September 21, 2010 by pmelcher.

The rule is simple : be where your customers are. Applying it is much harder.

Sure, you can have a twitter account, and Facebook, and Linkedin and all that . But is that where your customers are ? Not really. They don’t really follow you on Twitter because they don’t want to, nor do they wish to exchange personal stories with you on Facebook ( if they even know you), they log into Linkedin once every few months  to find a number and quite frankly would really appreciate if you would stop spamming them with your blast emails.

Sure, you have a website. But so does billions of other people/companies/schools/institutions/churches/ airline companies and so on. A drop in the ocean doesn’t even begin to describe where your website/blog is right now. You can make that two drops in the ocean if you have a really good SEO.

So what to do asks the wise man ? Well, there is a nifty smart why to put your images in the face of image buyers in a very subtle smart way. It’s called Image Exchange and it is brought to you by Israeli company Picscout, previously in the copyright infringement detection industry.

How does it work ? Very simple. You, the image creator, send small version of your images into their central servers where they are fingerprinted for detection. Image Buyers, on their side, download a small plug in for Firefox or Explorer ( Soon Chrome, hopefully). Every time your image is seen on any website at whatever format, a small “i” icon appears on top of it. All they have to to is click on it and they can be redirected to your website .

The huge misconception about Image Exchange is that  it only works with a Google Image search, which would be already not be too bad. But no, it works everywhere. Let’s say your friend post a link to an article that they like on Facebook. Automatically, a thumbnail of the picture on the page is rendered. Well, Image Exchange can recognize that image and tell you who the licensing right owner is.  Your images become viral and your best publicity without you doing a thing: Imagine that ! Wasn’t that one of the promises of the Internet ?

Image Exchange is somewhat free. They get paid for each recommendation that they bring to you after a certain amount of click-trough. You can purchase more, in advance, or stop whenever you want . That simple.

so, if you want your images to finally end up where your potential clients are, head on to Picscout and sign up.  You might actually see some more income without having to dump all your images into Istockphoto

Posted in license, copyright, commercial stock, Tweet, Search, photojournalism, editorial, transaction, finance, getty | Print | 5 Comments »

September 14, 2010 by pmelcher.

So, what do you do when you have a problem ? Burn everything ? Apparently , that is the new solution.

A year ago, French photographer, Jean Batiste ( sorry, couldn’t find his last name), decided that, in order to protest the harsh financial conditions some photographers face, he would burn his images. You can see the dramatic video here :

The result ? A lot of sympathetic press coverage on a slow news day and not much more. After all, if his images don’t sell, why would any care what he does with it ? Furthermore, he might have scanned all of them, making the burning of negatives ( remember those ?) barely symbolic.

He wanted to bring the attention of the French government on the fact that he was making little less than minimum wages with his pictures due to the financial mistreatment of photography. The French Government did not particularly react as they had to deal, like so many others, to a global meltdown of the economy. The financial trouble of a lonely photographer was no match to the global collapse of our banking system.So what does this Jean Batiste do ?

He is at it again. This time, he wants all photographers to join him in burning their negatives at the footsteps of a statue of Nicephore Niepce, the inventor of photography. Located in the remote town of Chalon sur Saône, somewhere in France, the event is schedule for January 11, 2011.

Surely, this is no Koran burning and it is doubtful that it will receive any of the obscene amount of coverage that we have recently seen. It is neither the self immolation of a monk, as we had dramatically witnessed during the Vietnam war. This is the tantrum of a unknown french photographer who like many of his fellow citizen cannot think of anything better than blame the government for his hard time and demand that they hold his hand.

We are aware of at least two photographers currently about to be evicted from their houses because they cannot pay their bills anymore. Do you think they are burning their hard drives in their back yard hoping Obama will notice ? No. They are hard at work trying to reinvent themselves in an extremely difficult time. Do they complain, bitch, cry, and kick. Sure.

But they certainly have no attention to walking in Washington demanding their rights to make a decent living. You know why ? Because they feel extremely fortunate to have been a living on a trade they love. Because they knew from day one of embracing this life that they would hit bumps and roadblocks.

Because they love photography too much to burn it.

Posted in license, copyright, Waste of time, No sense, finance, editorial, transaction, news | Print | No Comments »

September 12, 2010 by pmelcher.

Just when you thought it was safe to go outside and shoot again, a new threat has appeared. Under what seems like a very benign press release lies another attempt from Getty to turn the photography world into it’s own private playground.

This is the press release :

“Getty Images, Inc., has signed a multi-year agreement with McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT) to license its award-winning editorial imagery from their network of McClatchy and Tribune papers. From today, the strategic relationship will provide customers around the world with access to imagery captured by one of the most-respected news conglomerates, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services, and enables Getty Images to offer the most comprehensive editorial imagery for U.S. and world news, entertainment, sports, business and lifestyle.“

Seems like another one of these distribution agreements that Getty already has with a thousand plus companies and it is. Until you know what was the motivation behind this deal :

McClatchy and Tribune papers own 30 daily newspapers in 29 U.S. markets.. These local newspapers like to cover local news. Among the local news are, of course, local sports teams. At first, Getty images, owner of mutli deals with sport leagues like the NBA ( BasketBall), MLB ( Baseball), USGA ( Golf ), USTA ( Tennis) , NHL (Ice Hockey), and so on, tried to get  “local” photographers out of the games. After all, in Getty’s perspective, they are the official photographers for these sports and thus should be exclusive.

