Getty Images For Sale: Panic, why panic?

Once I received the news that Getty Images was up for sale my phone hasn’t stopped ringing. Panicked calls from photographers who are represented by Getty Images as well as other stock companies rang in by the numbers. These worried artists were wondering what would happen to the industry if Getty sells. What would happen? Truth be told, I really don’t know. But what I do know, I learned from what I read:

“The auction of Getty Images appears to be in jeopardy.”

Though several bidders, mostly private equity firms like Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Bain Capital and Providence Equity Partners, had expressed interest last month, according to the New York Times, Getty received no offers significantly above its current market value of $1.6 billion”.

So, what does this mean to the average image supplier or user of images? The short answer is nothing. Getty as the leader in the stock image market has a responsibility to its shareholders to explore all possible avenues to gain a high return on the investment. If the company does sell, aside from the possibility of reorganization or of selling off some of their assets, not much will change. Photographers will still get paid and customers will continue to get their images. I suspect that prices will more than likely increase again for some of the more popular Microstock images, which for the customer that uses subscription sites like PhotoSpin, is only a positive gain. Currently, an X large image from iStock Images sells for $15.00 per image while an annual subscription from PhotoSpin sells for $299.00 and allows you to download as many high res images as you need throughout the year. Therefore, whether you need 10 images a month or 100, it won't cost you more than the annual fee.

Getty Images For Sale: No need to panic!

The recession is coming! The recession is coming! The recession is coming?

Sounds like a war cry from the American Revolution or an old nursery rhyme about a little chicken and a piece of fruit. The truth is I don’t know if a recession is coming and, from what I’ve read, neither do the economists.

If a recession were to happen, what will it mean to advertising? Back in 2001 when we heard the cry of recession, advertising budgets dropped by almost 10% and internet advertising by a little over 25%. History has shown us that television and print ads are likely to be cut back first. I personally know commercial photographers that never recovered from the drop in assignment work and believe another recession would cause the assignments to drop even further. And, perhaps, the media that would feel the sting from the cut in advertising the worst will be the newspapers, which are already reeling from a drop in circulation (sorry guys).

So batten down the hatches, we may be heading for rough water! But, before we launch our proverbial life rafts, let’s ride the waves of opportunity. One of the greatest opportunities we have today is online advertising. Times are very different and more and more money is going towards internet advertising than ever before, resulting in a greater return on our clients’ ad dollar investment. And, to help get these ads noticed, are the SEO’s (search engine optimization) companies. These companies are growing faster than the national debt and are expert at expediting the visibility of these online ads.

As a designer you may consider developing more internet strategies for your clients. Become educated on SEO companies and how to help better position your customers’ advertising in the search engines. As a photographer I go back to what I have always said: you need to have multiple sources of income including assignment photography as well as numerous stock agencies representing your work.

Whether a recession is coming or not, we wanted to offer you yet another way to get your work noticed. This quarter we will be launching our new MYSpin Community and offering you a great way to advertise your services for free to over 1,000,000 people that buy or create commercial art. We’d love to hear your thoughts and welcome your feedback on our newest project as we enter into the beta testing phase: http://www.photospin.com/myspin-directory.asp.

NEW Year, New Browse, and New Marketing Channel

Sorry for the delay in writing, we've been busy developing the new Browse and community MySpin Directory sections of our website.

Yes, that’s right, PhotoSpin is at it again, trying to make life easier for our visitors and subscribers. As you probably know by now, we increased our image uploads from 400 to 1000s of new photos and illustrations per month. With all the new images making their home on our site, the volume list in our browse section was growing almost as fast as our image uploads. To make things more efficient for our customers, we decided to group our ever growing library of images into neat little categories. Check it out: https://www.photospin.com/browse_photos.asp

In addition to making our Browse section cleaner and more search friendly, we also wanted to offer our customers and visitors a place where they could showcase their work or post an ad as well as check out what other creatives are doing. Coming soon: the community MySpin Directory. Currently we're looking for PhotoSpin subscribers to beta test the Directory and encourage you to take a sneak peek at our mockups: http://www.photospin.com/myspin-directory.asp. If you're interested in being one of the first to post your work or advertise in our community, please drop us an email at beta@photospin.com

We're very excited about all the new changes at PhotoSpin.com and hope that you not only experience more efficient searches, but are able to make a few friends along the way in our new MySpin Directory.

Coming soon music clips...

The beat goes on...

The 1950s and early 60s, known as the beat generation, were filled with artists, musicians and poets such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and others. These creatives chronicled their lives through books, poems and music. Smoke, Jazz and open mic poetry filled rooms with music and tales of love, lust and dreams. Although some today still collaborate in those artsy little rooms, more often than not, the internet is the new 'cafe' of choice. We want to recreate a creative haven, a place where you, the artist, can go and relax, hang out with old friends or meet new ones. So get a cup of coffee or hot tea and take a moment to read the following and give us your thoughts. We want this to be your community. Please help us define an "internet cafe" for artists and bohemians to interact as well as post their poems, art and music.

Coming Soon: The MYspin Directory

What is the MYspin directory?
• A comprehensive list of creative resources.
• A portfolio showcase for designers, ad agencies, photographers, illustrators, fontographers, production companies, and printers.
• A community for creative professionals.


