Thank you to everyone who attended the “Driving New Revenues from the Web: Missouri History Museum’s Story” webinar last week.  We had a great turn out and many asked some great questions.  If you missed the webinar, a recording is now available for viewing on our website click on the following link to view now:

http://www.licensestream.com/licensestream2/Portal/knowledge_center/webinars.aspx

Quick Overview of the Webinar:  We heard from Angie Dietz, Digital Asset Archivist for Missouri History Museum discuss their need to leverage the power of the Web to extend their reach online so that anyone, anywhere could quickly find and license their images and other digital assets.  We then learned how LicenseStream helped the Missouri History Museum monetize its vast historic archives to drive new revenues and discover new markets.  We also reviewed how LicenseStream Content Tracker works with Digimarc for Images to find and address unauthorized uses of content across the Web and also create new revenue opportunities for the museum.

We hope you find this type of information useful.  Keep an eye out for other upcoming webinars by viewing our webinars page or signing up to receive notices . If you have other webinar ideas we’d love to hear from you (post in the comments below).

ImageSpan has just launched a Batch Edit feature for its LicenseStream service. This new process streamlines the entire editing process in cases where content already has been uploaded to LicenseStream.

More specifically, the new feature lets you select a batch of content that already has been uploaded and edit, add keywording or other metadata, and apply various types of licenses to it. You may also take a previously uploaded and prepared batch of content and create a gallery of images, or upload the content to an existing store. Previously, subscribers could batch edit content only after uploading but not after preparing the content.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to using this handy new time-saving feature:

1. Prepare Content: From the ‘Prepare Content’ page you are now able to apply a License Model to the selected uploaded content, as well as add the selected content directly to a Store and/or Gallery from here. 

• After upload you will see your content on the ‘Prepare Content’ page (or you can access this page by clicking on ‘Add Content’, then clicking the ‘Prepare Content’ button on the right side of the page).
• Apply your metadata as usual (if the metadata has previously been embedded via an Editing program as IPTC or XML, it will have been imported into the appropriate metadata fields).
• Under the ‘Allowed License Models’ section select the models you would like to apply: 
  • Rights Managed content: By default all License Models are checked, but you can uncheck any License Model you do not want to offer your clients. The following five License Models are available to your Buyers: 
    • Quick License: Broad License based on PLUS standards
    • Plus Packs: PLUS Packs offer the flexibility of broadly defined licenses in a form that is simple, straightforward and transparent.
    • Custom License: Detailed Custom License based on PLUS standards
    • Saved License: If you have saved preset Rights Managed Licenses you can apply them from here
    • Request License: User can send you an e-mail request to negotiate pricing (this option cannot be removed and will always be available to your clients) 
  •  Royalty Free/Rights Simple content: When you select ‘Royalty Free’ or ‘Rights Simple’ as your License Type, only the Royalty Free or Rights Simple option will appear as a default. 
• Under the ‘Store & Gallery’ header select the appropriate Store and/or Gallery where you would like your content to appear
  • Store: If you have not yet created a Store, please go to the ‘Business/Store Manager > Store Manager’ to create your Store first, then come back to the ‘Prepare Content’ page to add the content. You can also add the content to a Store from the ‘Manage Content’ page later.
  •  Gallery: Select an existing Gallery or click on ‘Create New Gallery’ to add your content to a new Gallery.
•  Click ‘Prepare Content’ to activate your content.

2. Batch Edit: From the ‘Manage Content’ page you can now select multiple content and add it to the Batch Content Editor to add/update metadata, apply a License Model and add the content to a Store and/or Gallery.

• Go to ‘Manage Content’
• Select the content you’d like to edit
• Go to ‘Actions > Add Selected to > Batch Content Editor
• Here you can add/update your metadata, change the License Models (see details above) and add your content to a Store and/or Gallery (see details above)
• Click on ‘Save Information’ to apply the changes

 For more information on this process and other helpful tips you can visit our online help guide. 

Starting tomorrow, we'll be at the PDN PhotoPlus International Conference + Expo, which runs through Saturday, October 24 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City.  More than 32,000 attendees and 230 exhibitors are expected at this year's event. We’ll showcase a new LicenseStream solution and demonstrate new LicenseStream features and benefits. 

