Stocksite Analysis: 123RF 2008
123RF is a realatively small stock agency. Sales are pretty stable, but low. Although 123RF pursues different and rather innovative ways to expand their customer base, no real evidence of their effectiveness will be witnessed with small portfolio sizes.
123RF is a friendly, in principle rather open stock agent, with a potential which doesn’t seem to be getting off the ground. The involvement of staff and contributors online is almost non-existent. Through the iregluar communiques from 123, it seems that quite a bit of effort is put in finding various new and innovative ways to exploit 123rf’s growing image database. The ideas and means expressed meet up to those criteria: they are new and innovative compared to other stock sites, but their results are overdue.
Basically, the same applies to 123RF’s service levels for contributors. Their live chat support feature is very effective, and initial contacts to the site’s owner seems to be top notch at first. Maybe the staggering growth contributes to the diminishing service levels and faltering transparency, yet recent changes don’t seem to be able to achieve their obviously intended improvement.
On the bright side, 123RF does seem to be attracting a different target group of clients, too. Images that only sell occasionally on other sites might sell better on 123RF.
Core statistics
- URL: http://www.123rf.com
- Revenues: Of all the stocksites, the revenues of 123RF are the least transparent. Although their subscription scheme seems easy enough to understand at $0,36 per sale, all other sales not only seem to fluctuate between $0,20 and more, but as the 123RF database has a severe lag, it is very difficult to get an accurate and instantaneous update of sales.
- Perks: 123RF has a few perks, mainly in site’s features. One of them is the script, to be embedded in contributor’s websites.
- Downsides: Relatively small turn over, due to low sales. The 123RF site is not know for its loading speed.
- Upload limits: No limitations
- Image requirements: Rather low, compared to other stock sites, however, peculiar rejections seem to be surfacing every now and then.
- Review times: Usually within 24 hours, but occasionally much longer
- Penalties: None known.
- Forum: 123RF has a rather dormant forum. Not much happens there, other than the occasional unanswered question, and admin notifications.
- Service level: Varying from very poor to almost immediately. 123RF offers a live chat option, and have an accessible telephone helpdesk. Questions asked by mail may take weeks before they are answered.
- Portfolio marketing: 123RF offers a rather substantial number of ways for portfolio marketing (commenting, public lightboxes, embedded scripts for websites, etc), but they don’t seem to be heavily used.
Tips and tricks:
- Upload, and see what sells. Move ahead from there.
- Don’t expect too much from 123RF, and don’t put too much time in it either. 123RF runs steadily but surely. Be patient.
