RAWPixel: be inspired

Recently I discovered new interesting resource where you can download high-resolution images for free — Rawpixel.com. Team Manager and Customer Relations Officer Nica Tortosa agreed to give me a short interview.

How long ago did Rawpixel started working?

Technically Rawpixel only started out in 2014, but we have be going since 2011 in other guises. We first started out with just a very small production team, travelling the World working on some pretty exciting shoot projects. Since then we have added many more creatives to our team and we are going from strength to strength. ​

Where are you based? Who is your team?

Our Rawpixel headquarters is in England, we also have a creative hub in Bangkok. Our Bangkok hub houses ​a diverse team of over 50 talented designers, editors, keyworders, and web developers. Bangkok is a very dynamic city, which gives us loads of​ inspiration and subjects to feature in our creative projects.

Image © Rawpixel | Rawpixel.com

How is your project different from other sites?

We create all of our content from scratch, through this we can ensure that every image provides the authenticity, diversity, creativity, quality and the all-round awesomeness that our customers need. Everyday, we ​endeavour to redefine​​​ stock photography. We ​listen to our clients and prospects, ​putting ourselves in their shoes ​to enable us to create the content they need. We own the copyright to all of our images and every image with a recognisable model has the necessary model release/permissions - as long as you use our image in accordance with our image licence, you can trust us that you aren't going to get caught out with any legal issues.

Is Rawpixel owner of images from your site? Can other photographers participate in the project?

Yes we own the copyright of all images on Rawpixel.com. ​We believe that producing amazing stock images comes down to having an amazing production and design team not just a talented photographer. At the moment all of our photographers are part of the Rawpixel team, we do not accept content from "contributors". However, we do have future plans to welcome amazing photographers to collaborate with the rest of our team.

Are photos from Rawpixel exclusive?

As we said above, we own the copyright of all of our images. At the moment we promote and sell our images through Rawpixel.com but also on some other microstock agencies. We are working hard on preparing our images and website to be able to offer our full portfolio for sale on Rawpixel.com, when we do this we will have a range of images that our exclusive to Rawpixel.com

Image © Rawpixel | Rawpixel.com

Rawpixel Free Image License allows to use content for commercial purposes — "Incorporate the image into merchandise as long as the image itself is not the merchandise". What about resale/distribution physical items at so-called print shops — zazzle.co.uk, redbubble.com, cafepress.co.uk, society6.com etc.?

If it is for personal use then that is fine. But if it is for commercial use/resale than it is not ok to reprint the image as merchandise, where the primary element of the merchandise is the image, such as printing the image on to a canvas. If however the image is only used as an element of the design/item and the image is not a primary element of the item, such as adding a caption to an image and printing it onto a mug, or incorporating the image into a wedding invitation design then that is ok.

Could you provide some positive statistics of Rawpixel? For example, how many customers cooperating with the site now, how many photos you have at the current time, etc.

Rawpixel currently have about 800,000 images in our library (we are already giving around 700 of them away for free at Rawpixel.com, and this number increases daily), we believe we are the World's leading creator of digital stock images. In November last year we estimated that someone downloads one of our images every 10 seconds - a pretty impressive statistic — but we are aiming for 1 every second!

Image © Rawpixel | Rawpixel.com

It's early days for us on Rawpixel.com, we have launched it so we can work directly with the hundreds of thousands creatives that use our images, we don't have as many of them as we would like collaborating with us on the site yet, but we do know the ones have already found us are doing a really good job of helping us to spread the word.

Russian version of this article on busja-design.blogspot: RAWPixel: be inspired.

100% from LogoGround

Statistic of blog shows that many users are looking sites for sale logos. Today I want to introduce to you not too big, but very interesting resource — LogoGround. First of all, it is interesting because it offers to authors 100% of each sale. Founder of LogoGround — Andre le Roux — agreed to tell how he succeeds.



How long ago did LogoGround started working?

I founded LogoGround in 2011.

How is your project different from other sites, that sell logos?

The main difference between us and other logo platforms is that we treat designers as our most valuable asset. We believe that happy designers is the first and most crucial step to building a successful logo selling community. Everything else, from marketing to quality control, becomes much easier if we have a community of happy designers.

