Author: Amos Struck

I write about the stock photo and microstock industry since 2006 on my several online-magazines. My goal for MyStockPhoto is to teach photographers and stock photographers how to sell more photos and earn money with their photography hobby.

Lookstat is a web service that automatically lets you track your online sales by image at multiple sites. We’ve already written about its Analytics functions in a previous post. They’ve just launched a new home page to focus on the new stock photo backoffice services. The features and services they have been developing are summarized by the slogan: You Create the Images – We Do the Rest We’re committed to reducing friction and making life better for photographers and our goal with our Back Office services is to allow photographers to focus on doing what they do best, which is…

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A step ahead for the leader in the microstock photo market: iStockphoto Legally Guarantees All Image, Video and Audio Files in Five Million-Plus Collection. iStock promises that files purchased and used in accordance with the iStock license, will not breach any trademark, copyright or other intellectual property rights or rights of privacy. The iStock Legal Guarantee provides that, if a customer receives a claim, iStock will cover the customer’s legal costs and direct damages to a combined total of $10,000. From the iStock forum: iStock has decided to slip on the old leather boxing gloves for you, our deserving customers.…

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PRESS RELEASE Deutsche Telekom Launches Online Photo Agency in UK New Microstock Site Offers Wider Exposure for Professional Photographers and Talented Amateurs London, 15 September, 2009. German online photo agency Polylooks, which is backed by Deutsche Telekom, has launched its service in the UK. Polylooks.co.uk  enables professional and talented amateur photographers to sell their images to publishers, advertisers and creative agencies. Polylooks will provide content with a unique European flavour required by creatives and businesses operating in the UK.  Polylooks already contains more than 35,000 UK-generated images alongside its extensive European portfolio and the site is looking to expand its…

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What are the most popular microstock clichés? Let’s discover them through Fotolia. We can visit the Fotolia’s “from this month Best Sellers” page (here a screenshot) Fotolia’s Bestsellers page or we can browse round the Top Selling contributors portfolios to know them and  to see what are their most popular works. A special thanks to Amos Struck for his Microstock Photo Plugin for Wordpress that let me buy and insert, in a few clicks, all the Fotolia’s pictures of this post, directly with caption, referral links, title, alternate text.

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On May we talked about the launch of Vivozoom, a new reality that is offering warranted stock photography at microstock prices. After a few months from the beginning of this “adventure”, I’ve asked Vivozoom’s CEO Lawrence Gould for an interview that I am glad to publish here.

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After this season of merging/acquisition/reorganization done by Corbis (Veer, VeerMarketplace) and GettyImages (iStockphoto, Stock.xchng, Jupiterimages, Photos.com) and already described on this blog in previous posts, I wonder what can be the future for the “Others”, smaller ones and up and comings. My personal opinion is that it will be hard to survive in this market, maybe it will be some chances for niche stock sites or for those will introduce useful new features or with an aggressive marketing strategy. But I’m not a microstock photo agency owner, so I’ve asked people involved in this market about their microstock business vision…

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© rmarinello – Fotolia.com Microstock agencies are progressively entering in the social network arena to enhance their online business, spread the word, improve branding and for direct customer care. The biggest agencies are active, with different effort, on Twitter and Facebook. The first Facebook Applications and Twitter services have been launched. Let’s see a list of the Twitter accounts, Facebook pages and new applications. I find the Twitter use of some agencies very useful. My personal approval goes to Shutterstock, Dreamstime, Cutcaster,  Snapixel, iStockphoto. Twitter Here a list of the Twitter accounts of the microstock agencies: iStockphoto @istockhelp @istockitalia Shutterstock…

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Just released the first microstock Wordpress plugin. The plugin automatically finds photos that are matching your actual blog post or site, within more than 6 Million Photos at Fotolia®. You can buy the picture directly from your blog composition page and automatically add to Media Library and into your draft post, with description and copyright notice. Microstock Photo Plugin is a Wordpress Plugin made to simplify the process of adding Photos from one of the major Microstock Agencies into Wordpres Blog Post or Sites. Amos Struck, creator and owner of the Plugin, editor of some of the biggest Microstock Pages…

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New Web and Mobile images from Getty Images Getty images has introduced Web and Mobile images prices in his traditional stock photography Royalty-Free and Rights-Managed business model. Getty Images announced two new Web & Mobile image products featuring very small file sizes – 170 pixels and 280 pixels – designed specifically for online and mobile use. These new Web & Mobile products enable customers to license high volumes of compelling, high quality and simple to use imagery at appropriate prices for the digital element of their campaigns and communications. Andy Saunders, vice president of creative imagery at Getty Images, said…

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SnapVillage Closing August 1st Reached the final stage of the transition from SnapVillage to Veer Marketplace, both empowered by Corbis. After transferring many SnapVillage contributors and their images over to Veer Marketplace in the spring and with Veer Marketplace that is now up and running  for customers, Corbis will be formally shutting down www.SnapVillage.com this Saturday, August 1st. As of August 1st, SnapVillage.com will no longer be available and visitors will be redirected to Veer Marketplace. Good news, any remaining unpaid royalties will be paid out on September 15th, regardless of whether or not the remaining balance meets the $10…

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