Check us out in Booth #1155 on the Expo show floor to learn about the latest LicenseStream developments. We'll even make it easy. For a free exhibit hall pass,  just CLICK HERE to register online with our promo code: License.

We’ll also be participating in and hosting several exciting events. They include:

• Participation by  ImageSpan’s VP, New Business Development Candice Murray in a panel at the International Conference on Tools for Selling Stock Direct that will include luminaries from other companies and organizations who are active in this area.
  • Time: 1:15 p.m. – 3:15 p.m. Thursday, October 22 , 2009
  • Location: Check PDN+PhotoPlus Conference schedule. 
  • Additional speakers:
    Fred Benenson – Creative Commons
    Allen Murabayashi – PhotoShelter
    Candice Murray – ImageSpan
    Rahul Pathak – LookStat
    Ellen Boughn – Panel Host & Stock Photography Consultant

For more information CLICK HERE    

• A talk by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Deanne Fitzmaurice. Deanne, who is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, will speak about her work and about how using LicenseStream and liveBooks can help photographers reach a larger audience online and create new revenue streams.
  • Time: 11 a.m.  Friday, October 23, 2009
  • Location: ImageSpan Booth #1155 PDN PhotoPlus Expo

• A presentation by Lyle Owerko, a photojournalist and commercial photographer in New York City. Lyle, who travels the world shooting for many NGOs and human rights groups, will speak to the benefits of using LicenseStream and liveBooks to extend his online reach and generate new revenues. 
  • Time: 11 a.m. Saturday, October 24, 2009
  • Location: LicenseStream Booth #1155 PDN PhotoPlus Expo

We look forward to seeing you at PDN PhotoPlus!

Let’s face it, all of us are feeling the crunch these days and many photographers who had a very steady stream of clients and projects have seen these dwindle over the past year or so. The decline is probably due to a number of factors, including the economic downturn, and several industry-specific trends including the availability of quality Prosumer cameras, the low pricing of royalty free microstock images, and the proliferation of super-low-cost photographers on sites such as CraigsList. All this makes for slim pickings. Many clients are shooting projects “in-house” and sourcing generic royalty free images because they, too, are feeling the crunch.

I spoke with a handful of professional photographers to find out what strategies they’ve employed over the past year to generate new business and found some interesting ideas.  Besides taking advantage of the ability to market and license their work using LicenseStream to generate passive income and expose their work to a greater audience,  many photographers are using the enforced downtime to get more creative about how they market their work.

This slow period has been welcome relief for some photographers who needed a break from tough daily schedules that don’t allow much time for personal growth in order to develop new artistic styles, create new bodies of work, or to learn about new photographic tools and acquire new techniques in a digital age. Some have decided to travel, exploring new views on the world that they can bring back and market. For example, one couple who had planned a trip to Africa took an extra step in their preparations: they contacted some private doctors and non-profit organizations to see how they might help support documenting success stories, and raise awareness for these doctors who were performing surgeries to fix facial abnormalities and other health related issues in underprivileged villages. This outreach resulted in work that helped support a trip they were going to take anyway and created a new area of business.

Other photographers have found it pays to participate in local farmers’ markets, in gallery exhibitions, or to develop fine art products.  One photographer talked about the success he had achieved in marketing his love of architecture, details, and natural patterns. He offered single-day rate for shooting photos of a particular location, say a winery or a beautiful hotel, and then offered to create for the location’s owners a coffee table book or a series of framed prints and the ability to use the images for promotional marketing materials as one complete package.

In addition to creating new niche markets and products, photographers need to look at reducing expenses. Consider sharing workspace costs, equipment, and combining different talents to collaborate on projects and expand networking circles. And let’s face it, not all of us are the best at running our business or going out and getting new clients. Hiring a business consultant and perhaps photo representative might be the best idea yet.

In addition, it may help to visit a few of our past LicenseStream blogs, including those on Using LicenseStream to Power Your Niche Photography Business, Using HTML to

Market Your Content,  Licensing Fundamentals: 20 Dos of SEO Practices, and Licensing Fundamentals: 10 Don'ts of SEO Practices.  

Oh, and don’t forget to say a few prayers, burn some incense, and avoid black cats. It can’t hurt.

