Trends alter the way we as consumers view the world we live in and the products we use every day. For example, 2009 saw the rise of the “netbook” computer as an auxiliary device for the home or travel, and 2010 has already seen the first launches of tablet-style computers.  As these devices proliferate and we become increasingly reliant on Web-based applications for everyday business, the paperless office and the wireless world we once dreamed of are becoming a reality. At the same time, growing adoption of these various devices means that demand for new content is greater than ever.  
 
What does this mean for me?

Keeping an eye on trends in the marketplace is essential to making your work as a content creator relevant to buyers. For example, trends in the technology sector change not only the way we do business but affect the way we spend our free time. Staying one step ahead of the curve and identifying trends in images that may interest corporate and other clients, including art directors at marketing and advertising firms, editorial outlets and other businesses that use images, may seem like an impossible task. But with all the resources available on the Web it should be part of your business strategy.

Last year, we talked about how in today’s photo marketplace, it helps to cultivate a specialty. Whatever your specialty, trends affect every aspect of your work and how it will be received in the marketplace.  This is the first in an occasional series that will identify upcoming trends and what they may mean for your business. Listed below are some of the big trends from 2009 that will continue to influence us into 2010 and beyond. In future posts, we’ll explore some of these trends in more depth. Meanwhile, keep these trends in mind as you market yourself to clients in the months ahead: 

Going Green Green may be an overused term that covers a very diverse range of industries and topics, but in 2010 there is no denying that it affects all of us. Whether you are talking about renewable energy, reducing carbon emissions or upgrading the windows in your home to save money on power, the thinking behind going green is simple. Save money, create jobs and make the most of what we have.

The Cloud Cloud computing is the phrase of the day in the IT world with more companies moving to cloud-based solutions. Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering a hosted service over the internet. Software, infrastructure and development platforms are run as a service. All a consumer needs is a computer with an internet connection. Cloud-based computing greatly reduces the cost of running and maintaining servers, software and IT support. The ability to access enormous amounts of data from multiple locations at very low cost is allowing companies across the world to build elaborate applications with easily scalable virtually unlimited amounts of computing resources, customer storage and IT services.

Are there any trends you’re seeing that are important to photographers and are not mentioned above? If so, please let us know by posting them in the comments section below.

We’re pleased to announce several new features now available!  We’ve received a lot of great feedback from many you over the last couple months and the LicenseStream team has been hard at work developing some of your requested features. There are 6 new features we‘ve highlighted in our newsletter and that we’d like to highlight in our LicenseStream Insight blog as well.

1. Customize your LicenseStream Store:  You can now customize the look of your store by including your logo in the top-left corner.  With this new feature,  you can keep the continuity of your brand throughout your LicenseStream store.  Simply go into your “Store Manager” and click on the “Logo” tab to upload your own business logo.
   

   



2. Showcase Your Galleries:  This addition lets you display Galleries as the top level of content within a store.  It’s a great way to showcase your galleries so buyers can instantly see a wider sampling of your work.  Be sure to sort your content in the order that you want it displayed.   You can easily refer back to our blog on how to easily sort and display your images in your galleries.


3. Give Your Gallery a Unique URL:  Give your Gallery a unique URL so that you can promote it via your website, blog, or e-mail to your clients.  We’ve made it easy to add one. Simply click on the Manage Gallery link inside of your Gallery and start promoting your Galleries now!  Stay tuned -- soon we’ll post information on this blog about promoting your work through social media outlets.


4. Link to you Store from Google Search:  We’ve also added a link to your store from the Licensing page.  Now when a buyer finds your image, video, or other digital content via Google Search, your LicenseStream store or published elsewhere on the Web, they will be directed to the Licensing page and will see a link to your store, where they can view your other works as well.  With this addition, LicenseStream offers buyers another way to discover more of your work!
   

