I was impressed with the redesign of electronicstalk.com when I wrote about it in October, but I’ve been disappointed with their approach to posting images. Electronicstalk are asking for £120.00 to publish each image to accompany releases. Although releases with images are more likely to be included in the featured articles box on the home page, it’s difficult to see the value in paying for the image. With the current layout the images are unlikely to drive a significant increase in traffic, and if a potential customer arrives at the page, they are probably interesting in the product features and there is no need to catch the eye of the reader. I can understand online publishers looking for new revenue streams, but without any guarantee of better promotion of the story, this doesn’t seem to be an approach that will see widespread adoption.
This is nothing more than a large media group trying to ” claw ” back their acquisition costs.
Apart from anything else, by charging for pictures to be published is a clear admission that the site is non editorial and that anything will be published that is received.
Electropages has been publishing pictures for free ever since it’s launch in 1999. Our policy is a simple one, if a story is worth publishing, it’s worth publishing in full along with any photograph.