As you already know the ‘Market Content’ section helps you create html code that you can paste into your own website or blog. With this code, you can create thumbnails of your images that link directly back to your LicenseStream account. That way, anyone, anywhere in the world who sees one of your thumbnails can click on the image or related link button to begin licensing on the spot.

But did you know that you can also:

•  Use the html code to link to your licensing page from your Flickr images?
•  Use larger, preview-sized images instead of thumbnails to link back to your licensing page?
•  Link directly to your licensing page from your own or another website?

In each of these cases, all you need to do is modify the html code we provide to make sure it links back to the correct content – usually a licensing page within your LicenseStream store. Here are a few quick examples and tips on leveraging HTML code to better market your content.

Link from Flickr

1.   Say an image buyer for a travel agency finds your amazing image of underwater diving off the coast of Hawaii on Flickr. To make it easy and seamless for them to license that image, simply provide a link that will take them from the Flickr image directly back to your LicenseStream account (add the html code to the description field for the image). Before adding the code that follows below, modify it by replacing the image ID after id= with your own image ID from the html code provided in the Market Content area:

<a href="http://www.licensestream.com/LicenseStream2/Shared/Dispatcher.aspx?id=cfb140f7-f793-4a2e-bec9-830f7aa5d1c2" rel="nofollow">License this image</a>

Once it is modified, add it to the description field for the image.
Example from Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/uschi1306/3725097329/in/set-72157621406631921/

Showcase Your Photography

2.    If you have a visually superb photograph that you want to showcase, you may want to display  larger images instead of thumbnails. To ensure that anyone clicking on that larger image can begin licensing it with a mouse click, simply modify the html code by replacing the text ‘Thumbnails’ with ‘UserComps’ in your html code:

<a href="http://www.licensestream2.com/LicenseStream2/Shared/Dispatcher.aspx?id=3071c372-1531-4c0c-8d58-9d1b6423f2fa"><img src="http://www.licensestream2.com/LicenseStream2/ContentStorage/47/

UserComps/fdemp5bb.jpg></a>

Example of a linkback from a larger image:

http://www.uschigerschner.com/PhotoArchive.html

Link from your Own (or Another) Website

3.   If you have a LicenseStream account but have built your own online presence elsewhere, it’s easy to link to your LicenseStream account from an image you are hosting directly on your own website. All you have to do is modify the html code below by replacing the image ID after id= with your own image ID from your html code:

<a href="http://www.licensestream.com/LicenseStream2/Shared/Dispatcher.aspx?id=2688b5bc-dfe0-418a-9c8e-ab0710525730">License this image</a>

Example of a linkback from another website:

http://www.uschigerschner.com/index.html

liveBooks users please note: Most liveBooks sites are created using Flash. As a result, you will not be able to link back to specific content in your LicenseStream account using the html code. Instead, you can simply add a link to your LicenseStream store from your liveBooks site.

As always, please feel free to contact support@licensestream.com with any questions or feedback.

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.

Today we're proud to announce that Joseph Sohm, a world-renowned photographer, writer and historian has selected LicenseStream to promote, protect, track and create new revenue streams from his entire library of images. His extensive library includes 1,300 images taken over 30 years for his book "Visions of America" that is set to launch formally in November. The book is premised on a single question — "How do you photograph democracy?" To see the full announcement, go to the ImageSpan newsroom

Sohm, a long-time stock photographer who is based in Ojai, CA., says LicenseStream offers him greater opportunities for maximizing the value of his extensive portfolio than through stock agencies alone, because it allows him to make his entire body of work – not just the hits – available online for licensing. It also allows him to publish his images to major search engines where anyone can click on the image and start the licensing process immediately – closing the gaps between search, discovery and payment. Joseph explains that previously, he was able to offer only a subset of his images through stock agencies, which he says operate on the premise that a core set of images typically attract customers repeatedly.

A companion multi-media "Photo Symphony" narrated by Academy Award winner Clint Eastwood and that premiered in Philadelphia just days after President Obama's inauguration earlier this year, is the basis for a series of music videos Sohm is producing and that he plans to release via Internet social networking sites over the next 12 months.