   



5. Improve Your Metadata:  We think keywording and other search engine optimization (SEO) practices are very important for promoting your images and video content.  After all, if you put content onto the Web without good keywording, potential customers are less likely to find your content.  As you may have read in our previous blog posts, we have some great tips about the Dos and Don’ts of SEO Practices, including keywording.  When adding or updating metadata from your ‘Prepare’ page or the ‘Edit’ option on your thumbnails, you can now opt to have your updated metadata embedded in your content.  What this means is that changes made to your keywords and metadata to refine and improve your search results will be attached to your image. Follow as many of the SEO tips as you can and make a practice of implementing them in your LicenseStream Store.


6. Delete a Pending Invoice:  Before we added this feature, if you had a pending invoice for a specific image, and you wanted to delete the image from your gallery or store, you wouldn’t be able to delete it.  Now you can delete a pending invoice and then delete the image from your gallery or store.

We’d love to hear your ideas for new features to help your LicenseStream business. Click here to send us your ideas.

Implementing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices is critical to maximizing the potential of your business. We want to continue the conversation begun two weeks ago about SEO practices. In our previous blog post, we focused on the “Don’ts” of SEO. In this post, we want to point out the steps you can take to improve your SEO. The goal is to ensure your website remains listed on any search index and that – most importantly – buyers can easily find your images, video clips, and other digital content. We also call out a few other SEO practices designed to help you convert visitors to your site into customers.

1. Know your Keywords: If you want to see what keywords people are using in their search queries check out Wordtracker’s free keyword suggestion tool.  Once you see where the keywords you use rank, determine whether they’re paying off for you.  Keywords used in only one search query, may not be offering you the best return.  However, for as much as you’d like to use broad keywords that are queried more frequently, balance that approach with specific keywords that describe your image.  For example:  “Labrador dog yellow, show dog, local dog show 2009, champion first place Labrador winner, Champion Fido the First.”  Such a set of keywords covers the broad category of Labrador dog, details about the dog’s name, information on the show that you photographed, and indicates that this is an image of the first-place winner.
   
   
2. Keep Keywords in focus:  When you’re writing content for your Web pages, be sure that you are incorporating the keywords used in your title and in your metadata to keep your keyword strategy focused and on target.  You may want to refer to this article from SEOmoz.org about how many keywords to use.  Depending on your keywords and your target market, the number of keywords you use could range from one to 15.  This article also provides good examples of how to write your Title, Meta Descriptions, and Headers so that they incorporate the keywords, make sense to anyone searching, and resist the trap of keyword stuffing.
   
   
3. Create Unique Page Titles: For every page you create, add a unique page title that clearly and accurately describes the content on that page.  Construct the page title by taking two to three of the keywords that bring you good keyword results and that target your audience. For example:
   
               www.somerandomwebsite.com/labrador_best_in_show_2009_pictures
   
               vs. 
   
               www.somerandomwebsite.com/123ABC
   
   
4. Construct a Search Engine-friendly Site:  Use HTML and include a Sitemap.  Flash is a gorgeous and safe way for you to display your photos, but may make your pages all but invisible to major search engines.  So build your gorgeous and safe Flash site, but also create an alternative HTML version that you can link to from the Flash section. That way, the search engines can easily crawl and index it.  A LicenseStream Creator account will give you that option and the buyer can license your content directly from your HTML site.  A sitemap also provides a clear and easy path for the search engines to index your website.
   
   
5. Build Links:  Creating relationships that foster links back to your site is a good thing and helps raise your ranking in the search index.  When you foster link backs to your site, the search engines view the links as nods that your site has good and relevant content, resulting in a higher search index ranking.   Engaging in social networking contributes to these efforts.  For example, if you post to a blog about how the License Management features within LicenseStream help you price your images at a level that drives sales, and then someone picks up a link to that post and uses it as a reference in their blog, you’re generating nods of approval by a search engine.  Alternatively, if your colleague writes about you and links to your LicenseStream Store to show his audience how LicenseStream is helping you build a successful business,  the search engines are likely to recognize such affirmations.  Slowly but surely you will rise in the ranking index.
   
