Pinterest Copyright Infringement: Yeah, so what?

The latest hot startup in the photo-sharing space is one that is also creating a lot of controversy about copyright infringement. Pinterest lets users create "boards" of images they find from around the Web. Users “pin up” these images, and share them with friends and strangers.

“Is this copyright infringement,” you ask?

Well, imagine exactly the same website that let's users upload music or movies. Do you think the music labels or movie studios would permit this? Pinterest would be shut down before they could get their first dollar of venture capital.

“But they’re photos, not music or movies!”

Yes, and photos have precisely the same copyright protection.

“Ok, wise guy, then why hasn’t Pinterest been shut down?”

Simply put, there’s no one there to stop them, at least not with the same effect and scale as music labels or movie studios. And the reason is reflected in your very statement: society simply regards photos as “different” from movies; they don’t see Pinterest’s use of imagery as copyright infringement.

And this is a natural feeling to the common person. Everyone shoots pictures all the time; it takes milliseconds; most people don’t invest any thought or intent. By contrast, music and movies require considerable time, effort and expense to produce. So, there’s a difference.

And herein lies the unresolved problem: the law is the law, and photos are copyrighted works, regardless of the time, skill, or anything else necessary to create them. Accordingly, photos are supposed to enjoy the same legal protections as music and movies.

“I see. But, most people want and expect to share their images with others.”

Yes! Their images. Pinterest isn’t letting people share their own photos; they’re sharing other people’s photos.”

“Ah, I see now.”

Very good, Grasshopper.

As a society, we permit this kind of infringement, which explains why there are no large, powerful, influential organizations representing the interests (and the copyrights) of photographers. People simply regard photos as different.

A case in point can be found in this article on chow.com, discussing people’s reactions when they found their recipes were being “pinned” to Pinterest, along with the photos of their foods. The complaint was that their intellectual property (cooking recipes) were being stolen; the recommendation: “Just allow the photo to be shared, not my recipe!”

You see? Never mind the pro photographers whose pictures were being infringed; they’re not part of the conversation.

“Ok, so what about those professional photographers? How are they hurt?”

I’ve been a photo industry analyst since the mid 1990s, and I’ve seen the industry suffer more from “piracy” than the film and music industries combined. Every single publicly traded stock photo agency has either gone out of business or withdrawn from public trade. Getty Images is the last profitable company of any significant size, and even then, its pay to photographers has been drifting lower for over ten years to maintain that status. A series of studies from Picscout – a photo-tracking service for stock agencies and photographers – finds that 90% of commercial websites use at least one photo in a manner considered to be “commercial use” without the copyright holder's authorization. No company whose business model is to sell or license photography has had venture capital investment since 2000.

Yet, the shadow economy for photography is enormous. In a study I conducted in 2007 on contract for a potential investor in a photo-related technology, I found that most photo buying and licensing was done on a peer-to-peer basis, mostly in local markets and exchanges, at a scale that suggested the total economic activity tipped at $25B/year. Yet, none of it can migrate online because of the “perception” that photos don’t count when it comes to piracy, and because there was no possible infrastructure to enforce legal protections.

So, yes, the photo industry has been starved to near extinction, compared to what it could be if it similar legal representation that the music and movie industries do.

“My gosh, I’m getting sad. But I still want to share photos online.”

Don’t misunderstand me; I’m cognizant and sympathetic to the non-professional side of photography and the social value of sharing images, both culturally and economically – including to those photo-sharing sites like Pinterest. There’s no question that people should be able to share images online with others in an unfettered manner that Pinterest provides, as well as every social network.

But to do so in compliance with copyright law would require a series of rights access that cannot be scaled up to serve the public at large without a centralized (and streamlined) rights clearinghouse. Legally speaking, Pinterest should obtain rights from “everyone,” but it’s not possible because people are uploading other people’s photos. If there were a central clearing house open to everyone – say, like the music labels have – Pinterest could enter into a unified license agreement.

Without such a clearing house, the law is the law, and the courts will eventually be forced to reconcile the law with society’s desires. Well, provided cases are brought to court to press the issue.

This is not new. Copyright itself has been a controversial topic for society (and justice) for years, and continues to this day. On one hand, there are many who believe that copyright protection should be lifted, if not severely curtailed, largely in order to avoid this very problem of the social benefit from photo-sharing. Economists, on the other hand, understand that the creative economy only exists because people can earn a living from their efforts—that "human creativity is the ultimate economic resource." (Florida 2002) If they couldn’t economically benefit from their creations, society would suffer more, since the lack of incentives (and hence, resources) would starve an important and socially valuable industry.

The only legal basis for dealing with this dispute continues to reside in the Copyright Act in 1976, which states that “copyright protection extends to original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression,” including photography, of course. Tightly coupled with the Copyright Act is The Berne Convention, which states that “Copyright must be automatic; it is prohibited to require formal registration.” Yes, the USA provides added protection that permits authors to register their works with the Copyright Office, which then affords them “statutory damages” in legal claims, which guarantees the copyright holder a minimum of $750 per claim, and up to $150,000 if the infringing party “willfully infringed” (that is, with intent). But this registration is not required in order for the copyright to be held by the person holding the camera, and that ownership comes with rights.

So, Pinterest and other social networks are technically contributing to copyright violation by permitting other users to upload unauthorized copyrighted works. This is called “contributory infringement.” This Wikipedia excerpt explains, “indirect infringement arises when a party materially contributes to, facilitates, induces, or is otherwise responsible for directly infringing acts carried out by another party.”

These underlying legal principles of copyright law are subtle, and few are as educated on it as they like to believe—especially corporate law firms that write the legal mumbo jumbo in “terms of service” agreements (TOS). To wit, Pinterest’s own TOS stipulates that when you upload a photo to Pinterest, you are granting it a "perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free license to use” your photos on its site and "application or services." While this is applicable if you own the photos you upload, you cannot grant this permission for photos that aren’t yours. That is, you are not the legal authority of someone else’s photos. So, Pinterest’s own TOS is unenforceable on photos that the user doesn’t own, which is pretty much all of them. So, strictly speaking, their TOS is toothless, pointless and moot.

But this is also besides the point: the user violated the copyright, not Pinterest.

So again, who’s to complain? To whom? Against Whom?

One could try to sue Pinterest, which is where their lawyers would quickly seek protection under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which states that websites that host content uploaded by users cannot be held liable for copyright infringement, so long as the site complies with “take down notices” from those copyright holders. Here, the original owner of the copyright notifies the company with a “take down notice,” and the company is off the hook—no TOS necessary.

Many companies – Pinterest, included – very effectively use the DMCA as the “get out of jail free” card, effectively keeping their business out of legal danger.

But once again, we come back to the subtleties of the Copyright Act. As stated earlier, Pinterest could be liable for secondary infringement, which would make them ineligible to seek protection from the DMCA. For matters relating to copyright, courts would have to decide on the merits of such claims solely on case law developments.

This brings us to landmark cases, such as Napster and most notably, Grokster, where courts have established a three-point test to determine if a website “induces infringement”: (1) whether the majority of the content uploaded by users is infringed works; (2) whether the site provides tools that can only be used to infringe; and (3) whether the use of the works are (a) for commercial purposes or (b) harms the commercial interests of the copyright holder.

In the case of “majority of content,” this part is pretty self-evident.

In the case of the site providing tools that are “only” used to infringe, Pinterest’s defense would have to be based on a finding by the Supreme Court in “Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc,” where the court found that, contributory liability cannot be imposed unless the technology lacks substantial non-infringing uses. Flickr, for example, only provides an “upload” button that allows users to upload images from their own hard drive. This provides “substantial non-infringing uses.” Indeed, the content on Flickr has most of its images uploaded by the original photographers themselves. Pinterest, however, cannot demonstrate this: their tool does not permit uploading photos from one’s own computer; in fact, it encourages users to pin photos from other sites.

The third test –commercial profit– also has roots in the legal doctrine of “Vicarious Liability,” where “courts have extended liability to those who profit from infringing activity when an enterprise has the right and ability to prevent the infringement.”

If someone were to go to the effort of showing that Pinterest satisfies all three tests, the company loses its DMCA protections, and must now face the music. This then re-engages copyright law, where the company could be liable for statutory damages if any of the works are registered with the copyright office. (Many pro photographers whose works are generally passed around the most, actually register their works.) Statutory damages mandate a minimum of $750 per infringed work, although a judge can raise the limit of the claim up to $150,000 per infringement if the defendant was deemed to “intentionally infringe.”

