Tom
10th Jan 2010, 06:30 am
Please compare these two images and say which you think is the best value for money in January 2010:
iStockphoto: http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-4698614-belvedere-gardens-prague-czech-republic.php
Dreamstime http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-belvedere-gardens-prague-image3615169
The Dreamstime image costs 6 credits at $1.25 each = $7.5
The iStockphoto image, which is the same photograph by the same photographer, costs 15 credits at $1.7 (£1.08) each = $25
Dreamstime also pay a higher percentage of the revenue to their photographers. A few years ago these images used to cost 1 credit each and I think the credits cost 50c each.
Another odd feature of the microstock business is that several agencies have gone out of business. I suppose the costs of running a microstock agency turned out to be greater than was expected. Or it may be that Flickr has put the low cost/low quality agencies out of business and that professional image-buyers, prefer to pay more without having to worry about quality or about model release forms - iStockphoto have always been meticulous in dealing whith these issues. But I still can't unerstand how, on an image-to-image comparison, iStockhphoto manages to charge THREE TIMES as much as Dreamstime. Maybe Getty Images hope to make more money out of photography than Paul Getty made out of oil. I do not plan on helping them.
iStockphoto: http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-4698614-belvedere-gardens-prague-czech-republic.php
Dreamstime http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-belvedere-gardens-prague-image3615169
The Dreamstime image costs 6 credits at $1.25 each = $7.5
The iStockphoto image, which is the same photograph by the same photographer, costs 15 credits at $1.7 (£1.08) each = $25
Dreamstime also pay a higher percentage of the revenue to their photographers. A few years ago these images used to cost 1 credit each and I think the credits cost 50c each.
Another odd feature of the microstock business is that several agencies have gone out of business. I suppose the costs of running a microstock agency turned out to be greater than was expected. Or it may be that Flickr has put the low cost/low quality agencies out of business and that professional image-buyers, prefer to pay more without having to worry about quality or about model release forms - iStockphoto have always been meticulous in dealing whith these issues. But I still can't unerstand how, on an image-to-image comparison, iStockhphoto manages to charge THREE TIMES as much as Dreamstime. Maybe Getty Images hope to make more money out of photography than Paul Getty made out of oil. I do not plan on helping them.