Month: July 2020

The In’s and Out’s of the Shutterstock Premier Platform

Posted by Jack on in Business, Images for Marketing, personalized services, Shutterstock, shutterstock premier, shutterstock premier license, Stock Photo, Stock Photo Questions & Answers, Teamwork

Different businesses have different visual needs. While startups and small businesses are a good match for the standard Shutterstock services, bigger companies with larger creative teams and greater image needs may find it insufficient and not all that helpful for their workflow.

If this is you, you’ll be happy to learn about Shutterstock‘ Premier Platform, where they offer a tailored solution for stock media and visual content creation for enterprises and large companies.

Advanced licensing options, unlimited seat access, personalised collections, improved search and a whole lot more features that simplify the creative process and reduce the cost for images for those with big image needs.

That’s what you find in Shutterstock Premier service, and what we’ll break down for you, next!

What Image Plans Are Available?

The Shutterstock Premier Program is available on both month-to-month and annual subscription plans. The monthly plan gives you the financial flexibility to only pay for the service during the months you actually need it. Simply turn off the auto-renewal option in your account settings, and you’re good to go.

The annual plan, as the name implies, means that you are purchasing a year-long commitment to Shutterstock.com. This means that you are effectively paying for 12 months of the service, so it is perfect for you if you need images regularly. It might seem like a lot of money, but if you heavy requirement for images, then it will be more than worth it.

The annual image plan also offers two payment methods. You can either be billed on a monthly basis or choose to pay the entire amount upfront. The latter comes with a significant discount, however, so it’s worth looking at that option if you can fit it into your budget.

Shutterstock Premier is a tailored solution and as such the final cost per month or per year will depend on your image needs, team size and other particulars of your business. However, being an enterprise-oriented program means that, expectably, its price points are higher than those of the standard Shutterstock image subscriptions and even the regular team subscriptions.

Don’t let this discourage you, though! The price of Shutterstock Premier is certainly way below that of hiring photographers and researchers individually, and overall is a great value service for its cost.

The Shutterstock Premier License

If your business requires a lot more firepower than the basic Shutterstock plan, you would be wise to consider the Shutterstock Premier License. The premier version of the license gives you many benefits that the standard license doesn’t include at all, and others that are only available on the enhanced license for regular customers. The Premier license:

  • Offers unlimited indemnification and unlimited distribution
  • Sensitive use rights
  • The ability to use the content in merchandise and templates
  • The possibility of buying image copyright, which minimizes legal risk and effectively grants you the exclusive use of the image.

Plus, Shutterstock’s Premier License grants you access to premium content that lower-tier licenses do not. You’ll literally have your pick of the best content Shutterstock has to offer.

The Premier Platform Advantage

When you sign up for a Premier License, the Shutterstock Premier Platform, which literally gives you access to millions of the best content the Internet has to offer, comes along with it. And since Shutterstock’s image library grows by about 50,000 high-quality, high-resolution images on a daily basis, you’re guaranteed to help you bring your visions to life.

It’s not uncommon for large enterprise businesses to have multiple departments working with each other. Within the Shutterstock PremierPlatform, you can add an unlimited number of users to accommodate all the people working on a particular project, as well as create subaccounts and manage the permissions for each account individually. This will allow you to control the access of each account, while still being able to share assets across your entire team.

Want to download multiple images? No problem. The Premier Platform allows batch downloading of up to 50 licensed images at a time, so you don’t have to download each piece of content one at a time. And if you feel like adding custom metadata to this content, the premier platform will let you do that, too, all while staying under the legal protection of Shutterstock.

Personalized Service from Shutterstock Experts

Shutterstock’s Premier Platform also has a dedicated research team. These experienced on-hand curators can provide you with the guidance you need when it comes to finding the right Shutterstock images for your specific visions and creative projects. Don’t know exactly what you’re looking for just yet? They can also help inspire you by giving you ideas and options. With the Premier Platform, you’re not only getting access to Shutterstock’s images but also to the personal, dedicated service of its experienced curators.

Shutterstock Premier’s service doesn’t end with its curators, however. When you sign up with the Premier Plan, you also have a personal account manager, who can assist with any questions, problems, and issues you may have with the platform.

And the best part is that these account managers are region and language-specific. We all know the hassles of dealing with centralized customer service. They don’t speak your language and aren’t familiar with your needs. With your over own account manager, you’re guaranteed to have a more seamless – and pleasant – exchange.