One would assume that if a site lost its DMCA protection because it was “inducing infringement,” then a judge would likely also rule that the infringement was “willful.” Hence, the $150,000 per image claim would be a hefty speeding ticket.

“Sounds troubling for Pinterest! Are they in trouble?”

Probably not. And it’s not because they aren’t in violation of copyright law—they are. It’s back to the basic question of “who’s going to sue them?” Unlike music and movie companies that have hoards of lawyers representing their interests and who aggressively shut down websites and file legal claims perpetually, photographers have no one. As individuals, photographers are too unsophisticated to navigate the difficult and expensive litigation process, so it is highly improbable that many will sue. And even if they did, they won’t be able to do so in a critical mass necessary to materially affect the company the way may music labels can. And even if they could, they’d be up against the same free-speech advocates that defended Grokster. This would not be an easy or inexpensive task, and would probably garner a large push-back from society who already regards photos as “different.”

I don’t mean to “pick on” Pinterest, actually. They are but one of many such sites. Polyvore not only satisfies the three-point test of “inducing users to infringe,” but their volume knob goes to 11: They offer even more sophisticated tools to infringe, including software that specifically designed to copy photos from other sites, while also providing no tools to upload users’ own photos, which flies directly into the face of the definition of Contributory Infringement, and satisfies the Supreme Court’s own language on whether the technology has a substantial “non-infringing use.” Worst of all, they are actually selling products, not advertising, which satisfies “Vicarious Liability.”

And their legal problems go beyond just copyright. Users also upload photos of celebrities to adorn the products sold on the site, which could be in violation of publicity laws if there isn’t a model release. (Cameron Diaz’s picture is one of the most popular.)

Polyvore does provide its own photos, which are legitimately licensed -- namely, from the companies selling the products depicted in the pictures. The test is whether the majority of the content uploaded by users are unauthorized. Other factors that appear to implicate their “knowledge of willful infringement” is a statement warning people not to infringe, and the promise they will take down photos if contacted by copyright owners. While one could argue that they are trying to give notice, this is akin to warning labels on cigarette boxes. No one’s fooling anyone here.

There’s no doubt that Polyvore knows its users are infringing, and it’s certainly possible that they are aware that they are also “inducing” infringement, but they are counting on the same two factors that Pinterest is: society accepts copyright infringement of photography, and more importantly, there are no special interest groups that will sue them for “contributory infringement” on behalf of a class of photographers.

“So, as long as society has accepted photography as a non-threatening step-child in the copyright debate, these sites are safe.”

The force is strong in you, young Jedi.

Still, the risk profile could suddenly spike if there were an unintended rise of those who would intend to assert those copyright protections, which could happen if incentives were to suddenly materialize. For example, a SOPA-like legislation.

“Huh? SOPA? Come again?”

Although the Stop Online Piracy Act is dead for now, the music and movie industries are not about to let it go. Something will eventually re-emerge with new and different terms. We’re already seeing a great deal of anti-piracy legislation coming out of Europe, and Congress and others are under a great deal of pressure to do something (probably after the election season).

What needs to be considered is the unintended consequences that might result if they don’t reconcile the incompatibilities between the social aspect of photography and the fact that it’s a copyrighted work. For, whatever law that has the intention of protecting movies and music just might create a financial incentive for new actors to enter the stage and try to represent the interests of the entire class of photographers, professional and otherwise. And the social networks that use photos are far bigger and vulnerable than the usual targets that music and movie studios attack, escalating the size of litigations that could arise.

A poorly drafted SOPA-like law could affect the internet in highly unexpected ways, akin to the sudden and immediate changes we saw in our political system after the Supreme Court’s decision on Citizen’s United.

“So, do you have a better solution?”

Funny you should ask.

I don’t believe one can ever legislate around this problem. There are two economies at play all the time: a legitimate one and an underground pirate economy. The best you can do is create so much incentive for people to participate in the legitimate economy, that the efforts to pirate become less interesting and less profitable, yielding a progressively smaller proportion of that industry’s total economy. Steve Jobs pleaded with the music industry to remove music locking in song files using the argument that people don’t want to infringe, so long as they can get access to what they want at a fair price. When the music industry finally agreed to remove those locks, online music sales spiked. But the music (and film) industries haven’t kept up with cultural and technological trends in how they handle the business side of their industries. They are still trying to solve 21^st century problems with 20^th century attitudes.

It’s not that I disapprove of litigation – it’s the music and movie industries greatest advantage. The legitimate marketplace exists because music and movie companies have the infrastructure to enforce copyrights; this is the stick that gets people to seek the carrot, benefiting the entire marketplace financially and fairly.

When it comes to photography, there is no infrastructure for enforcing copyrights, so there’s no viable marketplace. I mentioned that there needs to be a central clearing house for photo rights management: My solution to that is here.

________________________________

On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 4:15 AM, wrote:

When a person makes a board and posts other people's photos, isn't it just like sharing a link on a blog? When you click on the photo it goes back to the original website that it was found, doesn't it? I don't understand how that constitutes infringement, to me it's like a beefed-up hyperlink. Are you saying that they are literally taking photos and uploading them somewhere?

Literally copying content is one form of copyright infringement, but that's not what we're talking about here. The fact that the content is merely "displayed on a website not authorized by the copyright holder" is technically an infringement.

To illustrate, let's take your text, and change the word "photo" to "movie":

When a person makes a board and posts other
people's movies, isn't it just like sharing a link on a blog?

In this case, let's say that those "other people" are movie studios. Here, the the public that views this movie is able to see it on a site that has not been authorized to show the movie. The movie studio doesn't care that the movie also happens to link back to their site, or iTunes, or amazon, or anywhere else. The content itself is displayed on another website without authorization. That is an infringement.

Your question of "link" should not be conflated with "text links," which do not display original content. For example, the text link "click here for this photo" is not an infringement because content is not being displayed.

You may say that "photos are different" because photos aren't like movies, or that movie studios charge money, or anything else. Copyright law does not distinguish between media formats or financial intent or even who the owner is. Copyright law is there to allow copyright holders to choose how their content is used.

Many people think that content can be used unless the copyright holder objects, but that is not the case. Technically, the copyright holder must grant consent first.

I realize this would suddenly make everyone aware that every social network in the world is suddenly in gross violation of copyright, and that's why the legal system and the copyright "process" needs to be updated to reconcile this.

Market Efficiencies and Stock Photo Pricing

In my last blog post, Selling Stock: It's About Search Rank, Not Price, I argued that the price variability in the stock photo industry can be exploited by those who garner high search rankings. The rationale is that the direct and indirect cost (overhead) of finding an image so far exceeds typical license fees, that photo buyers are more indifferent to those license fees than sellers believe. Thus well-ranked photo sites would be able to command higher license fees, simply because they have first access to the buyer.

In fact, well-ranked photo websites are undermining their own profitability by lowering prices unnecessarily, mostly because they are following their perceived competitors, not because the customer is demanding lower prices. Their rationale would follow traditional economic theory under most market conditions, but therein lies the exception. The photo industry does not represent "normal economic conditions." Indeed, the photo industry represents a classic case of an "inefficient market."

Let me explain by starting with the definition of an "efficient market." It can be summarized as a market of buyers and sellers engaging under conditions where all information is available to parties on both sides of a transaction. (See this wikipedia link for extended definitions, examples, and citations.)

Examples of efficient markets are exchange-traded commodities like oil, orange juice and automobiles, among others. Here, producers of commodities make their wares generally available, and market-makers trade on this information. It is exceedingly difficult (if not impossible) to have inventory that the market is unaware of, or to purchase commodities without the broader market's awareness. These are the conditions that lead to the definition of an "efficient market."

While there will always be price volatility, it is almost entirely governed by predictions of how supply and demand might be affected by external events. The weather affects the price of Orange Juice; war and instability affects the price of oil; and a litany of factors affect the auto industry.

When it comes to image-licensing, most buyers and sellers do not have that much information about the "global" market of buyers or sellers, let alone access to conditions that can affect future supply and demand. This results in "market inefficiency," which results in price inconsistencies, precisely as predicted by economists. Therefore, prices vary from high to low across the spectrum, depending on the perception of the buyers in any given time/place. This is because they have limited and incomplete information about the global supply chain.

This also explains why people objected to my proposition from my prior article. They do not have access to "all information," and worse, they are unaware that their worldview is limited. That is, most pro photographers are under the illusion that the entire market of stock photos is monopolized by a small number of stock agencies.

