Digital Railroad has launched a public beta version of its online Marketplace, allowing editors and buyers to search members images in real-time. “The launch of Marketplace marks an important milestone in the evolution of the professional photography industry, delivering buyers unprecedented access to great photographer and agency images previously unavailable in one online destination.  The combination of the Marketplace as an extension to individual archives gives photographers and agencies a seamless marketing opportunity on one online platform,” said Evan Nisselson, Digital Railroad founder and CEO. There are more than a million images available in Marketplace.

Digital Railroad Press Release

DIGITAL RAILROAD UNVEILS MARKETPLACE UNITING THE FRAGMENTED PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY INDUSTRY

Delivering professional photo buyers a single point of access to thousands of sources submitting in real-time from over 60 countries

New York, April 11, 2007 – Digital Railroad, the trusted provider of Web-based archiving and marketing services for the professional photography industry, today announced the public beta launch of its online Marketplace (http://marketplace.digitalrailroad.net), empowering the professional photography community to more efficiently manage, market, and license professional photography while making it easier than ever for professional photo buyers to find and license images.  Utilizing a sophisticated permission-based global search, editors and buyers are able to search members images in real-time, as they are contributed, by keyword, captions, community ratings and other relevant metadata.

“The launch of Marketplace marks an important milestone in the evolution of the professional photography industry, delivering buyers unprecedented access to great photographer and agency images previously unavailable in one online destination.  The combination of the Marketplace as an extension to individual archives gives photographers and agencies a seamless marketing opportunity on one online platform,” said Evan Nisselson, Digital Railroad founder and CEO.  “Every minute of every day our community members around the world are creating, uploading, captioning, searching, buying, and rating new images in real-time – the best images will rise to the top in the Marketplace and continue to improve and evolve over time.” 

Now our members have access to a larger community of global image buyers. Digital Railroad is aggressively developing product features that will help bring more global image buyers into the community that are eager for fresh, original content from Marketplace as well as within individual member archives.

John Holonitch, Sr. Photo Coordinator at Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, who has already licensed several images from Marketplace notes, “As a participant in Digital Railroad’s Marketplace beta, I was impressed with the quality and diversity of the photography, and will be back for more.”

Unlike any other online system, buyers have one membername and a personal, “portable” workspace, which travels with them to the Marketplace as well as to any archive powered by digitalrailroad.net. This online workspace has unlimited lightboxes, tracking of received and sent lighboxes, and one cart with pending images to be licensed from any of the networked Digital Railroad archives and the Marketplace.

“After learning of Digital Railroad’s global community of photographers available through Marketplace, we immediately set out to establish a partnership with Digital Railroad to provide our photo managers with access to the unique content available,” says Michael Baynes, Director of Digital Content Partner Management, Thomson Learning. “Thomson Learning is keen to leverage Marketplace to innovate our acquisition process while supporting independent photographers via one channel.”

With more than a million images already available in Marketplace, this collection of dynamically growing images is expanding exponentially as the community continues to add and rate images on a daily basis, providing a unique experience for global buyers – a world of photography through one point of access.

Marketplace Features and Benefits:
• One Member Name, One Password: Image buyers only need to register once for free access to the Marketplace and thousands of member archives. 
• One Integrated Selling Platform: Members have the option to sell images via an aggregated Marketplace while simultaneously selling images directly via their own branded online archive.
• Powerful Search: Buyers can search for images based on licensing type, date range, release status, location, photographer, rating, image size, and orientation as well as keywords and captions. 
• Community Ratings: Photographer, agency, and buyer ratings combined with search terms, proprietary metrics, and Marketplace activity delivers the best images to the top of every search. 
• RSS Photo Feeds: Images submitted to Marketplace are delivered to buyers’ desks in real-time via RSS Photo Feeds.
• Referral Network: Image buyers are easily connected with photographers and agencies while photographer members are paid bounties for helping to refer successful sales to the Marketplace.
• Control Pricing: Members can price images as they desire and add territory publishing for international buyer access when necessary. 
• Licensing Images: Through a simplified pricing process, Marketplace provides two options for licensing, 1) Express Licensing uses PLUS Packs, based on the PLUS Coalition’s standards; 2) Custom Licensing allows you to enter more specific usage information.

About Digital Railroad
Digital Railroad (www.digitalrailroad.net) is the trusted provider of online technology and services for the global community of buyers and sellers of professional photography. Digital Railroad members actively manage images on topics such as sports, news, celebrity, commercial, nature and stock. Digital Railroad’s comprehensive suite of online services transforms the way photographers and agencies manage, market and sell images worldwide.

Digital Railroad is a trademark of Digital Railroad Inc. Other company, product or service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.

Picture Credit

Newport Beach, CA.
(c)Milnor Pictures, Inc. /drr.net
http://marketplace.digitalrailroad.net/Common/PhotoDetailPage.aspx?pid=670740

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