E-Commerce from DR . . .

Stock Asylum Staff Report
Oct 19, 2006


Digital Railroad announced this date that it has added a new e-commerce feature that lets image buyers use credit cards to licence rights-managed and royalty-free imagery from any of more than 800 collections.

The "Unified E-Commerce Enable Checkout Cart," as it is called, is a necessary step in Digital Railroad's efforts to create a search engine that will unite nearly all the individually-branded stock photography libraries that use the service, said Evan Nisselson, who is the company's CEO and Founder.

Nisselson said Digital Railroad plans to unveil the universal search function later this year. Currently, each library is searched separately

In the meantime, the new checkout cart will let image buyers simultaneously negotiate and purchase images from several Digital Railroad collections, Nisselson said. He noted that many image buyers shop several Digital Railroad member collections.

Image buyers still must negotiate right-managed prices with the owners of each collection, but once licensing fees are established, the buyer will pay for all the images with a single credit card transaction.

In addition, Nisselson said, negotiations can go more smoothly because of a new feature that lets buyers and image creators communicate interactively, using their computers. Of course the parties can simply get on the phone and do it the old-fashioned way as well, Nisselson said.

Nisselson said nearly 800 photographers and 35 stock agencies now use Digital Railroad technology. Some 23,000 image buyers from 55 countries have registered with the Digital Railroad web site.

Individual photographers pay $49.95 a month for up to 20 gigabytes of storage space and up to 75 gigabytes of internet bandwidth. There is a one-time $99 set-up fee and additional storage and bandwidth is is available for a fee. A less-expensive one-year package is also available to photographers.

Nisselson pointed out that one shooter, photojournalist Mark Garfinkel, claims to have boosted his earnings by 30 percent using Digital Railroad. Other photographers use the service to efficiently deliver images to multiple users.

"Buyers are overwhelmed by technology –– as are photographers," said Nisselson. He said digital Railroad's job is to make the technology manageable for both groups.

The Digital Railroad web site is at: http://www.digitalrailroad.net.