News
Freerangestock.com – a revenue model for free images
Chance Agrella, a professional media designer and photographer, has launched an advertising supported web-site that gives away stock images with a royalty free license and available for commercial use at no charge to the user. Google Adsense provides the only source of revenue for the site, Freerangestock.com. Now, Agrella has introduced a revenue share model with photographers who supply images to the site whereby they will receive 80% of the revenue from Google-loaded ads that appear with their images.
Agrella, who works from offices in Tucson, Arizona, founded the site in March of 2006 as a way to generate revenue from his own collection of images. “I initially wanted to see if I could generate some traffic giving away the photos I'd been shooting for years and using in my designs and presentations,” he says. “I had a large catalog and I wanted the images to get used, not churned under in micro-stock sales sites. I had seen a lot of "free" stock with restrictions - non-commercial only, larger sizes for sale, contact the photographer, credit the site, etc, but I wanted the relationship to be just the same as purchased stock. So the images are at least 2400 x 1600, copyrights are intact, and usage is mostly open except for redistribution and resale.”
The site currently has several thousand images available on-line with another 8,000 in various stages of preparation for uploading. Until the recent introduction of the new revenue sharing model, approximately 30 photographers had submitted work for placement in the Freerangestock database. Some Freerangestock submitters already earn up to $200 per month from the ad revenue which matches what many photographers earn on micro-stock sites. But Agrella says the model has yet to be fully tested. He hopes the revenue sharing opportunity will attract more photographers enabling the site to offer a more comprehensive database of images to its audience.
When asked how Freerangestock clients use the images, Agrella responded, “Every way imaginable - I've seen them in magazines, large websites, LOTS of blogs and hanging on walls. That's why I like to have it fairly unrestricted.”
Website: Freerangestock.com.
Posted in: Micropayment Stock Photography, News, Photographers, Stock Art Buyers, Stock Photo Companies