   
6. Provide Beneficial Content: Create content that is beneficial to your online audiences and communities.  While plugging your business and work is important, so is building credibility with your audience by providing information that may be helpful to them.  For example, if you’re a photographer, you might want to share the newest tricks that you’ve learned from shooting with your favorite Nikon camera.  Of course you can use examples from your shoot that will promote your work, but be sure to focus on how you can help your followers on Facebook, Twitter, or blog with information that will benefit them instead of focusing solely on how you’re looking for work or on your deep interest in licensing your work. By providing such helpful information, you’re more likely to generate links to your site from members of other sites whose editors and contributors find your content useful and potentially valuable to their audiences.
   
   
7. Engage in Social Networking:  You can engage in social networking on multiple platforms.  You might be Twitterific or a Facebook Fanatic.  You might find the professional network on LinkedIn, or any of a number of photography, videography, music or other content forums helpful to building your business.  Or you might just find that blogging about your passion and your work is enough to keep you busy.  Whatever outlet you choose, social networking can help generate links back to your site and your images. Stay tuned for a separate blog post about great ways to leverage various social networks.
   
   
8. Keep Your Sitemap As Shallow As Possible:  The deeper your website and Web pages go, the more difficult for the search engines to index the pages. When you’re building your website, use the same rationale for search engines as you would for customers coming to your website: enable key pages to be found easily from your main homepage.  Once a potential buyer visits your main page, he or she may be willing to click a layer and maybe even two layers down into your site. However, forcing a visitor to click any further may result in a potential buyer abandoning your site.
   
   
9. Stay Current with Your Keyword Research:  Review and refine your keywords on a regular basis.  Strive to review your keywords at least once every couple of months.  If you find your time pinched on other projects and tasks, then at least schedule a review of your keywords each quarter.  Part of the review should include a look at how your page rankings are doing.  Many people use the free Google Analytics service to see which keywords are generating traffic to their sites or to specific pages.  You’ll find knowing what works and what doesn’t to be helpful in revising your keywords. Couple that exercise with using the free Wordtracker service to determine which keywords are most popular.  Together, these services offer some of the best free tools available to sharpen your keyword strategy.
   
   
10. Ask For Help:  There is nothing wrong with asking for help, and there are many services out there to help you with SEO.  To take full advantage of such a service, make sure to engage actively in the SEO process so that it serves as an educational tool for you.  Ask plenty of questions, such as "Will you need me to make changes to my Web site content?" If your SEO partner says no, you may want to shop for another SEO agency that will make the changes you need to drive Web traffic and online sales. You should also ask about the tactics the SEO agency uses, to avoid the use of unethical SEO techniques that could get your site kicked off a major search index.  You may want to refer to our previous blog entry about SEO Don’ts to learn more about unethical behaviors that will hurt your search rankings. Track what the SEO agency is doing and what is  – and isn't – working.  Always benchmark your starting point. For example, start with determining the current number of visitors and page views per month and track these metrics each month over time. A good rule of thumb is to give your SEO partner 6-8 months to produce results and measure those results against your starting point. If the results promised fail to materialize in that timeframe, then you need to find another company to handle your SEO.

Now that you’ve reviewed the Dos and Don’ts of SEO, get started!  Begin by conducting your keyword research and building your keyword strategy.  Do as much as you can on your own to build links, engage in social networking and build communities around your work. Measure and see what results these efforts bring.  If you need to improve your SEO ranking further and/or you can’t manage the tasks, bring in an SEO consultant or company to help you.  Building a strong SEO ranking is a cost effective way to drive traffic and critical for your online business to thrive.

We wanted to continue the conversation about keywording and segue into Search Engine Optimization best-practices for your website.  The following are ten things “not” to do to ensure your website remains listed on any search index and most importantly, to ensure that people can find your work through the  search engines.

1.    Keyword Stuffing:  If you use the same keyword repeatedly within your website’s text or in your keyword tags, you’ll find yourself penalized and likely removed from the search results index.  How much repetition is too much?  Use a keyword density checker to make sure that you’re not over the legal limit.  Experts say 3-7% for your major keywords and 1-2% for your minor keywords. We touched on this in our last blog post about keywording, Licensing Fundamentals: Keywording for Search Results. 

