Getting All Those Other Images to Market . . .
Stock Asylum Staff Report
September 6, 2005
Randy Taylor thinks there are a lot of top quality stock images wasting
away out there and he's doing everything he can to help photographers
and small distributors get these to the image-buying community.
Taylor has announced a new, easy-to-use service that lets photographers and small distributors sell image licenses over the internet in a way that closely resembles approaches of larger stock sellers.
Named StockPipeline, the service offers on-line search, automated image licensing, on-demand resizing and download capabilities -- all services that stock buyers have become used to on the web sites of traditional distributors. StockPipeline connects seamlessly to participating web sites so that image searchers hardly notice they have left the original site and entered the StockPipeline service, Taylor said.
"Many of the large stock photo agencies are rejecting an increasingly large percentage of submissions," said Taylor, who also operates StockPhotoFinder, a stock search engine, and Stock Media, a traditional stock agency.
"Photographers need to bring these images to market in some form," Taylor added. "The greatest return on investment for photographers is to choose a strategy like this that allows them to directly market their work."
Indeed, an increasing number of photographers use their web sites to show stock photography, as evidenced by The Stock Asylum's internet directory, which links to many of these pages ( click here ). Some report significant web sales, though others clearly have a way to go before their efforts pay off.
In addition, several companies like Digital Railroad, Alamy, IPNStock, AGPix and others offer photographers new paths to the design, advertising and publishing markets outside the traditional stock agency system.
StockPipeline promises a relatively cost-effective approach, Taylor said. For $50 per month, photographers can upload up to 1,000 high resolution images using a simple drag-and-drop interface that automatically extracts metadata like keywords from the image files. The images are all resized to 56 megabytes.
Taylor said there is a $200 set-up fee, but noted that, for a limited time, StockArtistsAlliance members get a 75 percent reduction and members of the StockPhotoFinder network will receive a 50 percent cut.
StockPipeline can be found at: http://www.stockpipeline.com
StockPhotoFinder is at: http://www.stockphotofinder.com
Digital Railroad is at: http://www2.digitalrailroad.net
Alamy is at: http://www.alamy.com
IPNStock is at: http://www.ipnstock.com
AGPix is at: http://www.agpix.com
Stock Media is at: http://www.stockmedia.net
