Interview with Evan Nisselson of Digital Railroad

Features

Interview with Evan Nisselson of Digital Railroad

By Chris Ferrone July 28, 2006

In recent years several companies have begun to offer technology services to photographers that were previously only available to large stock agencies with large IT departments. Evan Nisselson the Founder and CEO of Digital Railroad has been one of the pioneers seeking to bridge the technology gap by offering an online storage and marketing solution connecting photographers and image buyers with all of the convenience of a large stock agency or newswire service. Evan Nisselson, has worked in the photography industry for 14 years and has experience as a CEO, VP, photo editor, software developer, lecturer, moderator, contest judge, published photographer and digital imaging consultant. Recently Chris Ferrone caught up with Evan and asked him the following questions.

ATI: In June of 2005, Digital Railroad received a significant boost in the form of $5.2MM in VC investment. What were to two or three most significant uses of those funds and how has the company changed over the last twelve months as a result of the investment?

EN: We have accomplished three principal goals of building the management team, signing marquee clients and continuing to develop our unique technology services platform to give photographers more control and avenues to sell and distribute their images.

The executive team now includes Charles Mauzy, President, Paul Ryall, VP of Marketing, Paul Melcher, VP of Sales, Andy Parsons, CTO, and David Patashnik, our VP of Finance. Together, they comprise over 100 years of digital imaging, photography and technology experience. We have also grown the rest of the staff to over twenty five employees.

We have successfully grown our marquee membership to over 550 photographers, 30 agencies, and 19,000 buyers in over 50 countries – they can be viewed on our growing member directory. One recent addition is the prestigious NBCU Photobank and there are several new photographer/agency clients that will be announced soon.

ATI: Digital Railroad attracts mostly photojournalists, celebrity and other editorial photographers looking to sell their work to magazine, newspaper, and news-site publishers. Will DR continue to take a primarily editorial tack?

EN: Actually, new members these days are no longer mostly editorial. We originally focused our technology services to meet the needs of photojournalists who, by the very time-sensitive nature of their work, need the fastest work-flow. Tools fast enough for photojournalist deadlines will be more than fast enough for all other photographers and now we are adding more features that add additional value for other types of photographers; Commercial, Studio, Sports, Celebrity and Stock. We have recently formed a partnership with APA [Advertising Photographers of America] and many of their photographers are eager to leverage our services.

Well-known RM commercial/stock shooter David Sanger now uses our platform. Among other marquee members, RF production companies like, Blend images is leveraging our distribution platform. Based on current trends, commercial photographers should reach 50% of the photographers using our system very soon.

ATI: Can you break down the 19,000 registered buyer’s world wide by category of content they generally use. Such as current news, celebrity, sports, commercial, etc.?

EN: We can’t offer specific percentage breakdowns for those categories. I can say, however, that, like our photographer membership, our registered buyer list is also trending toward 50% commercial and 50% editorial. Buyer clients find our universal sign in ID/single light-box system [each member has one user ID and password that works on all Digital Railroad photographers’ sites and allows one to save images from different archives in the same lightboxes organized however the buyer desires] making for easy searching across a wide variety of archives. If you look at the list of client-members on our web-site, you’ll see an impressive list that includes many ad agencies from around the globe.

ATI: Some would say that Digital Railroad would be more valuable to the image buyer if they could search through all of the archives on the Digital Railroad platform. Are there any plans to offer this service?

EN: Yes, we are launching our global search marketplace this year.

ATI: One would think e-commerce would play an essential role in the service you provide both photographers and a buyer, yet Digital Railroad still doesn’t offer e-commerce. When do you expect to have e-commerce up and running and how do you explain the growth in registered buyers and photographers even though you haven't offered it up to now?

EN: In reality the percentage of image purchased w/ credit card on-line, especially for RM usage is immaterial. As most of the images our photographer’s license are RM, which as we all know, is extremely difficult to sell entirely on-line. We have focused on first delivering services that minimize production and facilitate distribution – E-commerce features are coming as they become more of a business need to our members.

I strongly believe that it is critical for any new business to focus on the proven 80/20 rule. Develop features for 80% of your market needs rather than any needs smaller than 20%. It’s sort of like opening an automated car wash in a region of the Amazon where there are no roads.

With that said we will be adding e-commerce features soon and look forward to adding more over time.

ATI: Digital Railroad has presented its solution to small agencies and photographers as an alternative to working with the big stock agencies. Has this approach worked? Are your members currently attracting enough customers to compare with the potential revenue offered by Getty, Corbis, or Jupiter?

EN: Our members see our technology not as an alternative to working with other agencies (big or small) but a workflow platform that allows one to manage their image archive more efficiently. Many of our members sell their images through Getty, Corbis, and Jupiter and sell images directly through their own personally branded archive. For example, Blend [the RF production group] uses our technology to get their images out through multiple agents and channels quickly and efficiently.

ATI: Currently Digital Railroad supports single image licensing. Any plans to support other product offerings such a Video, Fonts, Subscription licensing, or Micro payment services?

EN: We already have members using our system to license illustrations, graphics, paintings, and so on. Several members have adapted our system to selling to their customers on a subscription model. This is done “outside the system” and requires periodic monitoring by the photographer with Digital Railroad’s reporting features, but it demonstrates how all different kinds of business models already work for all different kinds of clients using Digital Railroad’s technology.

ATI: Recently Digital Railroad became a Charter Sustaining Member of the PLUS coalition. Is this purely a marketing decision or is this a cause supported by Digital Railroad and those on the Digital Railroad platform?

EN: We support PLUS because we believe it’s good for the photography business at large. It’s another example of the many partnerships that Digital Railroad initiates in order to benefit our members. PLUS is a consortium that is working to make the licensing process easier for both photographers and buyers around the world. When they succeed, all boats rise with the tide.

ATI: As you know there are a few companies offering similar services to Digital Railroad (including PhotoShelter, 20/20 Software, IPN, NancyScans, Spitfire Photo). What separates Digital Railroad from these other services? What is your Unique Value Proposition?

EN: Photographers and agencies come to Digital Railroad because of its efficient work-flow capabilities, its affordability and because it connects them to the fastest growing professional community in the industry. A community which now includes thousands of photographers and a marquee list of almost 20,000 photo buyers in 50 countries.

We are building a platform for the global professional photography community and as our recently launched showcase area shows, we have now have an international reach and diversity in type of high quality photography that image-buyers search for. One of our Chinese based members sold images to a new buyer in Mexico. The buyer found her via Digital Railroad - not only showing that we connect our members with new clients but that we are connecting the global professional photographic community.

Ultimately our goal is to be the platform for this global professional photography community by continuing to drive technological innovation. This will allow photographers and agencies to concentrate on what they do best, create and sell their images while allowing buyers to find the best images in the world.