Ironically, the other markets (non-agency buyers/sellers) don't see the other side either. These discrete and separate markets will, by definition, find different prices than buyers in other markets. Stock agencies will view one another as competitors and lower their prices, whereas websites that are unaware of stock agencies (or don't attempt to compete with them) will command higher prices.

To optimize prices and create an efficient market, the following would have to take place:

• Stock agencies would have to expand to cover a larger proportion of the image-buying market. As my prior article advised, the way to do this is to partner (or merge) with photo-centric websites, whose proportion of global internet traffic is very high. This will allow "more information to be more universally available to a greater proportion of the buyers and sellers." This now leads to market efficiency.
  
• Once the market became efficient, it could then be automated through predictive pricing algorithms, precisely the way Google automated online ad prices using an auction-based mechanism. No doubt this is not a simple algorithm, and it took years to evolve, requiring considerable data mining to determine optimal market pricing. But it was achieved to a point where it is now a highly viable (and mutually beneficial) economic model for buyers and sellers. The market of photo buying is similarly large, and there's enough economic activity that appropriate data-mining efforts could lead to similar algorithms for auction-based image license pricing.

The question is whether anyone is willing to invest enough into this untapped market.

Selling Stock: it's about search rank, not price

Yesterday, I reposted an article I originally wrote in 2007, discussing the misconception that microstock pricing is what's driving down overall license fees.

I got a few emails that still challenged my assertion, and it appears I haven't emphasized strongly enough the most compelling arguments supporting this thesis.

All of my research supports the premise that the primary cost of licensing images is not the license fee, but the overhead associated with finding and acquiring the right image. The overhead and administration of a project that would involve photo licensing shows that the actual license fee ranks very low on the budget -- hence, low on the buyer's priority list. My 2007 surveys of buyers showed that.

If the person responsible for finding images for a project is paid $60/hr, and this person spends 2-3 more hours looking for a photo just to pay $1 vs. $50, this translates to paying someone $120-180, just to save $50. People who control budgets know that the license fee for photos is negligible to the total cost of production, even at the traditional stock photo rates. The bigger the project, and lower the proportion of the license fee for the image(s).

Those who sell images are dropping their prices because they're looking at their competition, not the buyer. Further, there is absolutely no evidence to show that sites that have lower prices sell more images. There is definitely a perception that there's a correlation, but that's because people are comparing apples to oranges. Getty sales vs iStock sales are not apples-to-apples because the two entities vary dramatically in search engine results (and other important factors). People talk about microstock sites more, and they link to them (in blogs, discussion forums) and the quantity of images on microstock sites is rapidly growing. So naturally, these sites get higher rankings in search results. Search engines don't rank sites because they have lower prices. They rank sites by size (content), links, and a black magic formula that is best described as "dispersion of discussion in and around the net." In short, microstock sites have more content and get more attention. Hence, better rankings, which translates to more traffic, which attracts more photographers to submit images to them, perpetuating the feedback loop.

In my 2007 survey, those who indicated they were aware of--and use microstock sites-- most don't go to them because the prices are lower; it's mostly because those sites ranked higher in search engine results, where the buyer starts.

Because search engine ranking drives traffic -- especially the untapped (and unaware) segment of the global economy that doesn't use stock agencies -- and because the greatest cost in photo acquisition is time, not the license fee, 90% of the time-savings is the image results the user gets on that initial search. If it takes the buyer to a stock agency site -- microstock or otherwise -- then the deal is nearly done. Price notwithstanding.

This is primarily why I have advocated for years that stock sites should focus their entire effort towards optimizing search engine rankings. While they could have done something about it in the past, the rise of social networks and the plethora of image-related websites and apps has made it impossible for agencies to rank highly on image-search rankings on their own. In today's market, they have no choice but to either partner with, or acquire/be-acquired-by a social-networking site.

The Getty<->Flickr combination is a very pragmatic example. Yahoo is circling the drain, and it needs to shed its non-performing assets and focus its attention on ... something. Whatever that is, it isn't Flickr, and there aren't a lot of buyers that would be interested in that asset, except for Getty or Corbis. The combined product would involve retooling Flickr to be far more socially active (to keep up with modern social networking trends), and to integrate licensing/acquisition into the user/social experience. Most importantly, to provide incentive programs for photo submitters to participate economically. (I've written a great deal about this in the past.)

Of course, perhaps Yahoo should just buy Getty. Facebook is getting into the game, which tends to lead one's eyes towards Google, but they are still struggling to play catch up in the social-networking arena, and their photo division is not run by someone with a disposition towards stock or an awareness of the economics of the photo industry. The company is more interested in building assets that support their advertising model. There's no evidence that "licensing" is on their radar--a pity because they would be on the forefront of the Web 3.0 economic model, where images would play a huge role. (See here.)

In the meantime, there's a $25B shadow economy in peer-to-peer photo licensing that's up for grabs. (See here.)

So, you ask, "how do you convince agencies of this?"
I've been trying since 1998.

(For fun, see this web archive of my site from 1999 discussing this topic.)

Creative Commons Effect on Photo Licensing

Julie Bernstein asked me the following question: "I am curious if your views on Creative Commons have changed since the four articles you published on this topic in '08."

Julie is referring to these articles (part1, p2, p3, p4) where I describe the CC as a great licensing method for almost all media types except photography.

In summary, what the CC has done is create a legally legitimate infrastructure for those who freely share copyrighted works. Before CC, such activity was technically an infringement, because the the publication of creative works requires consent of copyright holders. CC clears up that technicality, which is great. But it has inadvertently given people the impression that it has affected the licensing industry's pricing structures.

CC has not affected the greater licensing market (or prices), largely because of risk: CC has no centralized authority to assure that content is either submitted properly or used properly. Because it's so easy to game the system on either side of the photo (the supplier or the user can sue the other by luring them with a legally misleading scenario), the financial liability for anyone with a lot to lose is simply too high, especially given that traditional license fees are so minimal. So, the majority of image buyers simply stay away from CC.

Now, this is not to suggest there's something wrong with the CC model in principle. I'm a big advocate for it in all other contexts. Indeed, it was born out of the "free software" meme that was popular in the 1980s and 90s, when Gnu Public License (GPL) and other models were the precursors to the "open-source" model we still enjoy today. These are great innovations in licensing because they allow intellectual property to be used for the greater good, while also allowing for commercial use of those innovations.

But CC in the world of engineering is entirely different from photography. Engineering takes a considerable amount of time, resources and (usually) teamwork to produce anything of value that those in the open-source community would use. As such, the kind of content there is proportionally minimal, and each work is substantial and recognizable, making infringements quite easy to spot.

None of this is true in photography -- trillions of images are produced daily, it's impossible to track any given photo, or whether it is "legitimate" (either by the owner or the user).

So, sure, in a world of honest people that want to freely share their content in a peaceful corner of the image licensing market, CC is great. The CC market is growing, but the perception is only as a measurement of itself, not the total licensing market. An article on that topic can be found here:
http://www.danheller.com/blog/posts/total-size-of-licensing-market.html

Lastly, it's natural to ask, "If CC is so easy to game, why haven't we seen it?" The answer is because the market is so negligible. Economists often use crime data as a reality check on the economic activity they think they're aware of. The higher the crime rate, the more economic activity there is, and there's usually parity between that activity and the presumed size of a commodity's market. If there's little crime, the market size isn't big enough to warrant the effort. If CC were to genuinely gain momentum, it would attract those who would game the system for profit, which itself would have a cooling effect, bringing its popularity back down.

For the record, I've proposed that the best way to assuage people's risk concerns about CC is to use the "copyright registration" system. The CC foundation should have a submission system where those who want to submit images for CC licensing would bulk register those images to the copyright office. This gives them the right to file claims on behalf of the copyright owner, which is how major stock agencies like Getty work. Registered images are eligible for higher level of copyright protection, and there are federal penalties for fraudulent use. This means that users of CC images can be protected from invalid claims by those trying to game the system because this is built into the copyright act's provisions. Similarly, authors can be assured of CC compliance because non-compliant users could be subject to an infringement claim. Yes, you can sue someone for copyright infringement, even if the license fee were zero, because the infringement is another form of "breach of contract." Here, the user of a CC image agreed to the terms of CC by (for example) citing copyright ownership. Failing to do so is an infringement of that contract, and is therefore subject to the statutes provided by copyright law.

This would not only allow CC to have actual teeth, but the trust would go up as the risk comes down.

But such an infrastructure would be quite expensive to operate. That'd be a tall order just to create a system that brings the license fee for a commodity down only a few dollars, even if it is only to zero.

