestock have anounced a tiered commission structure, the previous offer was 20% then 30% after 100 downloads. The new pricing is 20-40% as per the table below:

Digest of Septembers Microstock News Stories:

Two big stories this month relating to the commission and sales structure under which images are sold. Veer announced they were to offer a subscription product, while subscription site shutterstock announced it would to start offering single images.

Decide for yourself from the facts and figures were have collected.
Each of the links below displays tabulated data selected and ordered from each of our microstock agency reviews:

A fair amount of this months news comes from istockphoto, the most important being their lunch of photo+ for their non-exclusive members. The system allows contributors to 'promote' a portion of their portfolio (percentage depends on acceptance ratio)  to be offered at the same prices as exclusive photographers standard images. It seems at present there is no best match or search engine boost associated with opting photos into photo+ (regardless of discussion on weather this is in istocks best interest to farm high priced sales). Photos are locked into photos plus for 6 months (not sure why). I'm a little hazy on commission rates also with some sellers reporting images sold for 66% more revenue (you would expect 50 or less if the photo was being sold at the same commission rate).

istockphoto have launched their editorial stock image collection to buyers (previously announced to contributors in December) . Editorial images are highlighted with red/orange image numbers and are subject to stricter license terms than commerical RF images. As stated previously these are not intended to cover recent news or celebrity content, but less timely stock images that feature restricted IP like recognizable designs (cars, logos, buildings, works of art etc) that cannot be made available as royalty free stock.