2.    Duplicate Content:  Duplicate content deliberately tries to trick search engines into improving a website’s ranking.  Search Engines have built-in algorithms that analyze pages with similar content.  How much similarity are they looking for?  Use this duplicate content tool to see if you’re pages duplicate too much information. If so, the search engines may omit your web pages or site from the search index.  A good place to read more on duplicate content is the Google Webmaster Central Blog.  If you need to see a more visual presentation on the subject, check out the blog posted by SEOMOZ.org.

3.    Free-For All Link Exchange Programs:  There is a difference between natural link building and free-for-all link exchange programs.  With natural link building, you’re linking to relevant sites or reciprocating links with partners or associations.  Free-for-all linking occurs when you use software to put your links out to hundreds of thousands of sites.  Free-for-all programs are essentially spam and if a search engine discovers this practice they will likely penalize your website and lower your ranking (if not blacklist you).  Stay honest, start a link-building program by establishing reciprocal links with relevant, reputable websites. It really is that simple.  If you’d like a good online resource to learn more about  this, check out this blog by SEOMOZ.org on link building.

4.    Robots:  Do not use a robot to rewrite your content. Such robots alter it just enough to generate a set of new, duplicate pages for search engine indexing and with the ultimate goal of increasing your search engine ranking.  You may be seduced by the offer of having your website rewritten for you.  Don’t fall for it.  Such robots, or programs, typically rewrite your content with very few changes.  If you’re caught with duplicate content, your search ranking is likely to plummet so far that no one will ever find it.  Needless to say, if you use the LicenseStream HTML code to publicize your store on your blog or personal website, don’t submit it for a robot to rewrite --not only will it affect search engine rankings for your personal website, but it could also affect rankings for your LicenseStream store.

5.    Keyword Dilution: Focus on the main keywords that pay off for your online content.  To get an idea of what keywords people are looking for, use the free service from Wordtracker.  Plug in your keywords and see how many searches they have initiated. Focus the copy on your website and each page on a specific theme. This will naturally ensure your keywords are specific as to the types of content and images that someone can find at your website.  You may want to refer to our previous LicenseStream Insight Blog post about keywording practices.

6.    Difficult to Crawl Website:  An all-Flash site is nice, but is difficult for the search engines to crawl and index.  So if you’re going to use Flash to create a site, include an HTML option and an easily navigable site map.  liveBooks is a great resource for putting together a fantastic Flash site for your work, and its Flash sites automatically generate an HTML version for SEO purposes. You can also link the Flash site you create with liveBooks directly to a LicenseStream account, so that visitors easily and seamlessly can license your work.  With these services, you’ll have both the HTML needed for good SEO and the keywording and direct licensing features that can help your business succeed.

7.    Hidden Text: Hidden text is computer text set in the same font color as the background so as not to be easily read by anyone viewing the page, but that a search engine will recognize. Usually it is used to camouflage keyword stuffing. If you think that it will generate a higher search result ranking, think again.  If you are caught doing this, your pages will be removed and banned from participation in search engine rankings.

8.    Bad Redirects: Don’t create pages with keywords with the sole purpose of getting a high search engine ranking only to redirect visitors to another page that is totally unrelated to the focus of a search. For example, say you do a search for “blue egrets” and you’re directed to a page that says, “One Moment While We Redirect You.” The next thing you know you’re on a page about candy bird eggs.  This practice is unlikely to win you any fans and instead may result in the removal of your site from search engine indices.  There are instances in which redirecting is appropriate.  But the deliberate and malicious misuse of keywords is a practice that is likely to backfire.

9.    Same Title on Every Page: Don’t use the same title on every page of your website.  While you may think that by using the same words over and over again you’ll achieve a higher search engine ranking, think again.  Instead, use titles relevant to the content on each page to increase the chance it’ll be found via a variety of search terms. For example, if your website is about birds in nature, don’t title every page: “Birds in Nature.” Instead, be specific.  If you have three pages within a LicenseStream store website and one is dedicated to Blue Egrets, then name that page, “Birds in Nature: Blue Egrets.”  Similarly, be specific in your captions or keywords.

