iStockphoto.com
Search Royalty Free Images & Photos | IStockPhoto.com
iStockPhoto.com is a website that provides royalty free stock photography and it operates on the basis of micropayment business model. At iStockPhoto.com the price of an image can range from 1$ to 40$ depending upon the size of each image. As mentioned in their website, they are the world’s most rapidly growing collection of original and international images that are free from any royalty. Apart from this they also believe that they are the ones who pioneered the microstock photography industry.
In February 2006, Getty Images acquired iStockPhoto.com for about 50 million dollars. According to the statistics obtained for the month of August 2006, the online photo library of iStockPhoto.com had about 1 million images provided by about 23,000 photographers contributing around 12,000 images per week. Some recent changes in the site helped it to improve dramatically. For example, apart from English the website now can also be viewed in French, German and Spanish languages. Searches can also be performed on the site in different languages like British English, American English, Portuguese and Japanese etc. the currencies supported by the site are US Dollars, Australian Dollars, Canadian Dollars, Euro, British Pound and Yen.
iStockPhoto.com commenced in May, 2000 and initially it was a free stock imagery site on the internet. However over the time, looking at vast increase in its collection of good quality images, the company got converted into a micropayment mode. Originally the site was supported by a web development firm named Evolvs Media belonging to Mr. Bruce Livingstone, the founder of iStockPhoto.com. However at present iStockPhoto.com is working as an independent corporation.
After the site was acquired by Getty, on September 18th, 2006 it was the first when the site got real benefits from this acquisition. A new system was installed on the site named “Controlled Vocabulary” for providing the ability to the users to search for keywords on the site in different languages.
Photographers interested in making a contribution to the site must apply before they can do so. A short quiz is conducted in which the photographers are asked about the policies and requirements of the site. The administrators of the site also judge the basic photographic knowledge of the photographer before they consider him eligible to make a contribution to the site. After this procedure the images uploaded by the photographer are examined to determine their quality before they are approved. If the images are approved the photographer gets the right to upload his images throughout the website. The keywords and the categorized images uploaded by the photographers are examined every time by the inspection queue to determine whether the images as supplied by the photographers meet the required standards.
iStockPhoto.com also deals in vector graphics created using programs like Adobe Illustrator, raster illustrations made in Bitmap Editors or other 3d graphic programs. Depending upon the quality of each image, the contributors receive a commission of about 20 to 40 percent of their sale. On achievement of specific milestones like 2500 sales, 10000 sales etc, the contributors are awarded canisters. As of December 2006, about 80 members reached a canister level of 25000 and thus were awarded “diamond canister”. Lisegagne and Hidsey are the only photographers who reached the level of 200000.
Contributors, who are able to reach a 500 sales level get an offer to become exclusive to the site. If they agree, a bonus is added to their current commission and they are restricted from selling their royalty free images anywhere else.
Each approved image contributed by the photographers is added to the database of the site and the purchasers can search the images through the services provided in the site. The images can be purchased in various sizes like small, large, XLarge, XXLarge etc. Development of a new site named IStockVideo.com was announced by iStockPhoto.com in July this year where various video clips would be available for sale in different formats like NTSC, PAL, HD etc. the collation started this September and the price of the video clips can range between 5 to 50 dollars depending on its quality and the resolution. This branch is in competition with the collections which are already available from companies like Art beats, Getty etc.
Languages
- English
- French
- German
- Spanish
Contact
- IStockphoto Inc.
-
- 1 866 478 6251
Related Domains
External Links
- Alexa: IStockPhoto.com
- IStockphoto Tutorial : Tutorial