Flatter Stock Licensing Tiers

I was recently sent email from someone who asked very good--and very common--questions, and I thought it might be apropos for my blog:

Do you think that a price does not depend on target audience? I imagine that for web use it has not a sense, but for books, newspapers, magazines, CDs: does not it have still importance in current market?

The current stock photo market is such that simplicity is king. For the most part, buyers are no longer accustomed to pricing tiers based on the criteria you mentioned above. Back before the internet, buyers and sellers had those pricing tiers because the economics permitted it. That is, buyers understood that different uses and tiers made it possible for them to get access to commodities that used to be under much tighter controls. In the 1990s and before, stock photography was sold through glossy, elaborately designed books; if a buyer wanted a photo of a tiger, there was a page with about 10-15 images, and that was the entire lot to choose from. When the supply of images and the distribution channel are tightly controlled, the distributor has much more control over the pricing structures.

Furthermore, the supply chain between image creators and users was more complex and expensive: there's the overhead of having slides sent (both ways), the overhead of scanning and touching up photos, personnel and expertise in design and technology, all of whom were skilled and nuanced trades.

The combination of a controlled distribution channel and an expensive supply chain implied a delicate balance in the financial flexibility between buyers and sellers, each wiggling up and down in price negotiations to settle at an equilibrium: a pricing structure that allowed lower-revenue editorial clients to participate alongside their commercial counterparts. This inherent inequality was balanced by those very pricing tiers, where buyers could plan their publication budgets so that they could put more money into images that appeared on more prominent positions (e.g., a cover shot vs interior pages), or to buy more or less "exclusive" content that fit their needs.

But then the internet and digital photography came into the picture. Here, the cost of creation and distribution of images went to zero, which subsequently opened up the channel to everyone that was previously locked out: consumers, hobbyists and semi-professionals. These two factors contributed to the collapse of the entire economic "reasoning" behind the pricing structures of stock licensing. Back in 1999, I said that it'd take about 10 years for this to filter through the economic ecosystem, and the supply/demand imbalance would erode those tiers, and the pricing structures would invariably flatten.

Indeed, publications no longer hire high-end photo editors with an art degree, skilled in design, and savvy in the business of creating quality publications. As lower-skilled (and lower paid) workers leveraged increasingly more sophisticated page-layout and print software, very high-quality publications can be created at much lower physical and employment costs. This has created a fundamental shift in the economics of every single business that uses imagery, not just photographers and agencies. Every company in the world uses photos of some kind at some point in the company's lifetime, and since companies employ people, one can say that the entire world's cultural attitude about imagery shifted: it's no longer considered a skilled labor, but that of a commodity, where just about anyone can do "a reasonably good job" (not that all of them actually do).

The net effect on the photo industry is a recycling of the photo-editor staff to an entirely different kind of employee. This new photo buyer is not only unaccustomed to any of the historical tiers of pricing rationale, but they are financially constrained to work within a budget that, like it or not, yields no material difference in the overall business. In a difficult economy, where companies share the financial challenges as the employees they employ, those who try to be the Good Samaritans and help the needy photographer only find they suffer at the bottom line.

Now, all that said, there's one overwhelming factor that can be used to preserve pricing structures: the fact that the most overwhelming cost associated with acquiring images is not the license fee of an image, but the cost of search and acquisition. The huge supply of images on the internet, and the exceedingly poor search mechanisms on all search-based sites (ranging from Google to the common stock agency) means that finding images is a very costly endeavor for photo buyers, irrespective of their "skill." As I've written in the past, it often takes anywhere from 1-5 hours per image for a photo researcher to find a set of images that exceed the lowest-threshold of acceptability for their needs. The actual cost of the license is negligible compared to the cost of search and acquisition.

(Note that the latest Pulitzer Prizes for economics has gone two to economists who've used the same mechanism to explain the disparity between the high rate of employment at the same time as there is also huge amounts of unfilled jobs. They came to the same conclusion: the cost of "finding where those jobs are" exceeds the feasibility for the job-seekers to go get them.)

Accounting for this economic reality, I have flattened my pricing tiers from the more traditional menu of editorial/commercial use and "placement", to that of a single metric: the size of the image. I don't care about anything else because I'm reflecting the attitudes of modern photo buyers: they don't care or understand the older pricing rationales and just want to get the image they want and get out. They are more prone to buy when the licensing mechanism is fast and simple.

Though my prices have also lowered a bit, they have not dropped nearly at the same rate as the pricing structures found in stock photo agencies, big and small. The rate of photo buying on my site has not dropped, despite the fact that my prices are 100-1000% higher than those on microstock sites. But don't let the huge percentage ranges fool you: just because I may sell an image for $50 when a microstock might sell the same image for $1 doesn't really mean anything to the photo buyer. That cost differential is largely irrelevant. They know that in order to save $49, they have to go back to the research stage, retrofit new images into their page layout, get new approval from clients, and so on. That's not worth the $49 difference.

What about exclusivity? Have you ever licensed an
image with a exclusivity clause for a certain amount of months/years?

Perception of exclusivity is way overblown. While all buyers love the idea of using an image that no one else will use -- which often causes them to "request" exclusivity -- the economic reality is that there's very little market for that. Whenever anyone asks for it, and I quote them any kind of upcharge, they always say, "nah, forget it." The issue of exclusivity turns most photographers into worry-warts, concerned that they'll fail to get the gig, or license the image, or scare away the client... And of course, they don't know what to quote, which they feel they need to do because the client asks for a quote.

My recommendation is not to worry about this, but instead, give a simple explanation to the client that the need for exclusivity is largely overblown. Unless the image was specifically shot for the client and contains very unique or proprietary information (people, things, or access), the upcharge for exclusivity will not pencil out to be worthwhile. In a global market of many images and many businesses, the risk of having the same image used by a competitor (or anyone else) is too low to bother paying the upcharge. Yes, I am aware of the famous 'oops' stories -- these are anomalies, not truly representative of the market.

... how could you manage everything before becoming a full
time photographer? I mean your previous job, photos, website, business
analysis, blog, wife and a child?...

I have always recommended that no one should ever enter into the business of licensing photography as their sole source of income. This is not the type of job that you jump into and instantly start making money. You should always start with photography as a hobby, build your inventory, establish your web presence, participate in social networking, and set up a stock-licensing fulfillment system. And do all this while you have a real job (or income) doing something else. If you go about your hobby efficiently and effectively, your licensing income will grow, and more importantly, be sustainable and predictable. Your traffic to your site should be a repeatable wave pattern (high traffic during the week; lower on weekends), and your sales should be similarly consistent. If this data is erratic, your business is not yet established well enough to rely on it as your sole source of income.

There are many other career-building aspects to this, and I cover them all here: http://www.danheller.com/biz-sense

Getty and Flickr: Prophesies Coming True?

People have been emailing me copiously, asking for a statement in response to the new relationship between Getty and Flickr, where Flickr members and visitors can work with each other through a new program with Getty Images called “Request to License”. The details of this program are listed here. From that page:

When a prospective licensee sees an image marked for license, they can click on the link and be put in touch with a representative from Getty Images who will help handle details like permissions, releases and pricing. Once reviewed, the Getty Images editors will send you a FlickrMail to request to license your work, either for commercial or editorial usage. The decision to license is always yours.

Why are people asking me about this?

For years, I've been proposing that precisely this model be implemented. Most of my blog entries in 2007 and 2008 articulated this very model. The first was on Feb 13, 2007, in an article titled, "The future of photo sharing sites and agencies". There, I predicted the inevitable convergence between companies like Getty and Flickr:

I believe it will invariably happen that major photo agencies like Getty and Corbis can (and should) move into the consumer market. Consider what would happen if major stock agencies expanded their businesses by opening the flood gates and letting everyone in. By removing the barriers that require photographers to "submit images," and having a separate portion of their sites be entirely open, much like other photo-sharing sites are, they would give more options to buyers, and provide more opportunities (and greater incentive) for photographers to join at all levels. Getty owns iStockPhoto.com, which is a microstock agency that sells images for much less, but this is not a consumer-based, social networking style photo sharing site like flickr is.

The key here is in italics: microstock agencies are not social networking sites, they are therefore limited by both buyers are sellers than the social-networking sites. My premise for this logic is based on my years of research showing that 80% or more of licensed images is peer-to-peer, directly between buyers and photographers, not among agencies. You can read this research in the article, "The Size of the Photo Licensing Market"). The summary of that research is this basic truism: Most buyers find images on non-stock agency websites.