10.    Misspelled Words:   Don’t use misspelled words anywhere other than in your META tags.  Yes -- you may want to incorporate common misspellings of words, but keep them hidden in your META tags, not in your copy.  Obviously incorporating misspelled words reduces your credibility, and such damage can’t be offset by any incremental gain in site ranking. 

These are just a few tips to get started; there are many others and we’ll offer related tips in future posts.  Optimizing your website for search engine ranking requires patience and diligent work.  Our advice is to stay honest.  Don’t try to game the system, it just isn’t worth it -- especially when your reputation and ranking of pages that represent your work are on the line.

This will be the first in an occasional series of blog posts that will explore how to use an array of tools and tactics within your LicenseStream stores and galleries – as well as outside of them – to grow your photography, videography or other creative content business.  In this series, we'll look at keyword strategies, search engine optimization, content descriptions, group naming structures, social media tools and how these all tie together.

The first step is to develop a keyword strategy.  What is a keyword strategy?  It is a plan or an outline for applying those keywords to your images, video, or other content that are accurate enough to help buyers easily find the image they need. Keywords play a critical role in elevating your search engine rankings, so choosing those keywords that are most relevant and targeted is the goal.  Moreover, the discipline of developing a keyword strategy leaves you with a clear outline of who your audience is and how they search, so you can leverage that knowledge to improve your search engine rankings for your images, blog, Tweets, or interactions with Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media

As we’ve mentioned in previous LicenseStream blogs, using LicenseStream's Keyword Generator is a good way to jumpstart your keyword strategy. Within the “Manage Content” area, you can apply keywords to the “Keywords,”  “Name” (also known as the title), and “Caption” fields designed to describe the image, video or other content in a way that is readily understandable. In each instance, the goal is to leverage keywords that deliver strong search results, and that enhance your ability to turn those results into transactions.

The better you understand how your audience searches for your work, the more likely you’ll use keywords that will improve your search engine rankings. To gain a better understanding of your market, it pays to ask a few current or potential customers what terms and techniques they use most often when they search online for the types of images and video clips you offer.  You may find that image buyers for nature magazines typically do a literal search by species name, location, and approximate age of the animal or the plant that they’re featuring in the article.  Alternatively, an advertising agency using nature photography may take a more conceptual approach, and search by color of bird, type, time of day, horizontal or vertical image. You may find additional differences, depending on the industry or individual user. 

Once you've determined the types of keywords to apply, research all of the different ways that people may search for these items.   For example, you may find that some people call a beverage “soda” while others who refer to it as “pop.”  Your U.S. customers may refer to “fries” while U.K. customers use the word “chips.” For a specific genre of images, such as those related to an egret, you might want to include “nature,” “birds,” “fowl,” and “shorebirds.”  You should also consider including common misspellings, synonyms and plurals.

Some keyword experts suggest that it’s good to take into account keyword density, and that the optimal percentage of keywords should be between three percent and five percent of all content on a site. To see whether your site measures up, check out one of the free online tools that will help you calculate the density of each keyword on your site: http://www.googlerankings.com/ultimate_seo_tool.php

At the same time, it’s best to avoid a practice known as “keyword stuffing” which is considered an unethical form of SEO and may result in the removal of your site from a search index altogether. Keyword stuffing is the repetition of keywords within a keyword tag or in a site’s content. For example, if on the Metadata tab that is part of the editing function within the “Manage Content” section of LicenseStream your caption reads: ”bird, blue egret bird, blue bird, egret bird, bird in nature,” the word “bird” may appear too often. Moreover, this string of words fails to include a call to action.  You probably can spur better traffic to your site with a caption such as “License a high res image of a blue egret bird located in Everglades City, Florida.  Find additional high res images of egrets and other shorebirds in the wild at …” and include the URL for your LicenseStream store. What you’ve done here is provided a call to action by recommending the licensing of a specific type of image, and included keywords likely to generate search results for your site.  In addition, you’ve offered a way for potential customers to find and view more of your portfolio.