Other logo sites do a good job of taking care of their clients, but often at the expense of their designers. At LogoGround we take care of our designers and they take care of our clients.

As far as I understand, you have large base of your logos. Who is your team?

Of the approximately 7,000 logos on the site, ± 650 logos were created by me or by LogoGround staff designers. It is important to me that we remain active as logo sellers on the site. I want us to experience the same problems that our designers experience so that we can offer real solutions.

We have a very small team: Five people total of which only three work full-time. I would like to keep the team as small as possible. We focus our development time on building systems that are fully scalable.



I noticed that the author receives 100% from every purchase. It sounds great. But how is this possible?

Yes, we pay 100% of the profit of every sale to the designer. We only deduct PayPal's fee. LogoGround does not take a cut. We make money primarily by selling our own logos on the site, but we also do work on behalf of designers from time to time.

When a logo sells, the designer must work with the client to add the client's company name, to change the logo colors etc. If there is no response from the designer, a LogoGround staff designer steps in to make sure our clients receive what they paid for. In such cases the designer earns only $40 per sale (look paragraph 6. Project Re-Assignment LogoGround.com User Agreement — fn by AllAboutMickrostock).

We realize that designers may not always be available to work with their clients, so we built a "pause" button into the site. Designers can pause their accounts at any time, which hides their logos from logo buyers. After all, designers should be able to go on vacation! :)



Why there is a minimum value of the logo — $150? I mean, what reason prompted you to make such estriction?

You know that on the Web, logos sold for low price are often sold as templates (logos that are resold). We do not resell logos, but ridiculously low prices (in the eyes of the client) can create the impression that we do.

The minimum price used to be $100. We recently changed it to $150. The reasoning and the discussion amongst our designers on this topic can be seen on our forum here — "Price Increase?"

You work with only PayPal now. Are you still considering other options for payment designers fee? Unfortunately in the forum thread "Designer Payments" I have not found evidences of progress. Is there any hope?

At the moment we work only through PayPal. We have investigated other options and we continue to do so. We know that there are many brilliant designers in countries where PayPal's services are not available and we would love to make it possible for those designers to join us. Unfortunately we can't say for sure when alternative payment methods will become available.

Can the author to sell their logos on other sites or logo for LogoGround should be exclusive?

We require exclusivity. This makes it possible for us to spot copyright issues when we review logos. We have on occasion made exceptions when designers requested it, but as a rule logos uploaded to LogoGround are exclusive to LogoGround.

Could you provide some positive statistics of LogoGround. For example, how many designers cooperating with the site now, how many logos you sold at the current time, etc.

We currently have 5,262 members of whom 3,423 are active designers. Sales to date: About 500 logos sold and about 6,500 unsold. Total of $114 100 paid to designers so far. We are approving 400 to 500 new logos per month.

LogoGround is growing rapidly. We expect 10,000+ users and 1,000+ sales before the end of this year.

This links can be useful for you:

• Designer FAQ
• LogoGround Designer Handbook
• How To Get Logos Approved on LogoGround
• The One-Strike Rule

Russian version of this article on busja-design.blogspot: 100% от LogoGround.

The Tribune Of Microstock Authors

The Tribune Of Microstock Authors announced today its awareness raising campaign:

We have noticed with regret that there are wide spread violations related to the use of copyrighted images, which is partially driven by the popularity of microstock agencies.

One of the major violations is the distribution of microstock images by third parties, ignoring all the terms and conditions of the license purchased, including the forbidden act of distributing or reselling the images.

Some sites share these microstock images in exchange of little payments; others give it for free in order to gain more popularity, ranking on the search engines and increase their traffic.
The administrators of these sites claim all the responsibility on the community of users who upload these images, while they know that most of their portal contents are illegal material.
Only in some cases part of the violated copyrighted contents are removed if the authors claim their properties, at the same time by sending a notice of copyright infringement.

