iSyndica closes

This is indeed a sad day for the microstock photographers! iSyndica will close on the 10th of October 2010.  I just started this blog last week and gave praise to iSyndica for being so great. They were great!  I will post my findings on why they closed here (if I can get to the bottom of it) as well as on our new forum. It's a very new forum, but we plan to keep it very active shortly.

Message from iSyndica:

iSyndica is closing

We wish to thank all of you for your support over the past 2 years. Unfortunately, we have, for many reasons, decided to discontinue the service, with an effective last day set to October 10, 2010.

We have compiled the list of Q&As below to help you understand our handling of the situation. Further contact will also be made on a one-to-one basis within your iSyndica account and by e-mail.

Read more here:

We are now out on a search to find another solution for streamlining the microstock upload work flow, alternatively we will start writing our own.  This might take some time, but I think there is a great need in the microstock industry for this type of service in order to get maximum ROI.

Please visit our forum from time to time to keep up to date with our findings and strategy for the future here.

Introduction to Ignite Lab

Ignite Lab's very first post...YAY!

I am not sure yet where we will start, but maybe an introduction is in order. Please follow our Facebook page to see what we're up to on a daily basis.

This blog will mostly be about stock media and microstock photography , but also including tips, tricks, tutorials, etc. around the creative production services, namely photography, video, 3D, music and audio.  We currently supply stock in the fields of photography, videography, audio clips, music loops and 3D models & textures.

To start off, I will keep this blog updated with our findings in the microstock and stock media industry, including sales statistics, content analysis, microstock tools, etc.  We have only started supplying microstock, and have learnt a lot already from some of the masters in the field, including Juri Arcurs, a celebrity in the microstock industry.

We are currently supplying photographic stock to a few agencies, including (but not limited to) Shutterstock (SS), iStockphoto (IS), Bigstock, Dreamstime, and some others that I will mention later in the feed. Our 3D product sell through Turbosquid and some others (also to be mentioned later).

Then there are some tools that we use to make the editing, keywording and uploading of content easier.  iSyndica deserving the first mention. You can see what they offer here.

To conclude, a brief history on microstock photography (Quoted from Wikipedia):

The pioneer of microstock photography was Bruce Livingstone, who created iStockphoto, originally a free stock photo site that quickly became an industry phenomenon. Livingstone sold iStockphoto to Getty Images in February 2006 for $50 million US dollars. Many other sites sprung up in the years after iStockphoto's inception; some of the larger ones are Dreamstime, Fotolia, Shutterstock and BigStockPhoto.

After a few years of initial growth microstock industry stepped into phase of mergers and acquisitions. Acquisition of iStockphoto by Getty Images in 2006 was followed by acquisition of StockXpert by Jupiterimages during 2006.^[2] Consequently Jupiterimages was bought by Getty Images in 2009^[3] which resulted closure of StockXpert in 2010 because of being non-strategic for Getty compared to iStockphoto. BigStockPhoto was purchased by Shutterstock in 2009.

Microstock industry isn't mature yet and continues to change. Starting from limited RF license all agencies added various Extended Licenses; sites based on "pay per download" principle introduced subscription and vice versa Shutterstock which was the only 100% subscription-based microstock introduced pay-per-download scheme and later acquired BigStockPhoto to extend their presence in pay-per-download niche. Newcomer Cutcaster.com extended the pricing model by introducing a model where contributors could set their start price or could choose to use a pricing algorithm and they allowed a buyer to pay the price shown or bid on the content and name their price. Microstock prices were significantly adjusted several times by the respective agencies in the last 3 years across multiple sites in order to make more profits and attract buyers. Many microstock sites started to sell video in addition to static pictures; and some started to sell sound clips.

That's probably enough typing for 1 day! I will leave you with a link to our website. It's in a mess at the moment, but you may view it here.

Until next time then.