30 Jun 2015 Getty Announces Deal With Fiverr

Today Getty Images announced a new partnership with crowdsourced digital creative services company Fiverr, where all services cost $5.

The Details

This deal will enable Fiverr users – both buyers and sellers – to use a selection of images from Getty Images and iStock’s Signature collections in the creation of creative designs.

The stock images will be available on Fiverr’s website as an “extra” in their user’s interface, under a flat rate of $10 per image.

Designers (“sellers”) can offer a fixed number of these images to their potential customers and earn 25% commission if they sell work containing them.

Buyers can purchase unlimited number of images for a designer to use in their projects.

Discount Pricing & Royalties

The flat $10 fee is interesting.  The 25% commission to the Fiverr seller means there’s just $7.50 left to split between Fiverr, Getty Images and the contributor.  And payment processing fees.

Presumably royalties will be calculated as a subscription, like the Adobe Stock deal did for Fotolia contributors.  I’ll update here if I hear more details about the royalties.

Partnership Mis-Match

This is an odd choice for a partnership.

Fiverr is a marketplace for ‘affordable’ – cheap, very cheap – services, including visual designs.  Anyone for a $5 logo?

Getty Images is the self-described premium supplier of stock photos, with prices to match.  The Signature collection at iStock is the expensive one.

Some designers on Fiverr’s platform are already commenting they do not see how or why a buyer that comes to the site looking for cheap solutions will be willing to spend so much extra money on images.

Dangerous Territory

Additionally, Fiverr doesn’t enjoy a positive reputation in the stock photography market due to their lack of control over image licensing rights. They have a hands-off policy toward the acknowledged presence of images being sold on their platform by people who are not the owners.  Exhibit A:

For an agency like Getty that is constantly monitoring copyright infringements and pursuing “revenue recovery”, this deal is a bit of a head scratcher.