30 Apr 2009 This Month in Microstock – April 2009
In relation to the massive news of the last few months, April was relatively calm. That’s not to say that there weren’t any interesting developments.
Microstock News
Dreamstime launched a Flash browser providing their buyers with a cleaner experience and larger previews when browsing search results. As it’s Flash, it’s instantly available from the new button on the search results pages with nothing to install.
LookStat announced they have closed a $500,000 Series A funding round. This is exciting for the microstock market in so many ways. It demonstrates that there’s opportunities in providing services to microstock contributors. We can also expect to benefit from the workflow services which LookStat announced are currently in private beta.
German midstock agency, PantherMedia, announced its move into the microstock space. Along with microstock level pricing they’re adding both credit-based sales (they were previously invoice only) and a credit-based subscription. The subscription provides an allotment of credits so contributors receive the same commission as for regular credit sales. PantherMedia launch this initiative with over 1 million files already in their portfolio, instantly moving them ahead of other microstock challengers. The announcement includes an open invitation for photographers to join.
Veer announced that uploads to SnapVillage will be disabled May 1st. This will facilitate the migration of images over to Veer Marketplace, where they are already available for sale. Veer expects to bring contribution online at Veer mid-year.
Vivozoom provided contributors with private preview of their buyer website. It’s clean, logically arranged, and best of all, the search results show a high quantity of results for an agency that hasn’t launched yet and isn’t crowdsourcing the content.
Fotolia announced their launch of microstock video, joining iStockphoto, Shutterstock and StockXpert in selling stock video alongside stock photos.
Jan
Posted at 11:36h, 01 MayHey Lee,
you forgot the biggest news of the month: iStockphotos new BM search going life 🙂
Ben O.
Posted at 13:23h, 01 MayI signed up with Panthermedia, but I’m worried that it being in german is going to complicate things. Does anyone else have any experience with this being problematic for English speaking (and typing) contributers?
How are keywords used? Do my English keywords sit there missing all the German speaking buyers?
That doesn’t seem like it’s going to workout too swell for me.
Just curious – wonderful blog, btw.
Keep up the excellent work.