Lucky Oliver - Another Nail in Getty’s Coffin

Posted on April 23, 2007
Filed Under web 2.0 |

The stock photo business has been under attack from web-based alternatives for some time. Digital Railroad and iStockPhoto have been offering disruptively priced professional stock images for quite a while now, and having a good amount of success doing it.

A newer entrant into this market is Lucky Oliver, which despite having IMO a really bad name does have an interesting approach to their market. You sign up for an account and then buy tokens (10 for $10 to 500 for $415) which you then use to purchase images out of the community with the pricing of the image, as low as $1, being a function of what size the image is delivered in.

By focusing on professional quality images offered at really low prices, compared to alternatives, Lucky Oliver is clearly moving beyond the traditional markets for stock images. My company will use this service for images we need for promotional material and online use, it’s a no-brainer given the depth of the library and the pricing model.

Of course, any marketplace for buyers also requires sellers and here Lucky Oliver also makes available enough incentives for someone to contribute their images. First and foremost, they do have a "velvet rope" that requires some qualifications to get across, so there is a human element that evaluates new contributor images along a spectrum of criteria. Once permitted into the market they do a great job of helping you optimize your listings to maximize returns.

I really like this service on a number of fronts, while the quirky personality they are trying to advance feels a little overdone at times it does differentiate them from the other competitors, but mostly I like the "middle market" focus that they clearly have and the payment system also encourages repeat behavior.

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