Digital Web Logistics

I welcomed the move by Getty Images who have launched a new service for Web & Mobile images Sized, Priced and ready for digital use.

I have been researching the lack of affordable web sized editorial images for blogging, and looking at many blogs I find that most could be enhanced by a stock image or two, but the key problems as I see them are the lack of affordable editorial images at microstock ‘pay-as-you-go’ prices, and an easy method of search and delivery, and I personally think that editorial web image use has been much overlooked, with the focus being to over saturate the market with trendy commercial images.

Now that the ‘new commercial markets’ have dried up and growth by acquisition is getting to be less of an option for the bigger websites, how to maintain any business growth, I think that the target will become the editorial side of the industry. 

Historically the thinking about the editorial use of images is around magazines and newspapers, along came microstock which targeted the commercial side of the business advertising and advertorial, with Istock becoming know as the art directors and designers ‘dirty little secret’, with the low cost images and aggressive marketing this opened up many new markets, like the small business users, personal websites, students and consultants that needed an image for a presentation.

Image by: Flickr/ahxcjb

The editorial side has not yet changed with the times, but just look how things have moved on, now anyone can have an editorial presence online, via a website, a blog like this one or just by contributing articles, and as a blogger I know that these potential image buyers are not serviced at all well, with there being no large library of microstock priced editorial content, the response I get when I discuss this is that there is no real demand for web sized editorial images.

But is it really that there is no demand, where is the research to back up this theory, or is it that there is no target marketing and awareness of supply by bloggers and article writers, in the United Kingdom we have Alamy who have nearly 17 million images available, with most of these being editorial use only due to their Customer base, I have searched the internet and where is the microstock alternative to the libraries like Alamy, another question could be do we really need alternatives?

I have been looking at things like business blogs where there are many standard business subjects and commercial microstock images of server farms, business people, stock graphs, and concept images for business growth etc:, but from another perspective what if I was an independent blogger writing an editorial article on the credit crunch and I needed an editorial shot of a banks frontage or HQ building, where could I currently get a suitable licensed image, or if I was writing about the recession and the motor industry, where do I get the suitable editorial blog size images, in the small quantity and at a reasonable price point?

Editorial travel blogs can be written by writers that create some revenue by the advertisements on the blog or webpage, they do not directly sell a service or product so are not commercial or advertorial websites and not all writers are photographers, some might require images with people and places, aeroplanes, airport lounges and airline companies, look at all the others uses like lifestyle, the environment, flowers and plant websites, various user groups, animal and personal welfare, sports writers, there are so many independent writers that write very informative non commercial editorial articles and blogs on almost every subject.

Most often many blogs and articles are just plain text and lack the eye catching images to attract and hold the reader, now Getty look to have seen the real potential of this market, but will the prices be affordable enough for information providers and non business writers, with so many un-answered questions about the delivery of the images, how would you market this as a service to potential new web image users, and where is the microstock alternative?.

I thought I would test this out by creating a scenario where I needed an editorial image of the Royal Bank of Scotland as an independent or personal blogger, like many offering their ideas, and writing a banking editorial article about RBS like this one:

My first port of call was a Google search for a website where can I purchase editorial Microstock: the search retuned YayMicro, Shutterstock & Alamy.

My first visit was to YayMicro as they advertise that they have editorial microstock images but on searching for RBS no images were returned, the next was ShutterStock where the search for RBS returned images but none of the Bank.

Alamy as expected had the images at £60 for a Royalty Free or £90 for a Rights Managed image.

I then tried the new Getty service the images are in three sizes:

• 170px RF $5-$10, RM $15

• 280px RF $15-$28, RM $35

• 413px RF $35-$49, RM $49

The 170px will suit my needs but the returned images were all RM and not available at the two smaller ‘new mobile or web use’ sizes, only the $49 for three months image option was offered.

So not being a business user but an independent or personal blogger, the cost of the image at $49 is still very prohibited for an article that might be read a from ten to a couple of hundred times over a few months, I now have the option to write the article as plain text, and a photographer has missed a limited use licence sale, the whole experience could mean that I would not bother looking for an editorial image again, but does leaves me wondering why I cannot get a suitable editorial image as limited use for a blog article at a reasonable enough microstock price, I can get millions of commercial images for $1 – $2, the question is why not an editorial licence?

I suppose there is always the fallback to Flickr and a Creative Commons licence where I found this image, I just made a derivative work from the original!

This photo was licensed under a Creative Commons license, to use this photo within the terms of the license, this blog is written in this editorial context so it is non-commercial, then I just have to attribute the photographer with a photo credit as "Image by: Flickr/ahxcjb".

I do use microstock images in my blog posts and I would have preferred to purchase an affordable limited use licence from a stocksite and photographer, but at $49 it is outside of what I normally pay for the commercial microstock images I use in my blog posts from Istock at $1-$4.