Guide: Stock Request

Even with dozens of stock agencies offering up millions of images – publications, agencies, and brands still sometimes struggle to find the right content to meet their needs. Wonderful Machine’s unique Stock Request service provides art buyers and photo editors with access to our extensive network of photographers, each with hard drives full of still and moving images that won’t be found in any stock library (and perhaps more importantly, they won’t show up unexpectedly in someone else’s campaign).

The process is simple. If you need a stock image, answer a few simple questions on our Stock Request page, we’ll submit your request to our network of photographers.

Depending on the budget and the preferences of the client, a Stock Request can be “Managed” or “Unmanaged.” When the budget is low, we usually connect photographers directly with the client to make the transaction efficient and cost-effective for everyone (these we call Unmanaged). When the budgets (and the expectations) are a bit higher, our team of producers and photo editors jump in to assist:

• We help the client write the creative brief to maximize the chance that they’ll get the images they need.
• We build a custom list (from our internal database of 24,000 photographers) who are most likely to have that content.
• We receive and organize the submissions and deliver one folder to the client.
• We negotiate the licensing fee on behalf of the photographer.
• We invoice and collect payment from the client and pay the photographer.

We pay a 60% commission to our member photographers (who receive all of our Stock Requests) and we pay a 50% commission to non-member photographers (who receive select Stock Requests). Photographers pay 13.00/month to subscribe to our Stock Requests.

With Unmanaged Stock Requests, we send a notification out to our member photographers in the form of a mass email (through Mailchimp). We share the client’s contact information (in addition to the creative brief, licensing, budget, deadline), and our photographers then submit their photos and negotiate directly with that client. For Managed Stock Requests, photographers submit their images to us and we take it from there.

We recently handled a Stock Request for a large retailer. They needed a photo of a red barn for butter and eggs packaging. Here’s the emailer we sent to our photographers:

Here’s the submission that the client chose:

Our producers made sure the photos had a property release. We got a list of every other client who had used the photo (which turned out to be none) and we negotiated a licensing fee of $15,000.00. Here’s how the client used the photo:

Of course, not all Stock Requests have such extensive usage or high price tag. The price and terms of each transaction are unique.

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For questions or a quick demo, give us a shout!