NEW PARADIGM SHIFTS IN STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY - PART II (Continued) OTHER OPTIONS not covered in this review PHOTOGRAPHERS DIRECT: This is popular option we thought should be mentioned. (We decide to include them because PD also operate on a principle similar to a stock photo agency: there are no fees to join or host your images, they only take a commission when sales are made.) However, unlike Alamy, Acclaim Images, My Loupe, The Stock Solution, or Absolute Stock Photo, Photographers Direct does not offer a fully e-commerce solution. The contributor only uploads low-resolution images to PD. Buyers are directed to the photographer for final sales (negotiating, making the sale, invoicing, collecting the money and delivering high-resolution images to the buyer). For providing a searchable index of your images and bringing buyers to those images, PD asks for a 20% commission. For the do-it-yourself-photographer, PD may be your answer. PD is growing rapidly in popularity, and their search engine rankings are quickly moving up. For more information, go to: http://www.photographersdirect.com/ DIGITAL RAILROAD: Here's the DR pitch: "Digital Railroad gives you the tools to easily manage, market and sell your digital images online. With Digital Railroad, youšll have a personalized online archive system as powerful as that of a large agency for a low monthly fee. Focus on making great pictures rather than worrying about managing your technology." That "low monthly fee" is $49.95, plus a one-time setup fee of $99. Basically, DR is just a very targeted (to photographers) Web hosting or Internet Service Provider, that offers an e-commerce solution for your stock images. They are not providing group marketing (or very little that we can see) to bring buyers collectively to DR -- that's your responsibility (to bring buyers to your Web pages on DR). That's the disadvantages to the DR program. The advantage is that there are no commissions -- you keep all of the sale. For more information, go to: http://www.digitalrailroad.net/ INDEPENDENT PHOTOGRAPHY NETWORK (IPNSTOCK.COM): Similar in many ways to Digital Railroad, but IPN has been around a lot longer. (IPN is now owned by the same company that owns Photo District News magazine.) For more information and costs, go to: http://www.ipnstock.com/ http://www.ipnstock.com/join.shtml MYSITE by MyLoupe: MySite is somewhat of a hybrid of the Digital Railroad and IPN approach: mySite charges a setup and hosting fee that is lower than DR and IPN, but also takes a small commission (15%) on sales. You still have to do your own marketing and bring buyers to your "mySite". The mySite program can also take an existing Web site and integrate it into a mySite. The main difference, though, is that your images can also be shown throughout the MyLoupe.com network where other portals can market your images (but take a larger commission of 30% to 50%, depending on the portal that makes the sale). For more information go to: http://www.myloupe.com/start/faq.php#havesite MIRA.COM: Some might ask why we did not include Mira.com, the stock agency of the Creative Eye Cooperative, in our list of online stock photo marketplaces? The answer is because Mira has been around for over seven years now, and little has changed. This agency (which originally started with the digital collections of the ASMP photographers who opted into their "in house" stock agency) keeps trying to re-invent itself every few years, but never seems to get off the ground and into mainstream e-commerce. On the days we visited their site, searches were slow and their current e-commerce solution seemed clumsy. It was also difficult to get online price quotes for rights managed images. Mira's new technology partnership with ImageSpan Inc. may solve these problems, but Mira's photographers have heard of similar claims before. This is a shame, because of all the agencies we've reviewed in this article, Mira has the highest quality content.
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