On Feb 18, 2007, I wrote how the photo-sharing and social-networking sites can capitalize on this opportunity in an article titled, "Two-Phased Approach to photo-sharing/licensing model". I said:

Phase One of this business will be where a photo-sharing site merely allows visitors to license images directly from the site. Phase Two will involve the distribution of the same photo assets to other sites, much the same way online ad sales are hosted (or "published") on other websites. ... For the sake of discussion, I'm going to assume that the approach ultimately adopted is the one I've suggested in the past: make it pure and simple by giving the user a toggle for setting whether his photos are (or aren't) permitted to be "sold".

And that's exactly what Getty and Flickr are doing now. Over four years later.

You may note that I said there was a two-phased approach. That second model will eventually become part of more photo-licensing business models. (In fact, it already exists, but among companies too small to get anyone's attention--partly because the technology and business models they've adopted do not properly understand and implement the true nature of photo licensing, copyright issues, and potential target markets. This is an aside for the moment; it may come up again when larger players eventually begin to consider the opportunities.)

Speaking of predictions, I remain steadfast in my opinion of the inevitability of what happens next:

In July, 2007, my blog post titled, "The Solution to Getty's Woes" explained how Getty can get out of its financial troubles by simply buying Flickr directly from Yahoo and using it as the main stock licensing engine. The article got into exceedingly detailed analysis of Getty's financial model (and troubles) combined with the explosion of available imagery on sites like Flickr that make this solution not only obvious, but inevitable.

On a directly related note, I called into question the life expectancy of the Creative Commons in this article (2008), where I again proposed that Flickr allow users the option of choosing between allowing their images available for free via CC, or to get income from their images. I said,

...it begs the question about whether enough people would choose the option to "make my images free"(CC) if it were next to the checkbox that says, "pay me a quarter if someone's dumb enough to buy it."

And then there's the buyer. If they were given the choice between "free images, with disclaimers and risks" and modestly priced images without such risks, it wouldn't be very likely that the "free" versions would be chosen very often.

The concept of CC would never survive under these two conditions.

Without getting too far afield, I have no qualms with the CC, per se. It's more about how simplistically it's been designed and deployed. It's just not sustainable in the real world business market. The problem is not the "license terms" and the structure of the legal contracts--those are all just fine. It's the fact that the system can be gamed so easily by both buyers and sellers, that it's too unreliable to be sustainable beyond a small handful of casual users (by comparison to the larger market of stock imagery). The true protections for both buyers and sellers is to leverage the copyright registration mechanism. That is, creative commons images that are also registered with the copyright office lowers the risk both both buyers and sellers, as explained in that article. Since no one is building copyright registration into their online business models, and the CC itself has a fundamental objection to the concept of copyright in the first place, the CC will be relegated to an historical footnote , bringing strength back to the for-fee licensing model. And which brings us back to why I'd always argued that Flickr should have enabled image licensing.

So, why is this all good for the photo licensing industry? I articulate this answer in the blog entry I wrote on March 15, 2007 in the article titled, "Photo-sharing-licensing sites leveling the playing field."

As more companies engage in the business of licensing images, photographers with credibility will gravitate to the sites that offer a better return on their money... In a way, this is how photo agencies started in the very beginning, only better: because photographers don't have to be "accepted," the playing field is much more level, and the market forces can be more free to let the money flow to those who really do merit the higher earnings (rather than at the whim of photo editors). The buyer, it turns out, is the best photo editor, and it will be pretty clear in short order which sites are hosting good, honest content.

I summarize with another excerpt from that article:

...the most basic, fundamental truism about photography remains: there are more people who have it as a hobby than as a profession, and the barrier to entry is low... the honeymoon period for Getty will end once photo-sharing sites become new outlets for photographers where the open market can decide their rates."

2009 Year in Review: Web Optimization

In this second segment of my series, "2009: Year in Review," I discuss issues related to managing my web presence. Some of these methods directly result in income, such as advertising dollars, whereas others indirectly affect income, such my ranking in search engines or by directing traffic towards monetizable content. Nothing discussed here addresses my actual sales and licensing methods, which was addressed in Part 1 of this series.

Web Traffic and Advertising

Traffic to my site has marginally increased by 16% from the same time last year (2008). More specifically, I averaged about 15,000 visitors a day in 2009, but the number would have been much higher had it not been for a technical mis-decision I made during the summer months that dramatically dropped my rankings, which had to do with "keyword stuffing", discussed later. Normalizing for that, my traffic has been pretty steady at around 16-18K unique visitors a day, compared to 14-15K/day in 2008. (Stats can be seen here.)

While that may sound impressive, it's not that simple. There are a number of devils in the details, and sifting through the data is only half the battle. For example, the bounce rate (the rate at which people leave my site after viewing the first page) rose to 8.5%, and the average time on site dropped by 11%. In other words, people are leaving my site sooner than before.

One would think that this is a bad thing, but there's other data that suggests otherwise. For example, advertising revenue more than doubled; in some cases (some pages and topics) tripled and quadrupled. All those people "bouncing" away without spending time on my site are clicking on ads. For 2009, advertising revenue jumped to represent 17% of total income.

One might say that I'm losing potential buyers to advertisers, but that's not what's going on. Most of the ads on my site are not for photography prints or licensing, which is the lion's share of my online transactions. That is, people are clicking on ads because they decidedly do not want anything I have to offer. I don't care that they leave; it just so happens that they're paying me a effective "exit tax." Or rather, the people who are getting my traffic are paying that tax.

Indeed, this turns out to be mutually beneficial: advertisers whose own sites don't rank well for some search terms, actually get a lot more relevant traffic from my site than they would if they paid to get onto Google's search page directly. That is, they'll pay ten cents to a dollar per click to put an ad on my page (through Google's adwords program), compared to twice or three times that much to put the same ad on Google's search results page. They may not quite get the same number of total traffic, but they'll get much more relevant traffic that converts to revenue if they place those ads on my site (or any of the other top-ranked sites). This kind of advertising-indirection costs them less, they get better bang for the buck. Best of all, I get a cut of it. :-)

I should point out that this isn't always so straightforward for advertisers, because targeting a specific site can be costly (in the form of lost opportunity, not necessarily money) if that site isn't consistently well-ranked. That is, if they target a site that appears to rank well sporadically (because their content changes), they could get a boost of traffic for a short time, and then go dark. Since my site has been around for a long time and is generally stable, this risk is not a concern.

In fact, many advertisers come directly to me and pay me to put their ads on my pages, rather than going through Google. There are advertising aggregators that have clients that pay them to do this analysis, and my site is coming up more often in their radar. My advertising rates are not based on clicks or impressions; they're flat fee rates, which advertisers like a lot for a high-traffic site like mine.

This then begs the question: what was the actual end-user looking for that they landed on my site, even though I didn't have what they were looking for? Why am I ranked so highly for them? Isn't that a problem with the search results?

First of all, the bounce rates are still quite low. Google does accurately put users on pages that match their searches. Of the low number of people who bounce, it's usually because they used the wrong search terms in the first place, and Google couldn't possibly know that ahead of time.

Take the Olympics in Vancouver, for example. If you search for "photos of vancouver", I'm currently ranked #8 on Google. (Before the Olympics, I was ranked among the top three.) So, I get a lot of people looking for olympics photos, even though they didn't use the term, "olympics" in their search query. When they don't see such images on my Vancouver page, users click on an ad that gets them where they wanted to go.

Vancouver is only one of a long list of examples. At the moment, I score very highly for phrases like:

1. "black and white pictures" (Google Rank: #4)
2. "what kind of camera should I buy" (#6),
3. "learning photography" (#2)
4. "photography business" (#1)
5. "model release" (#1)
6. "star trails" (#1)
7. "fill flash" (#1)
8. "photographing people" (#1)
9. "selling prints" (#1)
10. "photography marketing" (#3)
11. "sahara desert" (#5)
12. "stairs" (#6)
13. "photos of doors" (#1)
14. "photos of new york city" (#3)
15. "photos of san francisco" (#1)
16. "photos of kids" (#1)
17. "photos of united states" (#1)
18. "photos of patagonia" (#3)
19. "photos of cuba" (#1)

These are but a few among hundreds of phrases that Google ranks my site and/or pages among the top-five. But the key is that these terms are generic and they themselves do not bring traffic that can be attributed to a single dime of sales revenue.

While they are good for generating advertising revenue, there's an even better benefit to ranking high for generic search patterns: Non-buyer traffic out-strips buyers by orders of magnitude, and any traffic--buyers or not--contributes to the overall ranking of my site. When people search using more specific terms (for content that they do want to purchase), my site will rise in those search results, yielding sales.