This violation of sharing copyrighted files is practiced mainly by purchasing a subscription plan through a Microstock agency (which offers the largest format or the vector file of the illustration).
Unfortunately, the majority of the authors of these images can’t protest this kind of violation of their images, because they don’t know from which agency they were downloaded.
As a demonstration against this illegal practice, the authors have gathered in a group on facebook and launched a public page called TRIBUNE OF MICROSTOCK AUTHORS with a purpose of calling the attention of the Microstock agencies, so we can together with them, reach to solutions, eliminating or reducing this kind of practice to the minimum.
One of the possible suggestions to limit piracy on these images is to exclude the vector formats & the over medium file sizes by subscription plans. This will surely make it difficult on pirate sites to gain money from small sized images.

A list of some pirate sites that are practicing this kind of violations is published on the page.
Your comments amd suggestions are welcome on the Facebook page.

For agencies, we can provide separate documents for easier reading.

Search Box by Drawshop

Danish microstock DrawShop developed for authors presented on site Search Box - gadget that can be placed on your site or blog.

The search engine searches only results from your portfolio on DrawShop.

Search Box has a simple universal design, which is suitable for any page. You can copy the code in the bottom left corner of the tab Account Info.

Subscriptions by Photokore

Korean microstock Photokore announced the introduction of a subscription.

Through subscription administration plans to increase the number of buyers in the microstock market in Japan and Korea. The Chinese market is not currently being considered.

Sell ​​subscription plans in Korea will be through one of sister sites. This is to avoid unnecessary competition between the two sites.

Thus there are two types of subscriptions:

Direct subscription (on English and Japanese sites). For each purchased file author receives a fixed fee, which depends on the rank of the author.

Indirect subscription (on sister site in Korea). Royalties will be levied based on author's share of sales in a single subscription, and 50% of the proceeds. Payment - monthly.


Click on the image to see full size.

Subscription allows users to use images only for standard license. Customers who need extended license will be required to purchase credits.

To opt out send e-mail to help@photokore.com, with the subject line "Subscription opt out".

Design Competition by PhotoSpin

US microstock PhotoSpin offers to all its members to take part in the competition for the best design. Entries are accepted from August 27 to September 7.

To participate, you must:

- to be an active subscriber of any subscription plans;
- used in your design at least one PhotoSpin image;

To take part you need to do:

- Fill out entry form;
- Read & Agree to the Official Rules;
- Upload design in JPEG format, no larger than 800px.

Prizes:

First Place: The new iPad with Wi-Fi 16GB + Super Plus subscription (a $649.00 value).
Second Place: Super Plus subscription (a $649.00 value).
Third Place: Plus subscription (a $429.00 value).

VectorEdit - creative royalty free vector illustrations

I think it would be correct to provide more information for consumers and talk about sites that are not so known, but deserve attention.

First among them will be microstock site VectorEdit. I present you an interview with one of the founders of the resource Nick Thomas.

Hello, Nick. I would like to ask a few questions. Primarily: As far as you are a new site?

Hello to all. VectorEdit is a royalty free vector illustration source which we built a few years ago. It took a while to build the site, with the online payments etc. and it also took a while to upload and create entries for so many illustrations! We're always adding new illustrations to the site, but the site really went 'live' in 2009.

Who is your team?

We're a very small team! Paul Middlewick is the illustrator and designer. I'm the production specialist, website builder and admin contact.

Why did you run a website?

We created VectorEdit to re-use the many, many illustrations Paul had created over the years for advertising and marketing designs, visuals and concepts. As part of this work, we're always going back to previous projects to re-use elements or illustrations for new work and we thought other designers and visualisers could share the benefits of our work. So, we built VectorEdit. We've kept the costs very low as we see our customers as being creative people like ourselves who just need quick, high quality elements for them to complete their own designs.

How is your project different from other stocks? What makes it interesting for buyers?

VectorEdit is different to other sites because we aim our illustrations at fellow artists and designers. Our work is of the highest quality and, if the .eps version is purchased, fully editable making them ideal for other designers and illustrators to be able to use them in their own work quickly and easily.

It is possible to become your contributor?

We have thought of allowing other illustrators to add their work to VectorEdit, but are concerned that the quality of their work might not be up to our standard and so, for now, we're sticking to our own work.

Have you referral programme?

No, we don't have a formal referral programme. We rely on word-of-mouth and recommendation from our satisfied customers to spread the word about VectorEdit - always the best way!

Russian version of this article on busja-design.blogspot: VectorEdit - creative royalty free vector illustrations.