My latest images for sale at Shutterstock:

Sunday 9 January 2011

New agencies

I have begun uploading to Crestock and have been accepted as a contributor at StockFresh. Uploading is very fast once you have the keywords in the metadata and so I was able to load my Crestock queue with 100 images in an afternoon. I have been waiting a week so far for them to be inspected - I will let you know how they get on once they have been reviewed.

Stockfresh are a very new site and have not yet begun to market themselves fully. It makes sense that they would want to wait until they have a sizeable catalogue of images available before they spend a lot of money on marketing. I understand that they are waiting until they have at least a million images on their site, but so far have only half that number. As they offer download stats for each image it is possible to see that Yuri's best-selling image on StockFresh has only seven downloads. I will upload there as it may well be good to get in at the start of a new site, but I am not expecting much income from there for at least a year or so. Just FYI - my application took five days to be passed.

I have had my contributor application accepted at 123RF, but have not begun to upload there yet. I was a bit perturbed by their requirement that I agree to cover all their legal costs in the event of them being sued over one of my images. I was a bit confused by this as I understood legal liability to rest with the artist, but I am not keen to write their lawyers a blank cheque in any event. If anyone with more experience of this sort of thing wants to take a look and report back here then that would be great.

7 comments:

  1. EEK! I didn't notice that about 123RF. Maybe I don't want to contribute there ...

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  2. It may well be that I have got the wrong end of the stick, but it might be worth having a read of the contract for yourself...

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  3. I just read it now -

    http://www.123rf.com/submit/agreement.php

    So it's under Indemnity, the third point: "You agree to fully defend and indemnify 123RF, its employees, directors, and officers, and anyone else associated with 123RF, and each of their successors, licensees, and assigns free and harmless from any and all claims, liabilities, costs, losses, damages, or expenses, including attorneys' fees and expenses, arising from the breach of the warranties you so grant in Clause 10: Copyrights and Warranties."

    So when I look at Clause 10, I don't intend to or imagine that I would breach any "of the warranties I so granted" in this clause. Therefore, I'm not sure I should worry too much about it.

    But maybe I'm missing something.

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  4. Perhaps we'll learn more -
    http://www.microstockgroup.com/123royaltyfree-com/indemnity-section-of-the-contributor-agreement/

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  5. Thanks for that Marisa - good to know (or more worrying, whichever way you look at it!)
    Who is Gretchen?

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  6. By Gretchen, I (of course) meant you, Bridget. I'll go back and fix that. I'm becoming my father. Twisting names, with no rhyme or reason. At just 35, I am so screwed with the early onset senility! My apologies for the fudge.

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  7. Lol, no problem. How are you getting on Marisa? Care to come back to the forum and start a thread telling us your independence experiences to date?

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