Perfect for Large Teams That Require Collaboration on Various Projects

While Shutterstock isn’t the only royalty-free image provider out there, the Premier License and Premier Platform place them a cut above the competition for large teams that need access to creative assets.

In an extremely visual world where images can make or break your marketing, Shutterstock Premier can help your team deliver on the vision you want for your brand and business in a way that no other service can match.

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3 Online Shopping Tools to Help You Save

Posted by Jack on in Uncategorized

Over the past few years, the continuing rise in online shopping has sparked the launch of new browser extensions to help you find the best prices online, or to shave a few extra dollars off the total at the checkout.

These plug-ins can be rapidly downloaded to such browsers as Chrome, where they run in the background until you’re researching or actually making an online purchase; then they compare prices, seek discounts and sometimes more to help optimize your impending purchase. Their results typically appear in a pop-up window that appears to the side of the page from which you’re buying.

In other words, these browser extensions don’t require any expertise. Just install them, shop as you normally do, and the apps will do the saving for you. Here are three we think are worth considering for this year’s holiday season.

Honey

Honey began as a coupon-finding browser extension that helps you uncover the best deals and highest discounts when shopping at online vendors like Amazon. It’s still that, but now the extension also automatically scans the internet for identical products being sold for a lower price by other vendors. It will also show you a product’s price history, so you can know if it’s a good time to buy, and it allows you to add items to a watchlist to track price drops and buy at the optimal time.

When you go to the checkout on a purchase, Honey will automatically apply coupon codes in order to get you the highest possible discount. In addition, certain products give you the opportunity to claim Honey Gold, a rewards program. Honey Gold acts as credit that can be used toward future purchases through Honey, and soon you’ll be able to claim it as actual cash back via Paypal.

Currently, Honey only works for a few big vendors, but it appears their team is developing the extension for broader use. Honey runs on Google Chrome, Firefox, and Opera, and the company says support for other browsers and a mobile app are forthcoming.

Wikibuy

Like Honey, Wikibuy is a coupon-finding and price-comparison extension that finds great deals. And like Honey, Wikibuy also charts a product’s price history and allows you to add it to a watchlist for future price drops. Also, when you go to the checkout, Wikibuy applies coupon codes other buyers have used successfully, to get you additional discounts.

Also, as with Honey, the extension has a rewards program but, currently, the credits you earn can only be used toward future Wikibuy purchases.

Unlike Honey, too, Wikibuy currently only works on Google Chrome, but it does offer a free mobile app that you can use to scan barcodes and immediately see comparative prices.

Ebates

Ebates takes a simpler, if less immediate, approach to savings. Like Honey and Wikibuy, when you make a purchase from one of its many retail partners, Ebates will give you a discount (of between 1% and 10%, typically).

But unlike those competitors, Ebates doesn’t give in-app credit. Instead, your savings accumulate in an account that, every quarter, rebates you cash back from your discounts in the form of a personal check or your choice of dozens of gift cards. In other words, you have to wait a bit for your savings, but they invariably come in the form of cash, not credits or other less liquid forms. Plus, when you initially sign up, you get a free $10 gift card to either Target, Walmart, Macy’s or Kohl’s.

The Ebates extension works with Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, and Edge, and you can also use its service by going to Ebates.com and beginning your shopping from there. Ebates also offers a mobile app, for iPhones, iPads, and Android devices, that allows you to scan barcodes to compare prices and receive coupon codes in stores.

Which should you use? All of them.

Each of these businesses operate by earning a small commission from the vendors you purchase from, so the extensions themselves are free for you to use. It’s truly a win-win situation. But with so many overlapping services, which program should you use?

Currently, among the three services, Ebates works for the most vendors and is the simplest to use. However, the savviest online shopper will tell you to use them all. True, Wikibuy and Honey will often offer the same results (and no, you can’t earn cash back from both at the same time, since earnings depend on the cookies that vendors find in your browser at the time of checkout). However, certain vendors may work with one, but not the other, so it’s smart to activate both extensions. Additionally, Ebates can often be used to earn additional cash back on the total purchase after you’ve applied a coupon code that Wikibuy or Honey has found, which alone makes using all of these tools worthwhile.

The typical 2 or 3% savings might not sound like much, but with online shopping likely to exceed $129 billion this holiday season, those savings could really add up.