The site, where members can sell their photos or graphics as "stock art," employs the Web 2.0 idea of user-generated content. But Livingstone founded iStockphoto in 2000 when the Web 1.0 e-commerce idea still prevailed. The company resembles eBay: when a customer buys an image, iStockphoto charges the seller a commission.
iStockphoto survived the dot-com bust by selling stock art for dramatically lower prices--as little as a buck a pop--and became profitable at the end of 2002. At present, 35,000 members upload about 30,000 images each week and customers download one every 2.5 seconds. A year ago, Getty Images, the dominant seller of stock art, acquired iStockphoto for $50 million.
Other "microstock" companies including Fotolia, Dreamstime and Shutterstock remain rivals, and photo-sharing sites pose a new threat. A revamped Zooomr will let photographers sell their images and keep 90 percent of the proceeds, compared with just 20 percent to 40 percent for iStockphoto. And there's talk that Yahoo's photo-sharing juggernaut, Flickr, might move into stock art.
But Livingstone has been steeped in stock art since taking a job as a mail clerk at Image Club Graphics in the early 1990s. The company didn't like his idea of selling the art online, but Livingstone was hooked.
As a result of its stock-art heritage, the company has always vetted images for quality and compliance with legal requirements--signed forms for any subject with a visible face, for example. About 40 percent of submissions don't make the cut.
Livingstone discussed iStockphoto's history and challenges with CNET News.com's Stephen Shankland.
Q: Who are your competitors today?
Livingstone: Everyone. This year I think everybody is going to enter this market. I think a lot of companies have identified this model as being successful. Anyone who has images, a digital asset in the form of a picture is going to enter this space and try and sell it in one form or another.
Zooomr will let members sell their photos, there have been discussions whether Flickr might, too. What happens to you when that happens?
Livingstone: Companies like Zooomr and Flickr--they're great innovators and I think they just might be able to figure it out. It's tough, because you have this community that's used to sharing and they do things a certain way, and then suddenly you're introducing this business element that wasn't there before. I'm not sure it's going to be as easy as they think.
What about legal repercussions? There are a lot of photos on Flickr with faces visible that don't have a model release form attached.
Livingstone: It's a very complicated process. A model release in France is much different than a model release in the United States. For example, in France, they actually get to say, "I can only be used in ads that have to do with this, this and this, but I don't want to be used in ads for pharmaceuticals or sexual preference." There's also copyright.
But could they put competitive pressure on you just by combining Flickr with Google search and Flickr ratings? Could be good enough for a lot of people, just like iStockphoto was good enough for a lot of people who used to be in a higher category?
Livingstone: Competitive pressure is natural in any business, and we've had competitive pressure from other microstocks that started after we did and from subscription services. We can't be scared of competitors. It's natural and it's healthy.
You started in the online direction in 1994 while working at Image Club.
Livingstone: They didn't buy into this newfangled e-commerce thing, or maybe it was just too soon for them. I went out on my own, wrote a business plan and quit school. A few years later I had funding and released four CD-ROMs, which never really sold.
So what did you do?
Livingstone: Well, I got a little bitter that I wasn't able to actually sell my own images. It didn't feel very good to have failures, so I thought I would pull a bit of a rebellious move and give away these images.
I bought the domain from Network Solutions for $25 and launched this site where you could register, download as many high-resolution photos as you want and use everything with a royalty-free license. About six months later, we kept hearing from all these photographers and designers that they wanted to share their images with everyone as well.
So they didn't want to just download your stuff, they wanted to share their own stuff?
Livingstone: That was important for us, because it started the community. We also at that time invented this credit system where if (a person) downloaded one of my photos, then I would get a credit. I can use that credit to download one of Kara's photos. It was a barter system. That worked for a while--until we got this massive (Web site) hosting bill of about $10,000.
That's when you moved from barter to dollar signs.
Livingstone: To 25 cents per download.
Save up to $300/year on phone bills
with the consolidation of agencies into basically two super
agencies like Getty and Corbis makes it hard to go elsewhere to
find photos when stock is required. Most stock photography is
too generic for my specialized needs. But there are times when
they are handy. And iStockphoto really shines when you need
something simple and generic. Pictures for $50 are much better
than not much better photos for $500 or $700. Stock agencies
only have themselves to blame for not being more flexible for
losing so much business to iStockphoto and whatever
competition it might have.
In fact, I get to travel a lot because stock photos don't fit our
needs or are way too expensive. One year I spent $290,000 for
stock photography. I told my boss that would buy a lot of plane
tickets. Since then I've been to Brazil, Colombia, India and I'm
going to Africa next month! So thanks Getty and Corbis for
being too expensive. My life has become a lot more interesting
because of it!