So the objective is to have as many pages rank as highly as possible. One key strategy here is that I don't particularly care to rank highly for any single or small set of search terms--that doesn't necessarily benefit me. It's just having my site itself be indexed well for whatever content the search engines deem appropriate. And therein lies the question: how do they determine what search terms should send users to my site? Since they cannot determine what's inside of a photo the way a human eye does, search engines look for other clues to determine the content of a page that otherwise has very little text: metadata.

Keywording

I've blogged before about keywording; it's a huge topic. I'm not going to reiterate points I already made, but to appreciate how and why I employ my keywording methods, you need to at least understand this very basic set of truisms:

1. Most image buyers use search engines first, stock agencies second.
   Search engines act like "metasearch" for all the stock sites, as well as many other image sources, including mine, yours, everyone else's. It's best to use keywording techniques advised by search engines, not stock photo agencies.
2. Search engines are intelligent about search queries.
   Unlike days long ago, they know all the synonyms that are related to a common root. So, you do not need to include the singular and plurals, all the variants of "dog" (canine, puppy, pooch, etc.), and so on. What's more, intelligent search is becoming more common, even among stock agencies. The need to stuff your images with synonyms and other related keywords to make your list "more thorough or complete" is gone. In fact, attempting to do so can backfire on you. (More about that later.)
3. Controlled Vocabularies are a complete waste of time.
   There was once a time when such lists were useful, because it made the job of image search much easier for unsophisticated (brute force) search algorithms. Controlled vocabularies helped you use a small, consistent set of words, which kept you from using dozens of similar words that might come up with different search results when the user input search queries.
   
   While that premise was useful, it only addresses half the equation: the weakest link in search is not you, it's the end-users. Or rather, the search queries they submit. These people are not going to conform to controlled vocabularies. So, in order to map their queries to your images, their input text has to be converted to root words anyway. If the search algorithm is going to do this to end-user queries, it can (and should) also do it with your keyword list. Forcing you to conform to a list becomes a waste of time.
4. Keywording should take only a few minutes and minimal thought.
   It's very easy to over-think how people might find your images, or to worry that your images might not be found if someone uses a series of queries that you didn't think of. But this kind of over-thinking can negatively affect if and how your images are found. End-users learn very quickly to be very conservative in their search queries, or they will get a lot of irrelevant results, rapidly wasting their time. They may experiment with creative, conceptual, or "refined" queries to see what they get, but it doesn't take long to learn to "keep it simple." So should you. Keywords should include only the most basic, obvious, and prominent items in the photo. Search engines also rank the quality of photos (and the sites that host them) on their brevity. More than ten keywords will diminish a photo's rank because it usually means that someone is going to stuff the keyword list with unrelated words in an attempt to game the system. This is a common technique among photographers who submit their images to dozens of microstock agencies who do not enforce such restrictions, and who use brute-force (letter-for-letter) search algorithms. Keyword stuffing--also known as "keyword pollution"--has proven to be effective for such photo sites because it allows those images to be found ahead of other, potentially more relevant results for any given search.

In fact, I fell victim to "keyword stuffing" myself midway through 2009. In my automated keyword algorithms, which normally strips redundant or "similar" keywords, I had thought I was being clever by adding in location information (city, state, country) into the keyword list. Yet, what I found was that because the IPTC data already had these keywords, which search engines tap into, and because my keyword list grew (unnecessarily) by three more words, this dropped my rankings down by several notches, which kept me out of the "top fold" of search engine results. It's a huge deal dropping from #3 to #6 or #7 for a given search term, and you can see the results of this in my site traffic data over the summer of 2009.

Needless to say, this cost me quite a bit in traffic, which affected every other aspect of my business, from sales to advertising rates.

You can imagine, therefore, that "effective keywording" (so that images and website are deemed "credible" and ranked highly) is a hotly debated issue in the photo community. It's also one where entrepreneurs try to come up with solutions--some good, some not so much.

One example is a product "imense annotator" (annotator.imense.com), which has some interesting ideas, such as an image-recognition algorithm that tries to guess keywords that might describe the people in an image. It will do a reasonable job in ascertaining the ages, sex and ethnicity of people in a photo, and then attach those keywords to your images. Clever, and possibly quite useful more to a stock agency than an individual. This is because agencies have millions of images to process, none of which have been (or will be) seen by company staff. On the other hand, original photographers that shot the images could do this task quite easily on their own. One can only shoot so many images in a day, and since one has to eventually go through a manual (if not minimal) keywording phase anyway, one can assign the keywords associated with the "people" photos as part of that process. This shouldn't be all that time-consuming for reasonably well-disciplined photographers. And human analysis on such things is always going to outperform a computer. (Yes, I say this as an active programmer.)

(Note: The annotator only does people/facial recognition.)

All other aspects of annotator look and sound cool, but are considerably less effective in practicality. Again, these include "commercial vocabularies", "crowdsourcing" and "controlled vocabularies." As noted earlier, these ultimately contribute to the perils of keyword stuffing that search engines don't like--and which only serve to confuse stock agencies' less sophisticated search algorithms.

Another thing to keep in mind is keywording is often done once, and then you never touch those particular images again. Therefore, whatever you use as keywords today are likely to stick with your images long into the future. But technology doesn't sit still--especially image-recognition and search algorithms. For these, time has a tendency to speed by rather quickly. Before you know it, most search engines will be incorporating the same sort of algorithms like the annotator above. In fact, Google's own image recognition features are rather well developed, and can be seen in action if you use their Picasa image management solutions.

In any event, the point is that keywording is a classic case where "less is more." Images should have minimal base tokens in the keyword list; the search "intermediary" interprets the uncontrolled end-user queries and maps them to the minimal keyword list in your images. This is and will always be the most effective way for images to be found.

While I don't necessarily fault software companies for coming up with creative ways to "enhance" keywording, I draw the line when companies actually recommend methods and behaviors that are wholly counter-productive. An example is Cradoc Software's latest product, fotoKeyword Harvester, a product that does a form of semi-automation of keywording your images. While I am a fan of the company in many ways because it tries to also be the photographer's "coach" on many vital business matters, it has never been on the forefront of the photo business--rather, they seem to be stuck in the 1990s with many of them. Alas, most of their advice, while applicable 10-15 years ago, is well behind the times today.

In the case of the Keyword Harvester, the company sent out an article titled, "best ways to keyword images using concepts and attributes." A quote is: "You'll need to start paying attention to how images convey messages in advertising." They say:

One of the most valuable types of keywords for an image are things called Concepts. A concept is a term that describes non-concrete aspects of your image, an abstract idea. Concepts are used by advertisers to sell their product with the use of your image. They want the consumer to think of something specific when their product is thought of. (...) For example: Wells Fargo Bank uses images of cowboys, wagon trains, horses, and the wild west to promote their business. The concepts for these images are: excitement, freedom, trust, historic, strong, powerful.

There are several problems with all this. First is one I highlighted above in my bullet list: photo searchers (commercial or not) do not use conceptual search terms very often--at least, not with much success as they once did when the stock industry was far smaller, before digital images, and before the internet--a time when almost all stock sales were dominated by Getty Images. Back then, yes, conceptual keywords worked. And this was because Getty internally controlled all keywords for all images. Also, they had their own intelligent search, and they controlled the images in their databank.

Today, images are found in many places, are keyworded by arbitrary staff--or worse, photographers--and the consistency is impossible to centralize and manage. The direct result is that photo buyers don't search the way they once did. (This is an example of Cradoc seems to be stuck in the 1990s.)

It's easy to put this to the test: go to images.google.com and search for the "conceptual keywords" that Cradoc said represented the kind of themes Wells Fargo uses in their imagery. I tried every word on their list, as individual search terms, in pairs, in triplets, and as the entire group. Not one single set of results from these queries contained images that would ever be used by Wells Fargo. They are totally unrelated to all their business models. This is not unique; it's rarely ever the case that conceptual keyword searches yield desirable results. That's why most searchers don't use them anymore.

By contrast, if you search for images based on the actual elements used by Wells Fargo imagery -- cowboys, wagon trains, horses -- image search results show many images similar to those the bank actually uses.

Again, the lesson: keep it simple. Don't get clever. Do not try to anticipate what the searcher might use as search terms. Photo researchers are more afraid of you than you are of them. They are going to keep it simple, too.

