25 Aug 2015 YAYimages New Pricing Structure Targeting Low-Volume “Streaming” Customers

Hot on the heels of our look into $9.99 unlimited subscriptions, YAY Images is today implementing new subscription prices that are based on downloads rather than image size and targets low-volume customers that were previously directed to the former brand, YAY micro.

The changes are intended to boost the company’s Streaming service, and improve contributor per-download royalties.

Market Segment: Price Sensitive

Until now, YAYimages targeted high volume users while YAYmicro was for low volume users. With the new prices, YAYimages will now target both markets.

Like the previous prices, the new prices are low.  Very low.

They’re aiming for buyers who can’t afford Shutterstock, a sector of the market that’s much more comfortable with $9.99 than $249 per month, and doesn’t need 750 images a month. Although for the same quantity, downloaded, they’d only have to pay YAY $99.

According to YAY, these customers really don’t care much about image size.  They prefer to be restricted to smaller images if it means they can pay a lower fee.

The average monthly download across YAY Images’ subscriptions is 127 files per month.  The limit is 1000 for downloads, but unlimited for streaming.

YAY also reports that the streaming-only plan is substantially more popular than all other subscription plans combined, even though the other plans also include unlimited streaming too.

What is Image Streaming?

It’s embedding, in language for millennials.  The customer never downloads the file.  It’s for online use only, and the customer just receives an embed link.

It differs from Getty’s image embedding service in that it allows commercial use and provides a ‘pure’ image link, rather than code through which Getty can embed ads and make changes.

The files remain hosted on YAY’s servers even after the subscription ends, and include changes made via the online image editor.

Online Image Editor makes Streaming Workable

If you can’t download an image, how do you customise it?

YAY have addressed this issue with a free online image editor, powered by Aviary (now owned by Adobe), for all streamed images.

They report it’s very popular with this market segment who aren’t designers, don’t know Photoshop, and just want to make some simple edits to the images they use.

Percentage over Fixed Royalties

YAY pays a percentage of the revenue rather than fixed fee for subscription downloads.  The royalty is simply 50% of the subscription fee divided by the quantity of downloads from each subscription.

YAY believes that given the average download quantity they would make more profit paying a fixed royalty per download, but a revenue share is better for contributors, which is good for the sustainability of the company.

This model could work against contributors for unlimited subscriptions, but YAY says it averages out in contributors’ favor.

Price Changes

The new price tiers are no longer based on image size. They’re now based on the quantity of downloaded images, regardless of the quantity of streamed images.

New pricing

Previous Pricing