While keywording may seem like a time-consuming, labor-intensive exercise, it plays a critical role in ensuring your work is found via the Web's many search engines, particularly its most popular, Google.  To see some of our previous tips for keywording, look back at some of our blog posts about SEO and keywording.

One of the new features most requested by our users is a way to display content in the order they choose, not in the order that it was uploaded.  We understand that your storefront is the most visible outward-facing part of your LicenseStream account.  With this in mind, we added new features that allow you to determine how your content is displayed so you can turn your storefront into a showcase.

The way you display your online store’s content is very important.  You’ll want to ensure buyers see the most relevant and compelling work first.  To do this:

1.      Go to ‘Business/Store Manager > Store Manager.’

2.      Select your store and click the tab on the far left, ‘Sort.’  Here you can select and set the default sort order for your store content.

3.      The sort order options are:

a.      User Sort:  Sort your store content in any order that you wish.

b.      Upload Date:  Sort your store content by the date in which it was uploaded with the newest items appearing at the end of your store.

c.      Content Name: Sort your content in alphabetical or numerical order.

d.      Copyright: Sort your content by the name of the copyright holder and in alphabetical order.

4.    Once you have set your default sort order, go into your ‘Manage Content’ and select your store.  Click on ‘View/Sort Set Store Content.’  If you select ‘User Sort’ hover over your thumbnails to access the cursor arrow. This cursor arrow will allow you to move content around your store.

An additional word about naming your content: it’s important to name your content in a way that makes it easily identifiable and easy to find via major search engines. The thing to remember is that you want to drive potential buyers to your site – even if they don’t know who you are. To that end, it’s a good idea to give some thought to the types of buyers who will be searching through your store. For example, an art director at an agency may use different terms than an independent Web designer. (For more information on keywording, click here.)

We’ve designed LicenseStream to offer the flexibility you need to organize the content in it both for optimal display and optimal discovery.  It is critical that you jump into your LicenseStream account to name and organize your content to drive traffic to your store and to ensure your best work greets customers at the front door.

Once you have optimized your stores to drive traffic, you’ll want to come back to see how you can organize separate galleries within your stores, making it even easier for buyers to find the specific content they want. Stay tuned for more on that topic.

With powerful off-the-shelf consumer applications like Photoshop, almost anyone can take an image, crop it, alter, recolor or make a photo composite without too much effort. The question arises, how much “photoshopping” needs to be done for an image to be considered an original work of art?  

 All visual artists at one time or another have probably created art “borrowed” from copyrighted source material. The sample below shows how quickly the face of Mona Lisa and be flipped, altered, recolored and placed into a new background in a matter of minutes. The resulting altered image is pretty believable but is it a “new” original work of art? I don’t think so. If I had created the original portrait of Mona Lisa and came across the “Bearded Lady” version I would likely sue the infringing party for stealing my work.        

Mona Lisa (original) 

Bearded Lady (altered version)

I created this for my personal use but had I chosen to alter an original work in copyright and made the resulting “new” art more visible to the general public, even post it to my Facebook page, I could be accused of copyright infringement. Chances are the copyright police wouldn’t come knocking on my door for creating the new derivative work, but it would not be an original work of art.  

When an artist creates a work of art, the copyright comes into existence automatically and provides the owner with a number of exclusive rights. No registration is required, though it may be necessary to protect some remedies if the artist ever plans to sue for infringement. By the way, registering your content using ImageSpan's LicenseStream does just that because it establishes provenance (history of ownership) of the content.

To qualify as a derivative work, the creation must use a substantial amount of the prior work’s expression. How much? Enough so that the average person would conclude that it had been based on or adapted from the prior work. It’s a common sense thing. Merely borrowing the ideas expressed by the prior work (creating a work “inspired by” it) would not create a derivative work. Ideas are not copyrightable, and a work is not derivative unless it has been substantially copied from a prior work. 

