Why did I migrate from Easy Digital Downloads to WooCommerce ?
I ‘m a webdesigner in love with digitalart. I’m still selling in a comfortable way my images (photos, illustrations, vintage stuff, 3D renderings) at micro-stock and stock agencies. But my goal is to sell also by myself. As I can buildup websites, I launched AntikStock to sell a niche of mine: my illustrations restored and elaborated from the huge antique book collection of my property.
At a first glance Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) would really look the easy way to sell downloadable goods. But a rather disturbing (arithmetical!) issue (*) popping up changed my point of view and induced me to look seriously for alternatives and compare performances.
While comparing I found out that WooCommerce offers not only a quite solid E-commerce platform for virtual downloadable goods, but also much more interesting features free of charge.
A few examples: :
to duplicate a product to sell with WooCommerce is free, on EDD you have to pay 29usd/year only for this simple feature!
to comply with the EU VAT rules is free of charge, no way can EDD compete for free
cross-sells and upsells are included, no need to pay for the corresponding EDD options anymore.
I could go on further, I would just add that I completed seamlessy my migration owning an elegant new shop with many more features totally free of charge and – the cherry on top – with a beautiful free image zoom.
(*) As you may know, selling digitally downloadable goods in EU imposes a set of pretty complicated rules made by bureaucrats for bureaucrats, but we can cope with them. EDD behaves okay at checkout time unless you introduce a discount. If you do that a sum of round-up errors appears in the VAT calculation; as quite surprisingly the net amount in this case is not shown, the error goes easily unnoticed – until a diligent official remarks such a few cents mismatch and then things are likely to turn interesting. Of course I reported it, but EDD didn’t seem to take the matter seriously.
After a brief running in of vintage-nostalgia.com as my experiment was more positive than expected I decided it would be worth taking a step further, treasuring the previous experience. I made a few improvements:
– a more professional name
– a more reliable E-commerce platform
– bigger sample images (still watermarked)
– much more accurate tagging
Then I buried good old vintage-nostalgia in the garden and launched antikstock.com.
I’m pretty confident that, working on a profitable niche of the image-stock market, a professional website of my own shall be the best way to sell exclusive images decently. It is not time yet to say goodbye also to the best stock agencies, but if the trend stays worrisome the lifeboat is ready.
In this shipwreck I’ll have one advantage and one big flaw: I’m passionate about my work of restoring, elaborating, painting, making collages of antique illustrations from my huge ancient book library, which is growing almost uncontrollably.
On the other hand I’m aware that a good promotion on the social is important, and I have little time for that. We shall see…
Shutterstock never was my main microstock source of income, but they gave a decisive push to this bizarre new situation where stock images sold for free or nearly (a few cents) cover the best part of the market.
In this new age microstock is no more a gratifying source of revenue. What to do?
Alright, set aside the dreams, forget earning more, let’s just contain the collapse.
A quick analysis of my situation showed that the my ‘best’ agencies were – in that order – Adobe, Alamy, Istock and Shutterstock. Other minor agencies (Dreamstime, Pond5 etc.) were almost negligible as they provided just very occasional income.
In the light of that I changed my strategy, which proved to be a fortunate move: in some way I thus managed not only to contain the dreary “Shutterstock-effect” but also to stay stable at the previous level.
What did I do, exactly?
Chronologically:
Diversify the offer: I didn’t want to compete with myself anymore. My new goal was to offer my best images only to my best vendors to avoid selling them ludicrously cheap.
I drastically chopped the images with the best selling potential off the small agencies. Not an easy job, there was a lot of them, but it worked out fine.
Yet I keep uploading regularly a few generic images (food, landscapes, animals, nature…) to Dreamstime and Canstock, my best choice among the smaller ones, as they still pay $ rather than cents.
