22 Aug 2008 Zymmetrical
Update 2009-12-30: Zymmetrical has now closed for business.
I’ve always been a fan of Paul Melcher’s blog. He draws on his vast industry experience and knowledge to create the insights and opinions he provides via his blog, and he doesn’t hold back. Those posts that aren’t over my head usually leave me laughing or shaking my head in disbelief, but I always learn something and get a fresh perspective. After confessing this to Paul he shared that he has experienced the occasional head shaking after reading some of my blog posts too.
Paul’s strong opinions shine through in Zymmetrical, the agency he has created with business partner Keith Tuomi. Zymmetrical sets itself apart from other agencies in many ways, each designed to position the agency for the future of the market as it evolves “into what we expect today in modern society; unionized, equal-opportunity workplaces” says Keith.
“The real winner in the business will be the one that can balance the need for the content creators to earn a living, and the clients to get good value”, which Keith asserts Zymmetrical can achieve by “bring[ing] the buyers attention to the way we do business with the Artists [contributors]”. He continues, “These days, many people don’t like to knowingly buy things like clothing from sweatshop factories, because they don’t support the working conditions…”.
Zymmetrical has branded this contributor-friendly campaign as “Fair Trade” and backs it up by paying a high 70% contributor royalty rate and enabling contributors to price their content between $3 and $100. Content is referred to throughout the site as “Art” and contributors as “Artists”.
The agency has taken some criticism for their Fair Trade marketing and will be breaking new ground if they can achieve meaningful success with such a high commission rate, but founders Paul and Keith remain confident they can achieve their mission: to bring the best legal content without killing the artist.
Details
| Web Address | www.zymmetrical.com |
| Google Pagerank | 5 |
| Google Backlinks | 28 |
| Alexa Rank | 74,087 |
| Image Stats | Not available |
| Minimum Image Size | 640 pixels shortest side |
| Vectors | Yes |
| Footage | Yes |
| Licenses | Standard Royalty Free only |
| Compensation | 70% |
| Pricing | Contributors set their own prices between $3 – $100 |
| Payment Methods | PayPal (by PayPal Payment Request), or bank transfer where PayPal is unavailable |
| Payment threshold | $20 for PayPal or $100 for bank transfer (though they’ll pay request for $5 or more) |
| Referral Program | 10% of referred buyers only |
| Application Process | None, just start contributing |
| Exclusivity | Not offered |
| Upload Methods | HTML Form, Flash batch uploader, FTP, Post |
| IPTC Data | Supported, including camera and shot data |
| Currencies | US dollars |
| Languages | English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Polish |
| Headquarters | Vancouver, Canada |
Cool Features
- In addition to photos, vectors and video footage, Zymmetrical also supports buying and selling of Royalty Free fonts
- Zymmetrical is well internationalized with local languages, local domain names, and plans for locally located servers
- All IPTC data is shown enabling buyers to see the camera model, shutter speed and all other available information if contributors leave it in
- Buyers can search for images with particular colors and copyspace availability, not dissimilar to facilities at iStockphoto
- The website allows contributors to customize a modular profile page with profile elements similar to those available at other agencies. I was impressed to be able to import and display my own blog feed in my profile page
It’s All About Strategy
Zymmetrical are not going to be among the top earning agencies for contributors any time soon, nor is that their intention. All agencies entering the market at this time have to battle to build their portfolio and customer base simultaneously. This is particularly difficult when both buyers and contributors already get what they need from established agencies.
Some new agencies attempt to build a portfolio and customer base with a big budget. Zymmetrical, however, have “long-term operational and marketing budgets significantly lower than what a casual observer might expect”, so their success is largely dependent upon having a superior strategy.
The race to build sales is actually less important to Keith than enhancing the Zymmetrical customer experience. When explaining why his referral program doesn’t include referred contributors Keith writes, “We’re not playing for a high score yet, in Artist count or file count. At this point I’d rather be able to provide full service for fewer people then half-service for more.”
Low Budgets Have Their Costs
Zymmetrical are building their system slowly and with a limited budget, which comes across on their website. After more than two years online there are still some major shortcomings in their system: contributors must ‘request’ payouts via the PayPal website; FTP uploads are moved into the review queue manually; buyers cannot filter or order search results based on price; and, the site’s functionality and navigation are very clunky. The site’s design is also less polished and less modern than many of their competitors and there are numerous inconsistencies in the site’s information.
The upside of a low budget operation is that changes and fixes can be implemented more quickly, in theory. While the bugs I submitted still haven’t been resolved, I have seen forum conversations where bugs were fixed in real time during the conversation. Additionally, the lower development costs means Zymmetrical are already profitable.
Collaboration and Evolution
Keith and Paul are frequent visitors to the Microstock Group forum responding to questions and complaints respectfully and with a refreshing dose of personality. They’re intent on listening to the community and building their business in collaboration with their suppliers and customers. While they have a clearly defined strategy, they recognize that their business model will always need to evolve in line with changes in the market.
Analysis
The Zymmetrical strategy is designed to be what’s required of a successful stock agency once the market has matured to the equal opportunity state that Keith describes. His primary concern is positioning Zymmetrical for the market of tomorrow where the current microstock model will not be viable.
