In a major blow to my fledgling stock career, my sole agency PhotoShelter Collection called it quits today. I really admired what they where trying to do there and wish them all the best with there Archive service. It was never going to be easy but from a business standpoint you have to pull the plug.
So where do I go next? Almay?, iStock(bleh), DigitalRailroad? I would rather not go micro so please let me know where some good RM agencies are.
Update: Vincent LaForet gives his thoughts on his blog
It is not a sale but I am pretty stoked one of my images made editors choice. It will be interesting to see if it brings more traffic or not. I *think* I am getting a better idea of the style they are going for in the collection so I will hopefully get even more images accepted. Check out my editors choice image:
I have been thinking about this for a while now. The microstock revolution started a few years ago but it still felt very old. It changed the game mostly for producers of content, opening the door for an entire new breed of photographers. Now you can fairly easily pay for your hobby with income from microstock and thousands are doing it.
One thing that hasn’t really changed is the licensing. There are two main choices, royalty free(RF) and rights managed(RM). RF images are paid for once and used forever. This is the main license for most microstock sites. RM images are paid for based on where and when they will be used. For example if I wanted to use a RM image for a magazine I would be charged based on how long I wanted the rights and how big my subscriber base is.
GumGum is out to change all that with a very web based pricing model designed specifically for images used on the web. GumGum wants to use a CPM model. CPM is a term that means “Cost Per Thousand, (no idea why it is not CPT). This is a pricing model used heavily in the online ad space. As a photographer I can upload an image and set my CPM pricing. Then a designer comes along and gets code to place my image on there site. GumGum keeps track of the impressions and charges the designer. This has a couple of interesting aspects from a photographers point of view:
I continue getting revenue for the life of my image on a site, assuming people are still looking at the page. This is similar to a RM license but last forever.
The image size you are uploading in theory can’t really be used for prints etc. The technology they use also helps stop a lot of typical image theft tricks.
From a designers point of view I think they get a fairly low cost image (the the video below $.20 per CPM) so they don’t have to pay a lot if the site/page is not successfully.
There are a lot of other things that are pretty cool. Check out the demo video below or go to the GumGum site.
As reported on Photo Business BlogPhotoShelter has just hired Genevieve Harley from Getty Images to be Director of Sales at PhotoShelter. They also hired former American Express Senior Product Manager Andrew Fingerman to be PhotoShelter’s new vice president of marketing.
I don’t know anything about these people but them sem like good solid experienced people to bring on board. If PhotoShelter can move over a lot of Getty customers that can mean nothing but good things.
PhotoShelter Collection looks like it could be really good for photographers since I get to set my own price. They also use fotoQuote to help you set the price. Cycle61’s prices came out between a few hundred and $1000 dollars. If those are my prices then I won’t have to sell many to make my goal of $1000. they also handle news photos which is great since I plan to shoot some local pro and college soccer.