I clenched my teeth and closed my Istock account (where for a pretty long time I haven’t being uploading anyway), even though they provided a regular pretty good income. A matter of dignity, actually: most of the images there were given away even cheaper than at Shutterstock (!), though not many of us screamed about that…
I left only a few hundreds really ugly images on my Shutterstock account, deleting one by one all the others with evil satisfaction. The best of the uglies is this, utterly topical at lockdown times 😀 Three rolls of soft white toilet paper on a wicker basketNevertheless every now and then something gets sold even there: since last summer I made almost 3 dollars! (I’m considering buying a Rolls… 😀 )
As a result quite unsurprisingly the minor agencies are selling much less for me but my sales at Alamy and Adobe jumped nicely up thus compensating the burial of my Istock account and the loss of my huge (LOL) Shutterstock income.
In this way I’m not earning much more than before, but changing my tactics produced a very nice side effect: I feel now really better 🙂
However this is just an intermediate step: I’m still looking for further opportunities that comply better with the new rules of the game. They are there, they always are, it’s just a matter of finding them.
And let see what makes Adobe now, the news are a bit uncomfortable … the game is changing again, but okay I can play 🙂
Shutterstock rappresentava una parte non dominante dei miei proventi stock.
E’ stato però il sassolino che ha fatto franare la montagna: il mercato micro ne è stato rivoluzionato: ora con molta offerta gratuita o semi gratuita (come quella attuale di Shutterstock) è più difficile pensare al micro come una fonte di guadagno.
Che fare?
Pur essendo per me un part-time job per passione, sono corsa ai ripari con lo scopo a questo punto non di aumentare i miei guadagni ma di non perderli.
E ci sono riuscita.
Sono partita da un’analisi della mia situazione:
il mio income veniva essenzialmente nell’ordine da Adobe, Alamy, Istock e Shutterstock.
Le altre entità (Dreamstime ecc, ) sono state purtroppo sempre trascurabili in questo gioco, non un importo mensile regolare.
Le cose fatte in successione:
non competere con me stessa: ho diversificato l’offerta, falciato sistematicamente le piccole agenzie delle immagini con maggiore potenziale di vendita dove attualmente continuo ogni tanto a caricare immagini “generiche” magari utili ma non particolarmente “belle” (food, paesaggi, animali, natura ecc.), in primis su Dreamstime e Canstock da dove arriva più qualche dollaro che cents per singole vendite.
Ho preso il coraggio di chiudere il mio account su Istock. Non ci caricavo immagini da tempo anche se avevo tuttora una buona entrata regolare. Guardando come erano distribuiti questi dollari, la maggior parte delle immagini andavano via a pochi centesimi, meno che con il Shutterstock odierno, ma nessuno (o quasi) l’ha gridato…
Ho lasciato un paio di centinaio di immagini veramente brutte su Shutterstock, cancellando a una a una le altre. La più bella rimasta è una montagnola di carta igienica scattata per il lockdown. Three rolls of soft white toilet paper on a wicker basketNon ho chiuso l’account poichè ero curiosa di vedere come sarebbe andata a finire. Ogni tanto qualcuno mi compra per 10 cents una di queste immagini (sono arrivata a quasi a 3 dollari!) e devo dire che non c’è limite alla bruttezza.
Il risultato è che sono diminuite le vendite piccole ulteriormente ma sono aumentate significativamente le entrate da Alamy e Adobe. L’income mensile viene praticamente solo da queste due agenzie e si è mantenuto stabile sui valori ante Shutterstock compensando non solo le agenzie minori, ma anche la chiusura del mio account Istock .
Non ho guadagnato ma non ho perso, ho spostato. E mi ha fatto sentire molto meglio 😀
Poi mi sono guardata intorno, cercando altre opportunità, dopotutto non si sa cosa di preciso farà Adobe dopo le ultime news. I giochi stanno cambiando ancora, ma non mi fa più paura, posso cambiare le carte in tavola anch’io.
This is me in an ectoplasm version, having plenty of ghostly fun with my new camera.
My husband and I gave ourselves a Christmas gift in advance: the new DJI Pocket 2: a tiny pound of pocket-size camera with a great sharp sensor and a gimbal head allowing absolutely smooth 4K video clips at a very affordable price.
But I’m not going to describe the characteristics of this great new gadget here, you can find much more on YouTube and on specialized reviews. As I am not particularly fond of movies (I like still pics much more) I wondered if this pocket-size camera could replace in some way my good old one.