The 1,300 images for "Visions of America" are culled from 28,000 images that can now be found and licensed on Sohm's LicenseStream site at http://voa.licensestream.com

Today ImageSpan, the creator of LicenseStream, is announcing a strategic alliance with liveBooks, Inc., the leading provider of customized portfolio websites and marketing software for professional photographers. By teaming the market-leading LicenseStream licensing and royalty payment automation platform for all media with liveBooks’ services, the companies will deliver a set of best-in-class services that will empower photographers to publish their content safely and directly to the Web and global search engines, enabling them to extend their online reach and generate new revenues. To see today’s full announcement, go to the ImageSpan Newsroom.

To  learn more about how this strategic alliance can help you more efficiently manage your photo archive, click in to the webinar liveBooks will host with ImageSpan at 2 p.m. Pacific (5 p.m. Eastern) this coming Thursday, July 30. The webinar will feature ImageSpan’s Community Agent and Strategic Relations Director Pamela Fischer. See how you can enable licensing of your photos on your liveBooks Web site using LicenseStream and turn each piece of content into its own storefront. Register for the liveBooks webinar now!

How do you price your content for licensing?  It depends on a few key variables, including the type of content you want to license and the licensing model you select for that content. In this blog, we’re looking at pricing photographs, and so a key variable to consider is the goal of the photographer.

For example, are you (or the photographer you represent) targeting a specific market with a particular set of images?  Are you looking for the big single image license, or would you prefer to see your image(s) licensed multiple times to a number of different end users? The process of asking such questions applies to all the types of content that can be licensed through ImageSpan’s LicenseStream, including photos or other images, video, audio, even text and will help you determine the type of licensing models you’ll select.

Before we review how to select the best licensing model for your work, it may be helpful to look at some of the unique services LicenseStream offers and at how they will help you maximize the value of your work.

One is LicenseStream’s automated pricing engine. ImageSpan has conducted extensive research to ensure the automated pricing engine available in LicenseStream generates accurate pricing. Our platform also is designed so that you, the image creator, may allow people to license images for specific usages, types of media, regions, dollar amount, etc.  This empowers you as the content owner to negotiate larger deals – and not leave any money on the table.  Image buyers, especially when licensing their content for a large media buy or for an exclusive license, typically prefer to speak with someone to ensure they are obtaining the proper rights, etc. LicenseStream facilitates this exchange by building an email function into the licensing request process. Once the rights are agreed upon, completing the transaction with LicenseStream provides a clear record of the agreement’s terms and can be transacted by you (or the content owner you represent), or your client.

LicenseStream offers another unique advantage to both the content creator and the buyer: our licensing process generates licenses using the PLUS code – a machine-readable code that provides critical information such as the rights attached to a specific image and the license’s expiration date. This is extremely helpful for publishers using the content and who license very high volumes of images and need a way to track all the rights that they already have. Equipped with the ability to access the information provided in the machine-readable code, publishers can know exactly when and for what purposes they need to re-license an image.  At the same time, the PLUS code helps you as the content creator ensure that your clients use the images only as defined by and for the length of time the license permits.

However, before you even assign a price to content, you need to determine the business model you’d like to wrap around your content. In this post, we’ll review three established licensing models and one new model developed by ImageSpan as a response to the needs of our subscribers.

Royalty Free 

Pricing Royalty Free content is simple – it is based on the size of the image, video or other content that the buyer needs. It places no limitations on usage or duration of usage on the part of the licensee. Generally, the only limitation is that buyers cannot resell the image. For photographs or videos, pricing usually varies based on the resolution of the piece that is bought (i.e. higher resolution images cost more money). Standard Royalty Free prices range anywhere from approximately $39 to $500 for a single image.  Today, Royalty Free images also are available via a subscription model or on an old-fashioned CD, whereby a client pays an upfront fee, per user, to gain unlimited access to a pool of imagery for a certain period of time. 

Rights Managed 

Where image pricing really gets fun is when you are working with Rights Managed (RM) imagery.  Favored by top pros, this model ensures that a work’s creator gets paid fairly based on the value to the client. Because this model can be so complex, it typically isn’t used with lower-priced transactions. Several factors enter into RM imagery.  Pricing is based on how an image will be used, where it will be used, length of usage, type and amount of distribution and exclusivity.  For the most part, RM licenses are non-exclusive, meaning the -customer understands that someone within their industry may use the same image.  For very high-profile ad campaigns, book covers, even greeting cards and other photo products, the Exclusive license is preferred and in fact it  can be very valuable. 