I can verify this with my own statistics: My site gets about 19,000 search queries a day on my own search pages. Of the search terms I get, 99% are for very specific items. Furthermore, when someone actually licenses an image from me, and I track their search patterns that lead up to the sale, it is never the case that people use conceptual terms.

In preparation for this article, I interviewed one particular client about how he tends to search for images. He said, "I found that sites are so inconsistent about search terms, that I've learned not to use big words. Just be as specific as possible to the actual things I want to see in a photo."

When I asked him how he chose the particular photo he licensed from me, and what search terms he used leading up to it, he said he wanted a "futuristic landscape." When he tried that phrase (and derivatives, such as "future" and "cityscape") on Google, Getty and Corbis, he got nothing like what he wanted. So, he just got specific: "glowing buildings", which lead him to the image he licensed from my site, which can be seen here.

Keywording Methods

So, let's get to brass tacks: how should you keyword your images? Google has a document called, Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, which includes tips on optimizing your images for search. It all boils down to:

1. The image's filename should include the most relevant elements of the image.
   For example, if it's a photo of a boy and a dog, use "boy-dog.jpg". If you have many such images, use sequences: boy-dog-1.jpg, boy-dog-2.jpg, etc.
2. Use keywords sparsely.
   The more keywords you try to associate with an image, the more you dilute it, bringing down its "rank" and relevancy (and credibility) with search engines, or with given search queries. This is because search engines use two key metrics to determine how well a given image matches a search parameter: the ratio of matches between an image's keyword list and that of the search query, and the filename of the image. For example, if the user entered the query, "boy and dog", the search engine sees two words: "boy" and "dog." (It throws out filler words like "and.") Here, the image named, boy-dog.jpg has a 100% hit ratio of query terms with keyword terms, and the keywords were in the filename. Note that the actual photo itself may very well be that of a fish and a boat. (Google doesn't actually look at that, because, well, it doesn't know how.)
3. Avoid using synonyms and other "related" terms in keyword lists
   That is, do not attempt to be thorough in describing images with keywords. That's not your job. Search engines already know how to do that. They've got thousands of programmers with PhDs doing that for you (and for the end-user). The more you try to "help," the more you're actually interfering with the process, which reduces your relevancy and ranking.

The good news about keywording is that proper and effective use of keywords is extremely simple and shouldn't require much (if any) thought or time. Using myself as an example, my workflow involves two phases: the edit phase (where I rename all my photos so that their filenames reflect their content), and the keywording phase, where I apply individual words to images--usually in very large batches.

For example, let's say I'm on a photo shoot of a boy and a dog. After editing out the stuff that gets tossed, I'm left with several hundred images, where I then name them just as recommended by Google: boy-dog-lake.jpg, boy-dog-bridge.jpg, boy-dog-1.jpg, etc. In order to assure the highest ratio of search queries to keyword terms, I try to limit filenames to two to six words, though most are either three or four. This is a difficult decision because if I use too many words, I may "match" more queries, but the ratio will be diluted. If I use too few words, I will rank highly for very narrow searches, but may miss more opportunities. This trade-off is a zero-sum game, so rather than try to game the system, I just be honest: determine what's in the photo, and use that as the filename.

Any words that may be "in" the photo, but seems to be less relevant are then added to the keywords list in the image's metadata. And even then, I rarely add more than two or three words, usually modifiers such as "young" or "funny."

Naming files is often very quick because most are batches of similar images. One only needs to browse a given gallery on my site to see the number of similar images that are shot together. The keywording process is similarly fast, also involving mass-assignment of specific, unambiguous words to large batches of images. My rule of thumb is that keywording thousands of images should take no more than 30 minutes.

Most any image-management software can add keywords; I happen to use Adobe Bridge, which is bundled for free with Photoshop or any of the creative suite products.

Note that if you inspect the images on my site, you may notice that they appear to have lots of keywords. Most of these keywords aren't actually in the images that I process--these are added later by an automated post-production algorithm that generates all my static html pages. I do all this to present hints to the end-user for suggested related search terms to stimulate new search ideas.

Maps

The newest addendum to my website is the use of Google Maps. Essentially, each of my web pages incorporates a google map to represent where every photo was taken. While it may seem frivolous, there's been great advantage to the maps. (It also wasn't entirely easy; Google set up the whole mechanism for the sole purpose of presenting maps based on specific street and/or mailing addresses. I have no interest in that level of detail; I just wanted to generate maps for generic locations, like city/state/country. Well, that isn't quite so easy because there are many streets named after cities, states and countries, and there's no way to tell Google maps that I'm not interested in street addresses, just general city maps.)

Though I instituted maps onto my site late in December, the effect its had on my traffic and ranking has been a surprise. Search engines seem to give extra boost to web pages that are geo-tagged--that is, they indicate location. When people search for images where the search parameters include a location, my pages get an additional bump. I've seen about a 10% boost in traffic two months after having introduced geo-tagging onto my web pages, and I look forward to seeing more data to quantify the extent to which geo-tagging has long-term benefits.

2009 Year in Review: Content Remains King

In this first segment of my series, "2009: Year in Review," I discuss the role content has played on my business.

As I've preached since the dawn of my writings on the business of photography, the best way to make money on the web is to create as much content as possible. Having more inventory to sell is only a part of the benefit—indeed, a much smaller role than people may think in some cases, as I'll articulate shortly. The main reason content is so important is because it's the nucleus of all other revenue sources and business activity. Content plays an important role for search engines, which not only allow people to find you, but provides other sites with links. As links build, your search rankings increase, which increases traffic, which feed these various revenue streams. I discuss this principle in general in my chapter, Web-based Photography Business, which is part of my series of photo business books. (I discuss 2009's numbers more specifically in the next article in this series.)

As a general business model, I follow my own advice to others: Almost everything you do should ultimately result in new, monetizable content. Once you have it, you can make money with it in perpetuity, with very little (if any) additional overhead or resources. Outside of some initial short-term costs and overhead, your business can scale up to virtually any size by merely adding new content. Whatever short-term income or expense that may be involved in acquiring new content, it should be regarded as part of your investment in the future. (That is, the short term pay or income is less important as the long-term potential.) I'll get back to this subject shortly.

Though people monetize their content in different ways, I happen to choose to be the exclusive licensor of my own content. That is, I do not use stock agencies or other distribution models. I usually recommend this approach to people as a default assumption when considering entering into the photo industry, but one can certainly leverage the sales resources of agencies, if done properly from the outset.

Given that I have over 60,000 images in my online archives now, and the manner in which content can be leveraged so easily, it may come as a big surprise to learn that licensing of still photography only represented 5.8% of my total revenue for 2009, compared to 16.9% in 2008. But don't take this bad news.

First, still photography (the majority of the content on my website) is what I call the "gateway drug" for my clients. People discover my site primarily because of my still images, and end up making more lucrative transactions later. The fact that still imagery licensing has dropped as a percentage of total revenue is more due to the much larger increases in other, more lucrative revenue streams (discussed later). This further underscores the importance of having a robust and diverse business model that can survive (and even benefit from) shifts in the economy. In this context, the recession may have caused some people to spend less, but it also caused others to shift their spending towards me. Those "others" is a much larger population, even though each spends less on a per-transaction basis.

For example, my fine-art sales represented 19.5% of my revenue, up from 12.7% in 2008. This can be entirely explained by the economy and shifting demographics. Buyers on my site in 2008 and prior had been low-end art collectors and enthusiasts (see Selling Photography Prints), whose average purchase was $232 per order. By contrast, 2009 saw the average drop to $188 per order, but I got a lot more orders. Though I may have lost art collectors, they were replaced by high-end consumers were who shifted their spending from more expensive gifts (such as jewelry, etc.) to photography.

Assignments

In light of my prior blog articles on the principles of economics for photographers, assignments are also extremely critical to the acquisition of content. Many photographers scoff at the notion of accepting "low pay" for assignments, or even doing them for free, but this is extremely short-sighted and self-defeating. Acquisition of extremely valuable imagery is key to long-term revenue generation, and assignments are pivotal to that objective. If you choose your assignments well, then the "fee" you charged—be it a lot or a little—is, and should represent a very small proportion of the revenue you yield from the photos you just took. In other words, if you're only revenue form an assignment is the assignment fee, you have an outdated business model; you simply cannot compete in today's modern internet-based economy, especially when millions of people are taking pictures themselves. That assignment rates go down may be an unfortunate side-effect of this growth, but it is merely a blip on the screen when it comes to a mature photo business model.