Especially since McClatchy  newspaper then licensed those images via MCT to other newspapers and via agencies to the whole world.

That didn’t work. You cannot prevent local newspapers to cover local sports . Just imagine if the Chicago Tribune would not be allowed to cover a Bulls game ? or a White Sox game ? The whole foundation of US democracy would have been in shamble.

So what did Getty do? They went to McClatchy and said, let us do your distribution of images. Why ? so we can grab your sports images and add them to our own coverage, or sit on them, thus making us practically exclusive on all these sports game. Except for AP and Reuters who have yet to understand against who they are fighting.

Sports photography is big business and shows no sign of slowing down. Getty images is on the path to controlling every image that you will see coming out of a US sports competition, and everything around it. ( remember, Tiger Woods first public appearance ?)

This is not about fair competition anymore, where the best image wins, this is becoming a real monopoly. Heard that, Justice department ?

Posted in newspaper, license, magazine, finance, editorial, news, law, getty | Print | No Comments »

September 7, 2010 by pmelcher.

          Just when you thought is was over, it starts again, like a bloody headache. Getty Images, the agency that suffers and profits the most from micro stock is about to launch a cross brand collection. Called the Agency Collection, at least on Istock,  it will be priced at a premium to Vetta and will be available on iStock, Getty Images, Jupiter and PunchStock.

It will include images from Getty Images, but also from Istock contributors.

Why is this important ? Because this will be the first time that the same image will be available on all brands owned by Getty Images. Will they be priced the same? The post from Istock Kelly Thomspon doesn’t say, although the mention that they will be “priced at a premium to Vetta”seems to indicate that there is a good chance they will be.

A long awaited natural step, this cross brand collection will give Getty a lot of valuable data.

First and foremost, it will show which brand is the most successful at selling these images. If Istockphoto sells more than twenty times what Getty images has sold, you can be sure that will prompt the Seattle giant to revisit the need for sales people, something they are trying hard to prove. If Punchstock doesn’t sell any, they might shut down that brad.. And so on.

It will also show if an image sells better if available on multiple sites at the same time. In theory, it should be.

Istockphoto certainly has an edge in this competition. Not only it is a 100% royalty free platform, unlike the others, but  it has much, much more traffic than the others, which, for RF, is critical.

Kelly Thompson, the current COO, has much more to say in his forum post, mostly regarding another royalty rate adjustment. It is becoming so complicated that these poor microstockers need a high end degree in mathematics to figure it out.You have to wonder if they do it on purpose, a bit like those credit card fine prints.

The launch of this new cross brands collection is due out this month ( September) and it will also be interesting to see how Getty will market it . Will it be one campaign for all brands or all brands independent to each other ? We suspect, the latter.

Because this will be the first time the same images will be available on all brands own by one of the mega giants,it will mark the final breakdown of the walls that use to separate UGC and pro, as well as traditional and Microstock. Now, everything is everywhere at the same time.

Posted in license, Jupiter, alexa, commercial stock, Search, prosumer, Royalty free, getty, transaction, finance, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

September 3, 2010 by pmelcher.

So while most people are getting ready to take a long 3 day weekend to bid a last farewell to summer ( at least in North America) and others are frolicking among the cafe table of Perpignan, mighty Getty images doesn’t miss a beat.

What now ?  Called the “Artist Digital Toolkit” , it is basically a plain and dirty affiliate program with a Starbucks inspired name.  You know, like when you put a link to Amazon on your website and if someone clicks on it and ends up bying something you get a cut? Well, this is the same. Except, it uses contributors to do so.

How so crowdsourcing of them.

Here is the deal : You put one of their specially branded web banners, or e mail signature, or Facebook app, or whatever they give you and if someone clicks on it and purchases an image, you get a % of the sale: 16% if it is new customer, only 7 % if it’s a returning customer, whether it’s your image or not.

Help Getty sale images and get paid to do it.

Not only you give them content to sale, but you actually help them sale it too. What else, clean the offices after hours ?

You could even increase your 30% commission on certain sales to a whopping 37%. How cool is that? I smell riches here..

You will also contribute to Getty SEO campaign by creating new links for them. But you get no penny for that. Don’t push it, ok ?

So, if you are a Getty Contributor, get your free “Artist Digital Toolkit” and watch your bank account grow…

Posted in web 2.0, prosumer, license, commercial stock, Corpocrates, flickr, photojournalism, getty, editorial, transaction, finance, Microstock | Print | No Comments »