How Different is Different?

For a derivative work to be copyrightable, it must be "different enough" from the original work that it can be considered a new work in its own right. Making minor changes, or adding little of substance to a preexisting work will not qualify the work as a new version for copyright purposes.   

Artists who create collages know they involve combining multiple elements to create a new whole. The important thing to remember is that the changes must be significant. Minor alterations to a single other work might not be "different enough." Unfortunately, the law is rather vague on this point. There's no clear definition of how much is enough, either in terms of a percentage, or square inches.   

Derivative work can only include copyrighted material if it is created by the owner of the copyright for the original material, or with that owner's permission. Making a collage that includes photos from National Geographic, clippings from advertisements, or a famous Picasso painting is illegal unless you have obtained permission from whoever owns the copyright on those works.  

An example we can all relate to...

Most if not everyone has seen the famous pre-election HOPE poster from street artist Shepard Fairey with the red, white and blue illustration of President Obama. What you may not know is that Fairey is now in a legal copyright dispute over the poster with the Associated Press for using photographer Mannie Garcia‘s photograph of Obama as a reference image without getting permission or substantially changing it. One might argue that the new art form is so different from the original photograph that it should be considered original. When art works its way into media -- even for a political statement -- and gains enough exposure to raise the prospect of commercial gain, the issue of ethics and ownership comes to the forefront.  

An interesting note in this case is that the Garcia photo is now more famous and valuable than it ever would have been prior to the creation of Fairey’s Obama poster.  

Also of interest: Fairey found Garcia’s photograph for the illustration on Google Images. In fact, a recent survey shows that more than 60 percent of all images are found via Web searches. With LicenseStream, users can publish their work directly to Google.  

The Last Word

Protect yourself by creating original art that is not swiped from someone else’s portfolio or body of work. Protect your own intellectual property by registering it on LicenseStream where you can also benefit from our tracking capabilities. Our tracking services will alert you to instances where your work may have been misappropriated, and will let you resolve these situations by selecting among several automated responses. Responses may range from a request to license your work, include a photo credit, provide a link back to your site, or even a request to remove it.     

LicenseStream’s Tracker offers another benefit: it enables you to see where your images are being used. This intelligence may uncover new markets for your work, enabling you to forge new marketing strategies and make more effective business decisions.  

Our support desk has been getting many requests for help around Content Restrictions. So a quick post about Content Restrictions may help. Content Restrictions are meant to control the use of your content. For example, if you want that perfect image of a blue heron used only in wildlife magazines in North America, you can set up your restrictions to limit the use of your image in that way. In fact, LicenseStream offers flexibility to set up your restrictions in a number of ways.

The first is through the Business/Store Manager. You can select Manage Restrictions.’

On the right hand tool bar you will see ‘Restrictions.’ Click on ‘New Global Restrictions,’ Enter your restriction information and click ‘Create Restriction.’ That will be applied to all of your existing content and all new content added to your LicenseStream account.

If you ever want to remove a Global Restriction go back to Manage Restrictions. You’ll see your Global Restrictions listed. Simply click on the one that you want to delete and the bar will expand. Click the text link: ‘Delete Restriction.’

Using the Global Restriction feature makes it quick and simple to add restrictions to your entire collection.

In cases where you’d like to add more restrictions or remove the global restriction on a particular piece of content, click ‘Manage Content’ on the top navigation. Hover over the image that you’d like to add or remove restrictions from and click ‘Edit.’ Then select the tab ‘Restrictions.’ Here you can add new restrictions to the content or delete restrictions.

The same can also be done in the Business/Store Manager->Manage Restrictions by using the ‘New Content Restriction’ button.

