Many image and video libraries still pay more than US $1.00 per image for keywording at a time when companies such as Picsell Media are charging far less. How can this be?
The reasons are that those paying the higher amount either don’t know what’s out there or aren’t doing the maths on the cost of in-house keyworders.
For some time there was a movement in America, Europe and Australasia towards having English keywording done in Third World countries in the hope that the cost of labour might outweigh any quality issues.
More recently many of those same libraries have returned to keywording at home, either with local outsourcing or in-house staff. In such circumstances, it’s understandable that quality has been the focus rather than cost. The result is dollar keywording or close to it.
In the case of in-house keywording, as an “economy measure” picture editors, salespeople or even manager on $40+ an hour can be roped into doing keywording in what little spare time they have. Due to a lack of experience and speed, the result can be output well under the image per dollar mark. And quality can also be less than ideal. In the past few months we have come across a number of companies in that position or paying over the odds to outsourcing companies. Our response is the keywording cost-saving form to enable library owners to find out how much Picsell can reduce their bills. To find out how your keywording stacks up, click here.