Why The MYspin Directory?
• With over 1,000,000 visitors and 18 million page views so far this year, we wanted to offer you, our customers and potential customers, a way to get noticed and be seen on the internet.
• The listings will allow you to create ads that advertise your talents and services, a great new way for you to connect and interact with your peers in the industry.

Cost, what cost?
• If you are an active PhotoSpin subscriber you get a full color ad and listing absolutely FREE.
• Not a PhotoSpin subscriber? We still offer you a FREE listing without the full color ad.

As the community grows you can have live chats with other artists, both show and sell your work (you set the price) and, in the future, have access to your own blog. Think of it as a modern day coffee shop, complete with an open forum and microphone. All you'll have to do is supply the artwork.

Take a ride on Valueline

Looks like the photo stock industry is about to launch a new roller coaster called Valueline. But, before you jump on board, or jump overboard, let’s take a closer look at what’s going on.

As most of you are well aware, the photo stock industry has been changing for a number of years – rights managed vs. royalty free, subscription services, micro payment options, mergers, acquisitions and consolidation of companies. These have been the trends for the last 10 years. In response to these trends, innovative entrepreneurs have developed business models to create new ways of offering their products to accommodate the buying habits of new and existing customers.

Among these emerging models is the micro-payment sites, including the Getty owned, iStock, which in part is possibly responsible for its recent price slashing. On the surface, these sites seem to be the better value, pushing a trend for all companies to launch their own micro-payment option. This is evident in the recent proliferation of new micro-payment sites popping up in the industry, like weeds after a spring storm. However, when you factor in the higher resolution images and large quantity of image downloads that a subscription service allows, the lately overlooked subscription service is a much better value.

In Getty’s own micro-payment site, the price for a high resolution image is $10.00. Using simple math, the advantage greatly shifts to support the subscription model. If the subscription customers download just 30 high-resolution images in one year, they far exceed the cost of the subscription. For these customers, the benefit lies in downloading whatever they need whenever they need it without the worry of how many credits they have available. I think that one dollar downloads are a great option for the customer that needs a small quantity of low-res images. But, if the customer needs images for print or a large quantity of images at a great value- under a dollar per day, not a dollar per download-then the subscription model is well worth considering.

As Getty releases its new site, Valueline, take a moment to remember gettyworks.com, a product released by Getty in early 2001 and dropped a little after a year of operation. Getty, like all companies, is concerned with the bottom line and will use its large customer base to test new products and services as they have done in the past. Will this new venture succeed? Who knows. Right now it’s 100,000 mostly outdated images. These images might be over priced at $19-$49 per image. But, with Getty’s marketing muscle and position in the industry, all I can say is fasten your seat belts and get ready for a ride.

Why pay for an image when there are millions of free images on the web?

With all the availability of content on the web it’s important to know what you are getting and how the choices you make affect you and your customer. Today just downloading any image can get you and your client in BIG trouble. As the saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words”. Or, if you’re not careful, a picture may be worth thousands of dollars in legal fees.

Recently I attended a conference where the principle speaker was using PowerPoint to help convey his message. Several of the slides in the presentation included images that still carried the watermarks of the stock agencies that sold them. After the presentation I had time to ask the presenter where he acquired his images. He proudly explained to me that his designer found them during several photo searches on the web and that the images were available for free. I then took the time to explain to him that the images included in his presentation may be protected by a copyright and that the watermark displayed on the images is the owner’s or legal distributor’s way of protecting the images. I also pointed out that if he put them on his website, as he stated that he was planning to do, he may be liable for fees and damages.

Know your image source! Whether you use PhotoSpin or another royalty free image provider, the most important thing to know is where the images come from. Your customers are counting on you to not only provide a quality piece, but also a finished project without the possibility of negative repercussions that can damage both of your reputations.

Paying a little today may save you thousands tomorrow.

A Shameless Plug…
A few weeks ago in this blog I spoke with Glen Wexler about how to land a big account. He mentioned his newest project; a book entitled “The Secret Life of Cows”. Well it’s now available. If you want to see the true genius of Glen’s work check out his book: http://www.secretlifeofcows.com

What’s the better value for images: Micro-payments or Subscriptions?

Recently I spoke with a customer who called to renew her annual subscription and she was wondering if we were going to offer a micro-payment style site. I was fortunate that this particular customer had downloaded well over her $299.00 subscription price at even $1.00 per image. So it got me thinking. As a CEO of a subscription site you might expect this to have a certain slant. Truth be told, it does, but not one you would expect.

To gather my data I reviewed about 500 download records from a random list of PhotoSpin subscribers. On average, our typical subscriber downloads about 200 images per year. Viewing that data, micro-payment sites that charge $1.00 per image appeared to be a better value. But, after digging a bit deeper, I discovered that over 30% of the images downloaded from the PhotoSpin site were high-res files. At the most popular micro-payment site the price for the highest resolution image is $15.00. Using simple math, the advantage greatly shifts to support the subscription model. I also found that several of our customers only download high resolution images. For them, the micro-payments are not a value at all. If they download 20 high resolution images in a year, they exceed the subscription price. For the subscription customers, the benefit lies in downloading whatever they need whenever they need it, without the worry of how many credits they have available. I think that one dollar downloads are great if what you use are a small quantity of low-res images. But, if you need images for print or a large quantity of images at under a dollar per day (not a dollar per download), then the subscription model is well worth considering.