I'm not dismissing the potential income from an assignment; I never leave money on the table. If the client is well-endowed and I can negotiate higher fees, I do so. Mind you, negotiation is an entirely different subject, which I discuss in greater length here and here. But negotiation is only about optimizing what you can get, and should not be confused with whether you should take an assignment (regardless of price). In short, in mature business and career planning, assignments should be regarded as one-off payments for opportunities to acquire useful images that last into the future. When you amortize your assignment fees over the course of time, it should be negligible. (There are assignments I shot in 1996 that still generate revenue.)

Assignments represented 12.1% of my 2009 revenue, up from 4% in 2008. This substantial increase is due to both an increase in the number of assignments I took, and the amount I charge per assignment. As I said, I don't leave money on the table, despite the fact that I face the same market conditions as everyone else—namely, attempts by other photographers to under-bid me, even offering to shoot for free.

So, why would my clients pay me a higher rate than they used to, despite the increased competition? Because I provide something that cannot be supplanted by the lowest bidder: a track record. My experience, quality, reliability, and maturity in the industry is important to clients that cannot afford to risk getting a photographer to shoot something for free, yet end up with images they can't use, or other bad side effects of working with an inexperienced photographer.

I also choose clients wisely. I don't seek or need clients who can and should be serviced by emerging photographers. My motto is, "real clients don't need newbies." (Any photographer that complains about being harmed by newbies should have moved up and out long ago into the next tier of their profession.)

People often ask how I come up with my assignment fees. It's actually a very simple calculus of two factors: the client's financial condition, and the "value" of the images I can get. Remember, this doesn't govern whether I take an assignment, just what I charge for it once I deem it worthwhile. I emphatically dismiss all of the fee calculators that you see in books and on blogs. For example, most pros will say you should factor in your "costs" for any given assignment into your fee, whereas I feel costs are entirely irrelevant. I am never concerned with whether I'm making a profit for any given assignment because—remember—the true value of any given job is the longer-term potential with the images. Thinking about purely the fees for an assignment prevents you from focusing on career growth.

While I do generate good revenue from assignments, I will still shoot some for free. Last year I'd done two very important assignments, one was for free, and for another, I spent $3200 of my own money to fulfill the job. In this case, I knew that the imagery itself was invaluable. (And indeed it has already paid for itself in the aftermarket.) Better still, once my clients saw the results of the work, I not only sold them additional content that they didn't anticipate, but I got follow-on work to do exactly the same thing at twice my normal billing rate.

Still Photos

Over the past year, I've added about 30,000-40,000 new images, all
entirely from assignments. These include:

1. Cambodia (Siem Reap, Cambodia)
   
2. Laos (Southeast Asia)
   
3. Croatia (Europe)
   
4. Puglia (Apuglia) (The 'Heel' of Italy)
   
5. Jerusalem (Israel)
   
6. Paris, France
   
7. Oregon (USA)
   
8. The State of Idaho (USA)
   

Not included in this list are projects that I haven't yet gotten online, plus thousands of images added to existing galleries, mostly in and around California, such as Marin County (California), San Francisco, California, up and down the central valley, the The California Coast (USA) to the The Sierras (California). I've also expanded my topical pages, such as Doors and Windows, Stairs and Steps, Random Black and White Photographs, and other topics.

Video

As noted above, and in keeping with Truism #4 of my treatise, the Photography Business (1998), my latest expansion into new revenue resources includes video. As you know, video online has been increasing, and the technology required to produce quality video has come down. This has given many people an opportunity to expand their licensing potential in ways they never could before. I'm encroaching into the video turf much the same way consumers have encroached on the pro photography turf when digital cameras and the internet became inexpensive and accessible back in the 1990s.

Prior to 2009, I licensed no video footage. Yet it instantly grew to represent 12.2% of my 2009 revenue. Most of it is time-lapse photography, which I'd produced mostly as a curiosity that I stumbled into when I discovered my camera's cable release had an interval timer setting.

Most surprising about my video revenue is the fact that I have never promoted or solicited my videos. In fact, aside from my blog comments, I never even made it known that I had video content. I hadn't upgraded or enhanced my site in any way to host or license video content, and the only access to it is this page, which is merely a collection of links directly to my YouTube channel.

Needless to say, the natural viral marketing effect of YouTube is self-evident.

One then asks: if my site doesn't support it, and I can't license it through YouTube, how am I conducting transactions? Email! This is exactly how my stock photo business started. From 1996 to 2003, I had never had a shopping cart—buyers simply emailed me and asked to license images, and they'd send me a check.

Of course, that wasn't that unusual back then—few stock photo sites existed, let alone had automated shopping/purchasing systems, so buyers accepted it more readily back then. Times are different now, and so are expectations. All the more reason why I'm as surprised by the degree of video licensing I've done using this archaic model.

That said, I expect to integrate video licensing on my site soon enough.

It should be noted that one reason why my time-lapse footage commands such a high price is because of the way I shoot it. Rather than use a video camera, I use my conventional still cameras and capture each frame in full resolution: 5600 pixels wide. I then string them together into video sequences using either iMovie (for presentation onto YouTube) or Final Cut Express to retain the full ultra-high-resolution. In fact, these clips are so high-res, buyers can pan and zoom within the sequences down to ¼ of the original footage, and still retain enough resolution to achieve 1920 HD. (And even then, most video buyers don't really need 1920 anyway.)

None of this is possible using conventional video cameras, nor is it offered by other video-production service providers. And of course, the quality is much higher than video footage because night-time image detail in a pro-level dSLR far exceeds anything in the video camera category, even the amazing Red One. This strategy anticipates not just every possible buyer, but prepares for the future as well.

One might think that this is a huge shift in my day-to-day shooting. That's where the best news is: shooting time-lapse footage is as easy as setting up a camera for a conventional landscape shot, but instead of pressing the shutter button once, I press the interval timer, and then go away. For all-night images, I just go to bed; for daytime footage, I use my other camera body and shoot stills while the time-lapse body snaps away every 3-5 seconds. This is not to suggest that all time-lapse is easy (or yields successful sequences), it's only to say that it doesn't interfere with my existing shooting patterns.

Note that the videos on my YouTube site do not represent all the footage I've done, either in time-lapse or conventional capture. I've done a number of productions for clients as an addendum to my standard still-photography services. So, I haven't really grown a new business model as much as enhanced my existing assignment services. Also note that my Canon EOS 5D Mark II, the body that I use in standard still photography, also captures HD video, where I do get short segments of conventional video clips. (Always adding to my "content.")

Lastly, don't assume by any of this that I'm moving towards video and abandoning still photography. The kind of video I'm doing is just the low-hanging fruit that happens to be available given my set of conditions (equipment, talent and clients). I am by no means a true videographer that could be hired by a television network to produce content for broadcast. That said, the future of video licensing looks very, very bright, and it would be something I would strongly encourage other photographers to do if they had a propensity for the technology and the clients that would use it.

Consulting and Business Development

2009 saw a big decrease in my consulting revenue largely because I'm shifting away from that business model. I've always used it as a vehicle for conducting research into new and interesting areas of the photo industry. However, my interests are shifting into new directions, and I'm finding that the information many people seek is becoming repetitive, and ultimately fruitless. I'll be posting future articles on some of those initiatives.

Nevertheless, one of the side benefits of all this research is that I produce a lot more content that's not only indexed well by search engines (which brings me traffic, which helps my content sales), but it also leads to publishing revenue. As most of my readers know, I have written a few books on the photo business, which continue to sell quite well on my website. Even though they are "old" by publishing standards, I wrote them with longevity in mind, as they address timeless business principles. In 2009, my book sales and other publishing revenue (see below) represented 12.8% of my income, compared to 14.9% of 2008 revenue. (This aspect of my revenue is and always has been rather constant.)

Another noteworthy fact is that my site outsells ever other book retailer on the net by many orders of magnitude. And I negotiated the contracts with my publishers with this in mind—I don't mind taking less royalty advances on my books in exchange for very advantageous discounts for direct purchasing from them. Though my contemporaries in the photo business publishing world may sell more books on amazon than I do, I sell far more total books because of the volume on my site. There's also the fact that I get $10-15/book, whereas my counterparts get maybe 10-15% royalties on those amazon sales. (I'm guessing these royalties translate to about $1.50 to $2 per book.)

Then there's the revenue I get from publishers who reprint some of these blog entries (condensed down to 1500 words—yuck!) in their columns and newsletters. Interestingly, most are from non-US publishers. (One was translated into Russian. I got a copy. It was weird to see.)

The next article in the series will cover Web Traffic and Visitors, Search Engine Optimization, and advertising revenue. Stay tuned.