MicrostockInsider

Less than a week in yet that hang-over seems so long ago! I submitted 170 images last year, that's nothing like the number I was planning 12 months ago, that's despite upload being easier than ever. Thinking back 12 months and things felt very different, as I'm sure they will in 12 months time. Good news being that my earnings are up.

A couple of days ago there was a post on the lookstat blog titled top search keywords for energy, it compared search terms in Google in an attempt to estimate popularity of energy images on microstock sites. Earlier this year I did something similar in a post about seasonal stock images, and at the time I made the point that I wasn't exactly sure how well Google search terms related to searches on microstock sites.

So that set me thinking... (yes, be very afraid) Just exactly how much of a match is google trends/adwords data to what people are searching for at microstock sites? Clearly there will be some relationship, but I'd also guess that there are lots of popular terms that will not have a proportionate number of microstock searches. It's difficult to know how similar the two are. Is it reasonable to assume that popular keywords in Google are more likely to lead to more microstock sales as those keywords make popular subjects hence there will be related businesses in need of such images? As they say "assume makes an ass out of u and me".

Fotolia have announced the launch of their 'operation level ground' to attract new photographers. The program is open to both existing contributors at other microstock agencies (e.g. quit your istock exclusivity and come join us) and also to photographers who are currently outside of microstock selling their work elsewhere i.e. macrostock prices.

istock announced that as of yesterday it would be legally guaranteeing all sales, blowing the 'unique' offering from vivozoom out of the water. Details of the guarantee on this istockphoto forum post and more discussion on it at microstockdiaries. The legal cover will pay for up to $10,000 in damages and for and additional 100 credits users can purchase up to $250,000 of cover.

When I first read the original release I thought "yeah..." not all that exciting is it, and stuck it in with all the 'end of month news stories'. But then I'm NOT a frequent photo buyer am I. There are plenty of people out there who choose to pay micro prices over finding something free because of the comfort that buying gives them. Draw a parallel with the corporate worlds take up of "paid" open source software - having the support of someone else to point the finger at when things go bad is a nice place to be.

As istock take pains to point out problems arising from the content of their collection are very rare, but just a day after reading the release I read the following post on a local website (well as local as you get here in Queensland) http://www.thedaily.com.au/story/2009/09/16/builder-claims-chriss-home-as-its-own-design. While in this case istockphoto might not be at fault there are a lot of risk averse non-professional buyers in microstock who will find the offer of some protection if the file they buy turns out to contain protected IP very attractive.

Cutcaster have announced the launch of their "Betta than Vetta" collection, "Betta than Vetta" is apparently Irish for mountaintop, and is a collection of hand selected images available from the cutcaster stock collection of almost 400,000 items.

It's not the first hand picked collection and certainly not the last. While premium microstock sounds like an oxymoron to some traditionalists, and tongue in cheek or not, I can see that microstock agencies are taking multiple approaches to tackling a common problem: producing good image search results is difficult!