No sooner said than done, I began taking shoots outdoors and indoors with both and then comparing the outcomes.
My first images were accepted at Adobe, Alamy and Arcangel without arching a brow.
Since the microstock ship has begun to sink, thanks the Shutterstock coup de grâce, I gave some thoughts about escaping the frustration of the current situation.
It saddened me to see the Stock Coalition profile photos on FB : so many stunning images from many talented photographers on one side, and the fight for a few cents or (occasionally) a few dollars on the other.
This is not right.
These images tell a story: nobody should ever have to sell them this way.
Thanks to the suggestion of Alex Rotenberg’s Brutally Honest Guide to Microstock I applied to Arcangel, a stock agency that licenses images for book and disk covers. I had applied in the past in a lazy way and was discarded. Now, trying really to understand the mood of their images (and having fun doing it), I sent 20 resized pictures on one Sunday night and on the Monday morning after was instantly accepted!
Here a first batch of images:
I don’t know if this new adventure will sale well (if at all) but:
– in few days I learned about image processing more than in a decade
– I discovered the difference that ought to be between microstock and stock (the subject of my next post)
– I DON’T have to do the keywording job 😀 (I hate it even if is of paramount importance)
– I keep having fun discovering in my hard disks images not yet published and processing them in a quite different and emotional way
I always hear the same refrain: yes, they are fair indeed, pity though that they don’t sell much…
Actually so far my experience at Picfair had been… fair: for a few years I’ve been putting every now and then some images there, having three or four sales promptly paid in the meantime.
But times seem to be changing, and I decided that I need a personal photo website. I would know pretty well how to set up one myself, but for a small yearly fee Picfair offers me the possibility to have it under my own name, and as a very nice bonus also to sell my pictures as prints/posters/framed. So why not to give it a try?
So be it: luisafumi-photography.com
The presentation of the images is very good, and I can (beside having an URL of my own by them):
– sell prints,
– make albums and feature one on the first page,
– have a local search engine,
– create a splash page with a picture I love
– add external links to the menu (to my blog here, to my other website vintage-nostalgia.com, etc.)
– have a personal watermark. I retained the Pifair standard one, very well thought and designed, also because I am happy to be there in excellent company, as I find the overall Picfair image quality astonishingly high.
Time will tell if such a decision will be fruitful – now it is to early to make a reliable forecast about the destiny of the photo market at all.
Just few days after my new Picfair installation I was rewarded with a pleasant surprise: my first print sale, my splash image! A good omen and a nice startup.
I fear that Shutterstock has given the final blow to the microstock photos market with their unilateral action, by reducing drastically the contributors royalties to 10 cents/picture – promising more for big amounts of uploads and sales, but resetting the contributor at the beginning of each year – that is, forcing her/him to start from scratch @10 cents/sale, and thus humiliating legions of outraged submitters.
And I also fear that this deliberate act is actually a farsighted move: the SS people must have realized that the time was ripe to grab as much as possible before going out of business.
Just look around: the websites offering high res images for free are rapidly growing and some of their pictures are really beautiful, also considering that today’s smartphones are growing better endowed than most photographers.
What to do now?
I’m thinking of two possibilities:
1. Business is business: to upload all of one’s images on all agencies that sell (if just a little) in exchange for a decent (if just a little) royalty, and to hope for the best.
Alas, there is a heavy drawback about it, tough: a couple of years ago I withdrew almost all my images belonging to a particular well-selling niche from the less profitable agencies. As it happens, it proved to be a blatantly fortunate manoeuver: my sales at Alamy and Adobe more than doubled immediately. And they keep growing. This way I understood that I was my own cheap competitor. When 123RF contacted me on behalf of a customer about a deleted image of mine, I told them that I was really sorry and explained candidly my problem. Quite surprisingly they accepted my point of view and respected it.
2. To accept the change without moaning and make plans. To leave and to upload your images on the trustworthiest agencies, but to keep aside the best ones and find other more profitable ways to sell them.
