Being a website consultant and building a lot of different websites we want to do a couple of things so that we can add value to the user experience. We want to add compelling content and we want to be able to attract enough incoming links so that our content will rank in the SERP’s or the search engine results pages. I focus heavily on quality content development for my clients.

Recently I got a call from a PhD client whom I built a site for and he said received an e-mail from Getty Images. The mail said that he was in rights violations of an image. He needed to contact the person(s) who built his site. (That was me). He needed to find out where I got the image from. Luckily I licensed it from iStockPhoto. I also had the receipt. Here’s a look at the photo.

When I spoke to the person at Getty Images I shared with them I purchased the image at iStockPhoto. She said that was a “problem.” I said but it is not “my problem.” She concurred. I asked her if she had a relationship with iStockPhoto and she said “yes, we own them.” So I’m not sure what happened on their side but the issue went away for now, but it might be resurrected now with this blog post, who knows. I was annoyed that I had to waste my time and my clients with their incompetence.

So I am creating a new “ad campaign” for my own business. I wanted to use some images from Times Square and create a campaign that says something to the effect as a website consultant I can cut through the clutter online and use a Times Square image and an example of information overload. I went back to iStockPhoto. I like their offerings. However I did not see an image that I was really excited about. So I went over to Getty images. I did find some Times Square images that I liked however if I wanted to use them for 2 years in social media or on my web site I was going to pay between $1,050 and $1,250 for the 2 year license. Ouch!

I’m originally from New York City. I now live in Boston. I work with John Hubbard of Hubcam.com. I told John we need to go on a road trip to NYC and shoot our own original content, which he said he will do. We need to take pictures of Times Square, the George Washington Bridge, Central Park etc….and sell them to the stock photography guys. When I got on the chat portion of the Getty Images I asked them how much does the photographer get of the $1,050? Guess what, I did not get an answer back. So this tells me that the photographer might get a very small portion of that fee, do you agree? They get paid well for licensing and enforcing those licenses, how is that for a business model? Pretty good if you ask me.

Here’s an interesting article John sent to me discussing the business model for photographers and the stock photo guys, total over saturation of inventory.