Looking at New Stock Agencies

Last week was extremely busy in the news, and not just on Wall Street. There has been quite a bit of fallout from the Jill Greenberg fiasco, and the closing of the Photoshelter Collection. On the Photoshelter side of the universe, one of the old forum moderators has started a new Stock Imaging Forum, which seems to be getting off to a nice start. I was never huge on the community cheerleading formus, but this group seems headed more toward talk of real business and agency issues. I’ve chimed in on a few threads so far, and we’ll see where it goes.

One of the things that the closing of the Photoshelter Collection put in motion is the clammering of photographers running around wondering, “Now where do I put my images”? On the heels of that, I received an email today from a new agency called Allto1 that is seeking photographers. There are several things I look at in a new agency, not just to see if they might be a proper fit for my images, but also for my time and effort. Their email contained a number of attractive terms, like a focus on Rights Managed images, and a 70% commission.

The very first thing I look at is their home page, and I do so wearing a Photo-Buyer perspective. How clean or cluttered is it? Are there ads throughout the site that indicate they’re trying to generate revenue from page views vs. the sale of photos. Second, I do a generic search, i.e. “mountains” and see what comes up. Are the search returns quick to load, and in an easily viewable format? In this case, the search yielded 475 images, but was a bit slow. Moreover, the images returned were all square thumbnails, and professional photo buyers don’t want to waste time wondering about what’s not being shown in an image, and whether it’s a horizontal or vertical image. Finally, where is the agency based? Is their corporate address on Wilshire Blvd in downtown LA, Chicago, or Seattle, or like Allto1, in Estonia?

I don’t begrudge anyone their attempts at starting a new agency. At one point or another, probably every stock photographer out there has thought they should do the same thing. But time is money, and if you have to gamble on a new start-up, take a close look at how well (or not) they’ve stacked the cards toward success. Under the time is money equation, 70% of nothing is nothing, and if you factor in your time and effort – you can easily wind up on the minus side of the column. And just like with PSC, when everything looks rosey on the outside, this inside may be hollow and lacking.