The new PantherMedia contributor portal

PantherMedia has launched their brand new contributor portal. They claim that the first priority while implementing was to speed up the submission process, especially for bulk images or whole series of images. The PantherMedia beta-testers have uploaded thousands of new images.

The PantherMedia contributor portal is now the fourth portal in a family next to the stock agency, the photo community and the blog. All sales relevant functions are bundled on this new platform. From upload to payout, you can find everything here that is important when selling photos online. 

The portal indeed seems to be quick, well-structured and easy to use! Check it out here.

Royalty changes at iStockphoto are live

As announced earlier in September, iStockphoto implements the new royalty structure. This change caused a huge resonance within the microstock industry. Now the system is confirmed, and the only thing that has changed, is the structure of redeemed credit target. The changes were recently announced and can be found here: new royalty structure at iStockphoto.

Based on the previous year redeemed credit target, iStockphoto defines the starting royalty for 2011. And to be frank, it is still disappointing at least 90% of the microstock contributors. Despite the announced changes, these targets are just enormous. Even the exclusive contributors get less than non-exclusive at some other leading microstock websites. Well, only time will show what are the consequences of such decisions.

Also, you will need to agree with all changes of the iStockphoto Artist Supply Agreement. The next time you log in you will be directed to the new agreement.

Keymaster program changes at Dreamstime

The keymaster program from Dreamstime has been frequently used lately and those using the program might have seen an increase in the pending time for their images to be keyworded. At this point, the images submitted via this program are far too many for the existing keymasters to handle. There is a need to select new members as well as motivate the existing ones to work faster and better. Hence, it was decided to increase the price for this service. The new price is $0.60/file keyworded via this program.

The new pricing structure goes live as of December 15th. All images submitted and/or reviewed prior to this date that are pending for keywording are charged at the old $0.40 price. The price, although increased, is claimed to still be the lowest in the industry.

Dreamstime also points out that the images submitted for re-keywording are now given low priority for keywording. They will be keyworded but the pending time will be longer than that of newly uploaded files.

iStockphoto Now Accepting Contributor Submissions of Editorial Images to be Offered on iStockphoto.com Early Next Year

iStockphoto has announced to its community of more than 85,000 contributing artists that in January it will begin accepting images for use under a new “editorial use only” licensing agreement to be rolled out in early 2011. These images will be available to those needing non-released imagery such as news outlets, publishers, magazines, bloggers and presenters. They will be licensed for use as a descriptive visual reference to a product, place, event or concept.

While all images currently available on www.istockphoto.com can be used for editorial purposes today, they are most commonly used commercially for advertising and promotional materials. This creative type of usage requires contributors to follow a stringent set of guidelines. For example, images of specific products or anything marked with a logo are not allowed, images of people require model releases, and many buildings and landmarks may not be shown.

Because editorial only images may not be used for commercial purposes, they are not subject to the same guidelines. This makes it easier for contributors to provide additional content and provides customers with access to more great imagery.

iStock is currently accepting several types of editorial imagery including:

                  Products

                  Architecture and landmarks

                  Travel and lifestyle

                  Social commentary

                  Urban living

iStock is not looking for time-sensitive news items or images or items that fall within the realm of traditional photojournalism. Contributors looking to submit these types of images are encouraged to contact Getty Images. For more information on submitting editorial content, please visit http://www.istockphoto.com/article_view.php?ID=939.

iSyndica is closing

Very sad news came in… The greatest service up to date for microstock industry is living up its last days. iSyndica will close on October 10. Thousands of photographers who were using this service feel really disappointed now. For many of them, iSyndica was the only microstock tool worth its cost. A comprehensive and functional, it worked with most agencies and strongly optimized the workflow.

There are no reasons shown for this decision; I just hope that those will be disclosed soon. Moreover, I hope it was not a marketing trick from the authors of iSyndica to gain major attention and open the service again. Right now, there is a vacuum on the market for a project like iSyndica. Whoever will do something similar, correcting some iSyndica drawbacks, is going get thousands of users fast.

I see no other substitute for iSyndica. Do you?

Read the original announcement at iSyndica. 

What is micro stock photography?

Alright, I will start this blog with a brief description on what is microstock and why someone would buy or sell the royalty-free images online. Micro stock photography means an industry of low-cost stock images. From a photographer’s point of view, it means some websites where you can sell your photos, and someone can buy them for a micro payment, like a few dollars. Usually, designers and editors are the ones who buy such images.

Traditionally, stock images have been quite expensive, and it was tough to use high-quality photos in a web design project or a small business brochure. When micro stock business model appeared, a much wider audience got an access to high quality inexpensive photographs available just in a few clicks. Nowadays you can notice these images everywhere around you – in the ad posters, on billboards, in the corporate media, on product packaging and even in the private blogs.

Micro stock photography attracted lots of new photographers to the image sales business. Now you don’t have to be a real professional with over 25 years of studio experience to sell the images of green apples online. Yes, quality does matter, but now you can at least try earning some extra money on your hobby. Many amateur photographers can pay off their equipment (camera, lenses and accessories) selling images at photobanks. So the hobby eventually starts to pay off itself! And some who have enough patience start earning decent money. Or if you are an experienced photographer, you can boost your income with online sales. You will need patience to understand the principles of microstocking, but it may be worth it.

There are devoted people making $100K per year on microstocking while the industry leaders earn over a million annually. What I personally like is that the demand for royalty-free photos is growing every year. I will not close my eyes on the constantly growing number of photo contributors, but successful ones make more and more every year. So, if you are ready to explore the new opportunities, there is a list of most popular microstock agencies here. Good luck!