Why exclusivity is not an option for a stock photographer

Quoting from a post by Shutterstock founder John Oringer on his blog:

Shutterstock went through many stages of development before becoming today's company. I started with 30,000 of my own photos, and now we offer 20 million images, 35,000 active contributors, and over 550,000 buyers. Today, Shutterstock is the stock content leader, selling more than two images per second.

The image market that we have created is moving in several directions. And over the past nine years, we have learned a lot about both buyers and sellers of content. I get the question very often from buyers, sellers, investors and the press: "why don't you create an exclusivity program for Shutterstock creators?". All our main competitors have such offers, but not us. For us, the answer is obvious. However, this is completely incomprehensible to those who are not brewed in this business. The bottom line is that if you work with microstock agencies, exclusivity is not beneficial to you in the first place. And that's why:

1) The content itself is not a competitive advantage, the customer base and data about them is also a very important component. Some people don't understand this. We sell creativity, creative assets, and at first glance, exclusivity would be at hand here. We add over 10,000 images to our database every day. We have sold over a quarter of a billion images in 9 years. And we have an incredible amount of information about these downloads. We know which search leads to which picture. We can say that each customer is an open book for us, and in 14 languages at once. Shutterstock is the leader in terms of the size of the image library, and thus the leader in the amount of accumulated sales data. We are obsessed with successful search, and if today we could reduce the time from entering a request to downloading a photo by a tenth of a second, the day was not in vain. We work on this process constantly and use every opportunity to offer the best image for the buyer. The best image for a particular search query is not one that another photo bank does not have, but one that will be selected and purchased. With a library of 20 million pictures and 10,000 daily additions, we'll most likely have the picture you need. I believe that if we provide the customer with the right product faster than anyone else, then in the end we win too. There is no advantage in having an exclusive collection of images when the buyer chooses where to buy the images. He wants to get what he wants quickly. See for yourself, try searching on Shutterstock and make the same request to competitors.

2) As a civilized market, we believe in fairness. Right from the start, I was confident that the competition would make Shutterstock the best deal. By selling more works of authorship, we build long-term relationships built on the benefits of sales, and not on the rigid terms of a cooperation agreement. If the author is able to achieve more in another photo bank, for God's sake, he can cooperate with this other photo bank. This approach makes the Shutterstock court very strong in the long run. We are constantly fighting for both sides of the market.

3) As a place where the buyer is guaranteed that he will receive the right photo for every request, we cannot have any privileged works. All images are sold at the same price depending on the chosen subscription plan. This is the difference from all other microstocks. Photobanks that offer exclusivity should highlight certain images in the search. Search results for each request should be built in favor of exclusivists, so that they would be interested in participating in this. And if the photo bank does not sell more images for a higher price than other agencies, what is the point of remaining exclusive? What, exclusive images of better quality or more suitable for the search query? This is not what defines good search results. At Shutterstock, we focus on something else - search success. While other microstocks are sorting their SERPs to maximize profits, we are maximizing search success.

4) Since all images are offered under a royalty-free license, exclusivity does not matter to the buyer. In the microstaff market, exclusivity does not mean that the use of an image will be somehow limited compared to regular images.

Shutterstock focuses on the long term. We believe that the picture the buyer needs is determined by the best search engine. Simply put, without inflection towards exclusive pictures. And by continually improving search relevancy, we feel it is more important and needed by both buyers and sellers of images.

John

It remains only to add that a week after that, Shutter published a message to all exclusive authors (iStock in the first place). In which he proposes to throw the idea of exclusivity out of your head and sign up as the authors of Shutter. And Shutter promises to quickly consider their applications without an exam.