Exclusive

Exclusive licenses typically are used in cases involving high-profile, high-priced licenses to ensure that a competitor does not also use the same image to promote the same product, or in some cases, any other product (as in the case of an all-industry exclusive license).  This type of license should always be negotiated offline and the terms tailored to a specific use.  Once the terms are established, the transaction can be completed online as long as the content owner puts the content with the exclusive pricing in the shopping cart for the customer to the customer can easily complete the transaction. Editorially speaking, you may license an image exclusively for the cover of a magazine or a book.  An exclusive license for the cover of a magazine is going to be LESS than an exclusive license for the cover of a book.  Why?  The life span of a magazine is less than that of a book.  However, the image on the cover of any publication is what will sell the publication.  For the cover of a magazine, I would charge at least an additional 100% of the usage fee for the exclusive. 

Selling an exclusive license for the cover of a book is different in that the presumed shelf life of a book, so to speak, tends to be longer and the pricing for book (and therefore the image) typically is higher.  Just as a cover sells a magazine, the cover of a book really does sell a book.  It is important that you ask who the author is, especially for a retail book written by an author that you know will print and re-print.

You want to get market value!  Also, remember, when you license an image exclusively, you are blocking that image from being licensed again for that usage, within that industry and for an agreed-upon period of time. Exclusive licenses can go for well over $25,000 - $30,000 or more -- for a single image!  When licensing an image exclusively in the Commercial space, remember, again, it is being used to sell a product – what that agency is going to spend on media vs. what they are going to spend on your image is HUGE – get market value!  For an advertising exclusive, you should add a minimum of $5,000 to $10,000 for a usage fee.

Rights Simple

Rights Simple licensing combines the protection and detail of a Rights Managed license with the simplicity of a Royalty Free license. With this unique licensing model, developed by ImageSpan, buyers can get a license for a specific use but they are not limited by the industry or the region in which they use the work. It can be selected in a single click and all the terms of the license are included in the simple statement. In most cases, Rights Simple transactions of similar quality are priced higher than Royalty Free and lower than Rights Managed.  

Choose the Licensing Model that Best Meets Your Goals

Pricing is always an interesting challenge. Before you assign a price, it is critical that you carefully consider the benefits of each licensing model and how that selection affects pricing. For example, while a Rights Managed image may sell for a high price, the market for such an image may be limited. If you’re looking to expand your market, Royalty Free content may find a broader user base than Rights managed content, however, revenue from individual Royalty Free sales likely will be lower. Similarly, Rights Simple content may be priced low, but it is likely to find a larger market and appeal to buyers that usually don’t purchase stock, namely commercial media and advertising firms.  

Coming Up

Next week we’ll take a deeper look at the licensing model most favored by top photography pros – Rights Managed images.

ImageSpan has just launched the LicenseStream Creator Member Directory so that those looking for a photographer or videographer with a specialty can quickly find your portfolio or engage you for work.  This is just another way LicenseStream can promote your work, help you find collaborators, and empower you to network with fellow LicenseStream Creator members.  Our LicenseStream Creator service includes a wide variety of subscribers and you never know when you might have a job for them, or need to tap someone with expertise for a specific type of project.  Buyers can easily come to our LicenseStream Creator Member Directory and search for a specific subscriber, type or style of work.

To participate in the Member Directory, you’ll need a LicenseStream Creator PRO account.  Once you're logged in as a LicenseStream PRO subscriber, you can then go into “Market Content” and “Publicize Your Store.”  Since this feature is available only for our LicenseStream Creator PRO subscribers, this may be a good time to upgrade your account!

If you’d like to see a walk-through of the new LicenseStream Creator 2.0, watch Pam Fischer, Community Agent/Strategic Relations Director, on The DV Show.  Pam addresses the need to sell your pictures, videos or other digital content online and explains how LicenseStream Creator works for those who are not ready to open an online store or get a credit card merchant account.  LicenseStream Creator can help you with the licensing, distribution, delivery, pricing, payment and royalty processing so you can do what you do best: create innovative, powerful content and get that content to market fast to drive revenues and profit from your work.