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Photography has been around for a long time so any company that joins this market has to face a lot of competition. To succeed, new companies joining the business have to offer a technological advantage over the previous market leader. Wemark hopes to become the most popular platform for digital image sales.
Its competition is against image agencies that market and sell images. Instead of following the business model of agencies, Wemark hopes that it can use blockchain technology to lower its operating costs and pass those savings to the photographers and image buyers. Wemark is up against some strong competition.
Getty Images is currently a revered place for photographers as it tends to sell images at a high premium. Even though it gives photographers just 20% of the price tag, it tends to sell image downloads for several hundred dollars and that means photographers can get a decent income per image download.
The severe problem with Getty is that if a photographer wants to hand over an image them, that image cannot be sold or issued as a stock image anywhere else. The photographers completely lose control of their image. What’s worse is that Getty can decline images with little explanation for cause of rejection. Additionally, it only notifies photographers about sales data once a month. Photographers have to wait long periods of time to improve their image’s descriptions to pull in more buyers.
Wemark’s existence as a marketplace allows it to be a far better business. Photographers sell their images themselves to the customers and this means there isn’t a need to screen every single image thoroughly. Photographers also get to see their sales in real-time because they are the ones selling them and this means they can improve how they pitch their image continuously. Because they are the ones selling them, they do not hand over their rights to Wemark. Photographers have the ability to put their image anywhere.
One more important factor. Getty Images’ corporate partners are allowed to purchase images at very deep discounts (as much as 90%+). Since Getty controls the image’s price, the photographers have no control over how their time and effort is valued. This won’t be the care on Wemark.
While Getty Images can occasionally allow a photographers to earn a special rate of 20% on a high ticket photo, most image agencies sell images for prices at their discretion and give photographers rates as low as 15% (iStock) or a fixed amount which can be as low as 25 cents per image download (Shutterstock).
Many image agencies, including Getty, have a huge response wait time. If a photographer submits a photo, the photo could take as much as 6 week to be approved for a listing. Additionally, the photo could get rejected with almost no feedback or reasoning. Some, like Adobe Stock, can reject a photo for not having commercial value. This means photographers have to consider potential demand from a business rather than creativity if they want to even have the opportunity to make money.
All such factors are inexistent with an image marketplace. People and businesses can go and buy the image they want Photographers can sell the image they want and whether it has commercial value is up to customers to decide rather than a centralized business. There is no 6-week wait time, and rather than getting 15% of the income, Wemark takes a 15% fee and the rest belongs to the photographer.
The conditions photographers have to deal with to make money with image agencies are striking. Wemark is an obvious upgrade and most photographers will be happy to work with an image marketplace rather than just another image agency.
