Well, it was only a matter of time before one of the many photo-sharing sites decided it could sell stock imagery. iStockphoto was the first web 2.0 stock photography community, and remains the best. Now, Zooomr is taking a crack at the market. My observations:
- Stock photography is a crowded space. iStockphoto was first, but a lot of imitators followed. I can think of only three that have done well, but there are literally hundreds out there.
- Photosharing is also crowded. The difference is that the top players have a lot of traction. From a previous blog entry, I noted the following companies and their Alexa rank in the Alexa top 100 list: Fotolog (29), Flickr (42), Imageshack (50), Photobucket (55), ImageVenue (82). Most notably, Flickr has also been rumored to start selling images. I'm sure this latest release of Zooomr will be something that Yahoo! watches with great interest.
- Zooomr's 10% commission (paying 90% to the photographer) might be unsustainable. Paypal will charge 6% transaction fees, and credit cards charge about 3.5% - that leaves Zooomr with 4 - 6.5% if it doesn't pass those costs onto the photographer. In the worst-case scenario, $1,000,000 in revenues would yield $40,000 in gross margin, before any SG&A costs. Alamy tried to sell stock imagery while charging just 15% commission, plus a fee to the photographer for storing images. They abandoned that program in 2002. Now, they charge 35% commission. The reason why I say might is because Zooomr has a built-in viral model with their photo-sharing service, which yields them a lot of free traffic that stock photography sites don't normally get.
- Zooomr's search and filtering functions must yield iStockphoto or Getty Images -like results. iStockphoto has a great collection of edited images that are all under $15 each (as low as $1, depending on file size). In iStockphoto, Zooomr has a competitor with great prices, great selection and great quality.
UPDATE: Thomas Hawk, CEO of Zooomr has left a comment. It's a good read. iStockphoto empowered amateur and semi-pro photographers to break into the ultra-exclusive field of earning money from selling images. We did it by standardizing on low prices, increasing selection and copious amounts of promotion. Zooomr will allow self-pricing, and because of a self-advertising model, will send most of the money back to photographers. This model could turn out to be Stock Photo 4.0 - 1.0 was stock on film; 2.0 was stock on CD/web, pioneered largely by Photodisc; 3.0 was "microstock" pioneered by iStockphoto.
Patrick thanks for your comments on Zooomr. We are super excited about our upcoming Mark III release hope that photographers everywhere can and will embrace what we are trying to do.
ReplyDeleteI am CEO of Zooomr, but more than that I'm a photographer. I've sold lots of images and for prices much higher than microstock.
Zooomr is a site built by and and for photographers. The stock photography market today is a $2 billion market mostly dominated by Getty, Corbis and JupiterMedia.
The problem with these models is that most of the money goes to the agencies themselves. We strongly believe that most of the $2 billion stock photography market ought to go to the photographers that are creating the beautiful images that marketers are buying.
Zooomr is small. Right now in fact there are just two of us. We believe that by staying lean and mean that we can operate on a 10% cut. It is less our goal to become some hugely profitable company and more our goal to empower the photographers of the world.
We are also a social network. A social network where free accounts will see ads and there will be small other ways we monetize our site. As you indicate this will help with traffic.
More than this though we believe that our photographers will be the best marketers of Zooomr driving potential buyers to the site. By pushing the envelope to allow photographers as large a cut as we think is humanly possible we hope that they will in return become our marketers, spreading the message to stock buyers everywhere that Zooomr is the best way from them to support photographers in the end.
We plan on giving photographers full control over the prices that they set for their images. Restricting your sales to $1 doesn't make sense. Economics 101 in the end will determine the price that photos should sell at. I will tell you though that when there are images on Zooomr that are every bit as good as what you see on Corbis and Getty (and there are) there is no reason why these photos should not be selling for $100, $200, or much more in certain cases.
Part of our offering is an amazing algorithm that uses our social network rather than paid staff to choose which photos are most saleable to marketers.
We are passionate about what we are doing but do recognize that in the end it may likely take more than passion and maybe we will need to redefine our business model at some point too. But for now we think we have a shot at doing something revolutionary for all photographers everywhere and well... we just have to try.
Tom
I am Chief Instigator of LuckyOliver, and also a photographer and designer. I've sold lot's of images for prices much higher than 'microstock', or companies that help people sell images to other people.
ReplyDeleteLuckyOliver is built by photographers and designers. The photography market is much larger that 2 billion dollars. 'Stock' photography has been dominated by three players because they controlled the market of image buyers.
Ok...I'll stop the rhetoric- I'm just having a little fun. :)
The only point I might add is that I think the statement, "Restricting your sales to $1 doesn't make sense" doesn't make sense. That's industry speak (trickled down from larger stock firms and pro photographers wanting to put 'microstock' into a price point category...it's really more than a price point). If you look at many community based stock sites there's a sliding scale. LuckyOliver pricing starts at a token ($1) but goes up to 50 tokens ($50) for putting it on a product. We allow our artists to set a buyout price.
Anyhow, I just wanted to point out that pricing is only one part of the equation. I wish you guys luck Thomas, and if you're in the south bay let me know!
Bryan