If you add a restriction to an individual piece of content, you will then be able to find it in the Business/Store Manger ->Manage Restrictions directly below the Global Restrictions in the right hand toolbar. The restrictions listed are text links. So if you click on the text link, it will expand in the toolbar. If you click on ‘Select Restriction Content’ it will show you the content that particular restriction has been applied to. If you’d like to add the same restriction to more content, then simply select the content and click on ‘Add Selected Content.’ An easy way to remove a restriction from some but not all of your content is to click on ‘Select Restriction Content’ and deselect the pieces of content that you do not want to remove the restriction from. When you are satisfied click on ‘Remove Selected Content’ and it will remove the restriction from the content that you had selected.

If you’d like to delete any of the restrictions on the content, simply follow the above steps and click on the ‘delete’ button for the particular restriction that you want to remove from the content.

No matter what, restrictions can have end dates or have no end date. However, each restriction must have a start date. You can create as many or as few restrictions as you’d like for your content.

ImageSpan CEO Iain Scholnick Speaks at Digital Hollywood Today!

Following up on last Friday’s post, we wanted to remind you that ImageSpan’s CEO, Iain Scholnick, is speaking this morning at Digital Hollywood Spring 2009 (at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel in Santa Monica May 4-7)

He’s speaking there on the following panel:
9 a.m. – 10:15 a.m., Wednesday, May 6
Track III: Content Rights - Digital Rights - Entertainment & Technology Track
Digital Choice and Access to Digital Content - Balancing Consumer Rights with Technology, Regulation and Legal Principles
Speakers:
Arnaud Robert, Corporate Vice President, Emerging Technology Strategy, The Walt Disney Company
Michael Alexander, Strategy & Growth Initiatives, IBM Global Telecommunications Industry
Stuart Rosove, VP, Media & Entertainment, Digimarc Corporation
Laurin H. Mills, Managing Partner, Nixon Peabody LLP
Iain Scholnick, CEO and President, ImageSpan
Ann Chaitovitz, consultant, former Executive Director at Future of Music Coalition, copyright attorney-advisor, USPTO
Moderator:
James M. Burger, Attorney at Law, Dow Lohnes, Moderator

For more information, view the full session description and speaker information by clicking here.

Hope we see you there!

Making the most of LicenseStream's watermarking feature means understanding how you can benefit from it, then applying it to both new and existing content.

Visual watermarks can serve many purposes. The idea behind using a visible watermark is to visually define ownership and prevent theft. You can also use a watermark like a calling card. As long as the watermark is clearly identifiable as yours, the more times people see it, the more apt them are to remember and associate it with your creative work. So make it unique and informative. Be sure to include your business name and LicenseStream Store URL.

 A quick mote on watermark parameters: Your watermark will work best in LicenseStream if it is no more than 500 pixels wide or tall.

Once you create your watermark, upload it to LicenseStream using these steps:

1. Log into your account
2. Go to "Business/Store Manager"
3. Select "Set Default Watermark"
4. In the first box: Watermark Source, select "Add/Delete Watermark"
5. Browse your files and upload the watermark

In a previous blog, we discussed setting the default watermark for new content. Now we'll address the challenge of updating all of your existing content with your new watermark.

1. Go to "Manage My Content"
2. Select All
3. Under "Actions" select "Batch Watermark Manager"
4. Select your watermark source, blend mode, position, and size.
5. Set the watermark
6. You've now added the watermark to all of your existing content

ImageSpan’s LicenseStream platform clearly resonated with the crowds attending the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last week. The fact that so many attendees were looking for Web-based tools and solutions that deliver real value and ultimately, real revenues in an otherwise weak economy was great news for ImageSpan. Web 2.0 attendees flocked to our booth quicker than jackrabbits on speed dates. 

All of which leads us to key takeaways from Web 2.0 Expo 2009 that underscore how LicenseStream offers a great solution for today’s  media owners and consumers:

• ImageSpan CEO Iain Scholnick on KRON-TV4 in San Francisco: http://www.kron4.com/News/2009Web20ExpoCoverage/tabid/430/Default.aspx
• ImageSpan’s Director of Strategic Relations, Pam Fischer, on the Techie Diva site: http://www.sojournals.com/video/techie-diva-licensestream