When Shutterstock, a stock photo website, was launched in 2003, it entered a very crowded market.
However, the company’s founder, had reason to believe he could succeed. Jon Oringer had founded businesses before and was confident that Shutterstock offered something different to the sundry other stock photo websites out there.
BusinessWings: The stock photo and clipart industry appears fairly saturated, so what sets Shutterstock apart from its competitors?
Jon Oringer: Perhaps the largest and most fundamental difference between Shutterstock and other stock photo sites is that Shutterstock is a subscription-based service, which means that our subscribers pay to access images on a monthly or annual basis instead of paying for image credits.
We were the first online stock company to implement the universally emulated 25-a-day subscription plan, sell editorial images and offer stock video
Since our customers generally use stock images on a regular basis, many enjoy the flexibility of having a ’25 a day’ subscription plan because they know they will also always have enough images for their needs.
Shutterstock also offers on-demand subscriptions, which are lower commitment plans that allow subscribers to download images any time over a one-year period. The on demand subscription plans are ideal for businesses and individuals who do not need the volume of images offered with our traditional 25-a-day subscription plans.
Shutterstock is a pioneer in the stock image world and continues to innovate. We were the first online stock company to implement the universally emulated 25-a-day subscription plan, the first online stock company to sell editorial images and the first online stock image agency to offer stock video.
Also, Shutterstock has a number of unique programs, such as the ‘On The Red Carpet’ programme, which gives press passes to Shutterstock photographers for a wide variety of celebrity and special events, or Shutterstock Footage, an online collection of stock video footage that operates in a similar fashion to our stock image site.
BW: I think I’m correct in saying Shutterstock began life as a hobby. Could you tell us a little more about the site’s inception?
JO: I had used other agencies’ stock images for businesses I’d launched previously. However, I noticed that prices were either too expensive, or the content was stale if reasonably priced. There was no marketplace that adequately catered to both buyers and sellers of stock imagery.
So I taught myself some photography basics and began shooting stock photos. In six months, I had over 100,000 photos.
I uploaded 30,000 for sale onto a subscription site I created and within hours, dozens of photographers were asking me to help them sell their images as well. As a result, in 2003 we combined subscriptions with user-generated content and Shutterstock was born.