I remain unconvinced that the current microstock business model is killing contributors or is otherwise “unsustainable”. I’m also skeptical that buyers will – in any meaningful quantity – choose a stock photo agency on the basis of the contributor commission alone. That being said, I’ve read enough of Paul Melcher’s blog to know his understanding of the market is superior to mine, so I’ll watch closely for the opportunity to learn something else from the Zymmetrical strategy.
As for contributing to Zymmetrical, they’re clearly not in a position to provide a timely return on investment for uploading an entire portfolio. Everything about the agency is designed for a future that hasn’t yet arrived. While many contributors are reporting sales, it appears that contributing to Zymmetrical is an investment in the future and/or a gesture of support for the Zymmetrical political stand.
John
Posted at 10:09h, 26 AugustI am not going to bother.
I learned my lesson with LO. no point in wasting my time with 3rd tier sites.
Mikhail Lavrenov
Posted at 11:17h, 26 AugustI am not going to bother either. Doubtful business model; slow site and no sales… Stays at the bottom of my list next to mostphotos.
Talking about new sites I have better hopes for YAYmicro – this autumn should show if they are capable to take off.
Kelly Thompson
Posted at 19:57h, 26 August“Buyers can search for images with particular colors and copyspace availability, not dissimilar to facilities at iStockphoto”
Thanks for pointing this out Lee. Since this is a patent-pending technology, we’ll be taking the appropriate actions.
hohohoho
Posted at 06:58h, 27 AugustI’ve tried this stock. It’s a very slow site.
Keith Tuomi
Posted at 07:19h, 27 AugustKelly, an appropriate action may be to check out this story:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080528-patent-troll-sending-out-invoices-for-image-hyperlinks.html
For the people experiencing slowness: try connecting to the international portal closest to your location: If you are in Europe, try http://www.zymmetrical.de, http://www.zymmetrical.fr – we serve our images (which usually make 90% of webpage loadtime) from servers located physically in either US or Europe.
You should notice a dramatic speed improvement.
Keith Tuomi
Posted at 10:12h, 17 NovemberKelly, I think the reason your patent-pending application for Copyspace is way past due for actual approval, is that Eastman-Kodak already has a patent for a much more mature description of ‘your’ system (patent granted Sep.5 2000):
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=25&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=%22copy+space%22&OS=%22copy+space%22&RS=%22copy+space%22
Compared with your application (filed Oct 4 2006):
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=23&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=“copy+space”&OS=”copy+space”&RS=”copy+space”
Also, I might add, the Rule of Thirds has been around for a while: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds
Keith Tuomi
Posted at 09:59h, 18 NovemberAnother, earlier one from Kodak:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=29&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=%22copy+space%22&OS=%22copy+space%22&RS=%22copy+space%22
“It is often desirable to identify regions within an image which are suitable for the inclusion of text or figurative elements into the image. Such regions are known as open space, or alternatively, copy space, empty space, or dead space. Open space is typically one or more completely bounded sub-regions of an image whose color and spatial properties appear visually uniform. These sub-region boundaries may have either a regular or irregular shape. Images with large regions of regular, low contrast, smooth texture qualities are desirable regions to place such textual or figurative elements. An example use of open space would be in a photographic image used for the cover of a magazine, where the text used for the magazine title and description of feature articles must be placed in areas on the image where there exists a distinct absence of essential subject matter.
Open space can be characterized in terms of the spatial extent of the region, the location of the region relative to the entire image, and the dominant color and texture contained within the open space. Such characterizations are generally referred to as image metadata because such metadata is derived from the image. Specifically, the characterization of the extent, location, color and texture of the open space within an image is referred to as open space metadata.
Presently, the ability to detect and characterize open space in an image is a manual, subjective task which can produce limited results. It is a common practice to examine images with respect to their open space attributes in order to identify the proper image for a particular application. In the example of selecting an appropriate photographic image for the cover of a magazine, many images must be evaluated, not only for their open space attributes but also their content as appropriate for the magazine. A search of a very large image collection for images which meet the specific open space requirement, such as red regions across the upper 20% of the entire image, will produce only a limited number of candidate images from the collection due to the extensive, time consuming manual search required. Every image in the collection must be visually examined, even if it contains no open space whatsoever. Additionally, this entire process must be repeated for every open space search request.
The results of a manual search for images containing open space will be subjective, relying on the searcher’s own mental concept of open space as it relates to the open space requirements set forth in the search request. The person requesting an image containing open space is not necessarily the person performing the search on the image collection. These two people may not share the same concept of open space as set forth in the search request, causing a mis-match in the open space search results. Additionally, each candidate image identified by manual inspection is equally weighted, with no quantitative ranking from best match of the search requirements to the worst match. These shortcomings may cause the search to produce results that may not identify adequate candidate images from the image collection even though they actually exist in the collection. Ideally, all images in the collection that meet a set of non-subjective open space criteria should be retrieved and presented to the user for review is some prescribed, non-subjective manner.
Therefore, there is a need for a method and system for objectively identifying and consistently characterizing the open space in images that avoids these problems. ”
I’m sorry you blew $11K on a patent application, Kelly, but next time a bit more research would be prudent.