16 Nov 2015 Microstock Keywording Service ‘Kboarding’ Opens Up
Kboarding, a professional keywording service for microstock contributors which I detailed in August, has completed development of their service and opened for business.
The official release will be on November 23, but service is already online in “test mode”, and they have a lot of plans for further development.
The Idea
Kboarding is an initiative by Russian stock photographer Danil Nevsky, intended to be a simple but powerful tool for microstock contributors to get titles, descriptions and keywords for their images. It delivers accurate English metadata, produced by expert keyworders.
The project launched in beta in August this year, with a free trial and a $50 monthly subscription for up to 100 images. The aim was to get user feedback from around 500 customers in that period and use that to guide adjustments to the service while they completed the technical development and staff recruitment & training.
The Service
Three months later, Danil says that the user feedback was successful, and the development and staff training are sorted. The team of professional English-speaking keyworders are now adding image metadata to images uploaded by customers within 24 hours of submission. Processed images are downloaded via the website with the metadata embedded.
Danil says the service received 300 images in the first hours online and is very happy with this early traction. He’s positively surprised his young product has already earned the trust of microstock photographers.
The service is still structured in monthly subscriptions, but pricing has been adjusted and sized in volume-based tiers. The Lite plan is their original offer for up to 100 images processed, but price has been lowered to $30. They’ve added Standard plan at $ 75 for up to 250 photos, and Pro service that keywords up to 500 images for $150; Standard and Pro subscriptions include bonus allowance, of 10 and 25 images respectively.
Big Plans
As for the future, Danil says customer feedback highlighted the importance of delivering metadata in a text document, which they will work on next.
They’re also now looking at extending the offer to include uploading and submission of images to multiple agencies like picWorkflow, and previously unsuccessful attempts of this business model iSyndica and LookStat.
It’s a very tough market to get into given the extremely limited quantity of professional stock photo producers who are both successful enough to be able to pay for such a service yet not so successful that they haven’t developed their own internal systems to do just that. Starting small with just one service is likely a smart strategy. Let’s just hope Danil doesn’t make the service too broad too soon and run out of momentum.
Danil Rudenko
Posted at 02:11h, 17 November(404 error for now on Kboarding..)
I also wish them to do, what PicWorkFlow didn’t done (but promise from year to year) – video support . It will expand a lot the target audience
Bob Davies
Posted at 04:06h, 17 NovemberJust to correct, we do caption and keyword videos at picWorkflow 🙂
Danil Rudenko
Posted at 04:10h, 17 NovemberBob, I mean the option, when keyworder can see the videopreview. Because when keyworder see only the still picture, he is not able to describe the video.
Bob Davies
Posted at 14:11h, 17 NovemberI only ever had a couple of people ask for video-previews, so it never made it to the top of the todo list.
Since you mentioned it here though I’ve implemented that feature this afternoon. All new video uploads on pw will now have webm video previews on all browsers except IE. Thanks for the nudge \o/
Good luck with Kboarding. It’s a tough space to be profitable in, but it’s a jolly fun place to stay afloat 😉
Tomas Griger
Posted at 05:18h, 17 NovemberSounds interesting. I was planning to start using picworkflow after I achieved production of 500 images/month. I ran some test images through them and was happy with the results, but the pricing is still a bit steep for me. Looks like this solution is a bit cheaper, so I’ll certainly give it a go to see if the quality is ok.
Danil Rudenko
Posted at 16:13h, 17 NovemberBob, great to hear! Thanks a lot for the new and important feature!
Elnur
Posted at 03:06h, 19 November” They’ve added Standard plan at $ 75 for up to 250 photos, and Pro service that keywords up to 500 images for $250;” – the math doesn’t work for me here. More images – more expensive per image??