iStockphoto Launches Subscription

Microstock pioneer, iStockphoto, launches a new service today: Subscriptions. Previously, buying images were strictly on a pay-as-you-go basis, but now users can have a fixed daily limit of download credits at a lower price. These credits are spent, depending on the resolution of the image you are downloading. On a small plan, you have 10 credits a day, which is enough to buy either 10 web-size photos, 1 large or a combination of medium, small etc. On the subscriptions page, there is a calculator to show, what you can get with the credits you have. What's different about it is, that with subscriptions, clients can get the credits for as little as $0.24 a piece, depending on how long you sign up for. If you pay as you go the best available deal is still more than three times that!

As an exclusive contributor to iStockphoto, I have of course opted for my entire portfolio to be available to subscription customers. I really have no expectations when it comes to the effect on sales, which is not to say that I expect no increase at all. I do. It's more that I don't know exactly what to expect. The new service is great for designers who use a high volume of photos in their work, and it might just be easier for some to manage a subscription, but I have no real sense of any actual numbers.

This is something I will be keeping an eye on, and I will be posting follow-up reports here in the future. In the meantime, hop on over to iStockphoto and check it out. Did you know that they also recently launched iStockaudio? You can probably guess what that's about. 

Rasmus Rasmussen is on loan from iStockphoto, where he is part of the image inspection team.