Crestock offers freebie images

Reading time: 8 – 13 minutes

Crestock just launched a new wordpress plugin, offering bloggers free images. The plugin allows bloggers to directly download blog-sized images (max 400 pixels), free of charge, into their wordpress blog. The plugin has full search functionality. The images will provide credits to the photographer, and a link back to Crestock.

• More about Crestocks wordpress plugin here.
• Download the plugin here.

How does it work?

Installing the plugin is easy. Crestock recommends installing the plugin manually, rather than through the wordpress. After activating the plugin, a new widget appears on the right, above the others when you start writing a new post.

By entering keywords, the plugin suggests images from Crestock’s collection, matching the search query.

Images are placed inside the blog post, simply by dragging and dropping the thumbnail to the desired spot. The image, then, is automatically downloaded to your server. If the download doesn’t succeed, a placeholder is shown, in stead of the image:

Limitations

• The plugin automatically right-aligns the images, with no option to change it. (this can be done using the HTML edit tab) Adding a control panel for image size and placement would be very handy!
• The credit line underneath the image, including the link back to Crestock (the primary way to increase traffic, resulting in sales for the photographer!)  is easily removed. Way too easy. Perhaps linking the image back to the URL, provided in the credit line, would be more efficient (but also possible to remove)
• The link back to Crestock loads in the current page, drawing away your visitors – again, a control panel could fix this.
• The number of images (still?) seems to be relatively limited, retrieving ‘no results’ for a substantial number of searches. I think if photographers would receive direct compensation for blog images, this could be solved. Solving the issue at the basis – a less ambiguous reviewing process – would perhaps even nip the entire problem in the butt.
• After a while, the Crestock plugin reloads with a randomized selection of images, taking the place of prior search results. Rather irritating, if you’ve just found the image you were looking for, but didn’t place it yet. My vote goes to removing this auto-reload entirely.

Initial doubts

From a photographers and Crestock contributor’s point of view, I have had my doubts about this new service, ever since Crestock announced it.

Confusing email

A week ago, Crestock sent out a rather persuasive email, asking contributors to opt in and give away their images for free, in return for a 5% increase on royalties on every commission sale, exposure, and the increase of traffic. The email itself is convincing, but its interpretation is somewhat ambiguous. Although I believe the figures and facts Crestock states are correct, the conclusions probably depict a too positive picture:

One of the lures was that some of the “big names” had already signed up for it. All very nice, but the sheer scale of the portfolio from those contributors vary greatly from the average photographer. Crestock clearly aims at the top 5 percentile, for whom I can see the benefits of throwing in a frew freebies every now and then.

Wordpress has over 3.1 minlion active blogs. I’m curious how many of those 3.1 million blogs are owned and maintained by Crestock prospects, and what percentage of those prospects will actually start using this plugin.

The most popular plugins have been downloaded 4.42 million times. Crestock omitted, that they’re all general purpose, wheras Crestock’s plugin serves a more specific, if not niche market. Besides, 4.42 million, is the sum of the top ten of most downloaded plugins. The majority of plugins is anticipated to be ~ 5000, and the number of downloads of a plugin doesn’t mean the plugin itself is installed,  removed shortly after installation, or even activated at all.

The link back to Crestock is intended to build deep links to each of our images – indexing search engines where people can buy the images. I like that idea, except, that those omni-important links are easily removed. A dangerous proposition for any photographer, who has just given away an image for free.

The sentence that stung, is Crestock’s remark, indicating the common interest to be to make “you as much money as possible”, when the average commission they offer is lower than at the competition, the number of downloads is relatively insignificant, and on top of that, they fail to pay their contributors within a reasonable time. Not a lot to get me excited.

Underneath the email, Crestock provided a link for photographers, to sign in and participate, and offer the photographers’ portfolio for free. As soon as I clicked the link, I was surprised to find I was instantly signed in for this promotion, without a confirmation page. It took me an email to Crestock to opt out again. (To which Gudmund – luckily – swiftly responded). This instant opt-in through the link provided in the email is a bit too aggressive for my taste – I was expecting to find more information, first.

Doubts on effectiveness

• From a commercial point of view as photographer, I’m not too keen on giving away my images for free. The level of sales at crestock is amongst the lowest around, and although the credit sales at Crestock are relatively fair, there aren’t that many of them, to make a 5% increase on those royalties worth my while.
• Being a photographer, I rarely have the need for someone-else’s images. And if I do, I rather buy the image, than have the image watermarked. Then again, I’m not one of Crestock’s target audience.
• I could think of a couple of reasons why someone would use this feature, and I’m sure it’ll increase traffic to the agent, resulting in an increase of sales. However, I can also imagine, a lot of bloggers would not like their blog to be an advertisement portal for Crestock.
• It remains to be seen, how many bloggers will actually click through to buy one of more larger images. Frankly, it wouldt surprise me, if that number is significant. After all: how many times have you seen an image in a blog, thinking: Hey! Let’s buy an image?
• In order for such a tool to be effective, the number of images should reflect most of the agent’s collection. Having my reservation about giving away free images, and knowing I share those reservation with quite a few others, the quantity of images is (still?) too limiting, to provide an image for all desired contexts.
• I haven’t been able to find an opt-out or settings page to select specific images I’d wish to enter. As far as I know, once opted in, your entire portfolio is opted in, and the only way to opt out is to write an email to Crestock.

The photographers benefits

For anyone, who is a large contributor at Crestock, with significant sales, opting in and giving away blog-sized images for free might make sense, as the increase in traffic, and the odd click-through of anyone following the credit link and becoming a paying customer might be interesting. It will definitely increase the exposure, and might even result in a couple of additional sales. The 5% added commission on credit sales – given enough quantity – might also be tempting for some contributors.

The plugin in use

Although I have my reservation about this plugin from a photographers point of view, I’m sure it’ll be great for quite a few bloggers. the plugin adds functionality, and ease of use inserting images into a blog post. It looks nice, and the user interface is well designed, as is the full advanced search options.

Search results and relevance

I gave the plugin a one time spin, to see how it works. My first idea was to add an image, depicting “controversy”, “mixed feelings”, “throwing away money”, or something depicting the “launching” of a new feature. Unfortunately, no images turned up using any of the keywords. A number of other searches also returned no results. For the keyword “confusion”, the majority of images were irrelevant. This isn’t exactly a flaw in the plugin, but mostly the photographers failure to keyword properly. It is also an indication the number of free images available is anything but substantial.

Conclusion

Kudos to Crestock for trying, and finding an innovative way to market their collection, and for a programming job well done. They developed an appealing,  functional and easy to use interface. Also, I’m pleasantly surprised about the watermark, providing credits to the photographer. Didn’t see that one coming!

In rolling out this program,communicating it, the compensation structure behind it, and their way to ask the contributing photographers for their cooperation, I feel Crestock is a bit over-optimistic.  I feel there will be very little commitment from the photographers point of view to support this initiative, as foremost, this initiative seems to be primarily to the benefit of the Crestock.

If the Crestock plugin catches on, it might well create another downward – and undesired -  trend for most photographers. However,  I see little evidence of such a thing happening. Primarily, because I believe Crestock doesn’t have enough goodwill to get a lot of photographers participating, needed to create the needed leverage and that the conversion between bloggers and paying customers falters behind. In addition, there might be a bit of hesitance about turning a blog into an advertisement portal for Crestock.

• More info on mystockphoto.org
• The email and more initial reactions on microstockgroup.com