Still I think that the idea of a personal stock agency is worth a thought or three anyway – no matter if self-hosted or not: there are several alternatives on the market and at least two of them are very affordable (I’ll tell about them in a next post).
It could turn into a precious show-window for the images you like too much to give them away cheap.
At this point it wouldn’t surprised me to witness a revival of many curated niches over the mass cauldron.
Since many years I’m not only a contributor, but on behalf of my web customers also a microstock buyer, and as such I’m perfectly aware that my behaviour doesn’t deviate much from the vast majority of buyers, who statistically give up after the second page the local search engines produce.
And what with the tenths of millions of images stored by the agencies? Dead, almost completely dead.
Nowadays selling microstock is like winning a prize at a cheap lottery called “search engines”: partially random, partially influenced by hidden rules and only marginally based on the actual, hard-labored keywording.
What’s the point of such zillions of dead images, when just a few thousands of high-quality pictures, if well presented and properly selected, could make a really huge difference?
Ho come l’impressione che Shutterstock abbia dato una spallata fatale al mercato delle foto microstock con un azione (unilaterale) che ha indignato non pochi contributors, facendo drasticamente scendere le royalties a 10 cents/foto, promettendo di più a chi galoppa per fornire più foto e vendite, per ricominciare però tutto daccapo a 10 cents l’anno successivo. E così via.
Temo purtroppo che si sia trattato di una mossa lungimirante: hanno capito che i tempi erano maturi e quindi deciso di arraffare quanto più possibile prima di chiudere.
Date un’occhiata in giro: si moltiplicano rapidamente siti che offrono high-res foto free molte delle quali bellissime. Tutti possono ormai contribuire con foto decenti da smartphone. Non occorre neanche sfoderare esperienza e capacità quando la macchina ne possiede per conto vostro.
Che fare?
Vedo due possibilità:
1. (business is business) buttarsi allo sbaraglio, caricare tutte le stesse foto sui siti che vendono almeno un po’ e offrono royalties non oltraggiose e sperare.
Ho una controindicazione in merito a questa decisione. Già un paio di anni fa, avendo delle immagini best-sellers di nicchia, le ho ritirate quasi del tutto (si lascia un filo di Arianna, no?) dai siti che pagavano di meno. Il risultato è stato eclatante: un immediato boom di vendite più che raddoppiate in Alamy ed Adobe, che cresce e continua tuttora. Ho capito che non dovevo essere io il mio cheap competitor. 123Rf mi ha contattato poichè un cliente voleva acquistare un’immagine che avevo cancellato e ho spiegato il mio problema. Sorprendentemente mi hanno detto che capivano benissimo il mio punto di vista.
2. prendere atto che le cose cambiano senza mugugnare troppo e fare un po’ di piani. Lasciare e caricare le foto sui siti microstock che vi danno affidamento, ma tenere da parte quelle che sono i vostri punti di forza e trovare altre maniere di monetizzarle.
Considererei anche l’idea di un sito-agenzia personale, non importa se self-maintained o ospitato contro una quantità modesta di vile denaro (ce ne sono, ve ne parlo la prossima volta). Se non altro potrebbe essere una show-room per le immagini più belle che pensate non valga la pena di dar via per poco.
Non mi parebbe affatto strano infatti che ci fosse un riflusso verso più nicchie curate contro il calderone di massa.
Sono anch’io un’acquirente di microstock per conto dei miei clienti web. Mi rendo conto di fare esattamente come dicono le statistiche di chi acquista microstock: la stragrande maggioranza non va oltre la seconda pagina offerta dai motori di ricerca locali, poi si stufa.
E le decine di milionate di immagini stivate nelle agenzie? Restano là, morte.
Inutile dire che ormai vendere appare sempre più come vincere un modesto premio nella lotteria organizzata dalle search engines: in parte random, in parte influenzate da “opportunità contingenti”, in piccola parte basata effettivamente sul keywording.
Mi chiedo che senso abbiano queste quantità inverosimili di foto, quando qualche migliaio di immagini di qualità, ben selezionate e presentate come si deve possono veramente fare la differenza.
luisa 
