Dreamstime’s Founder: A Top Photographer Makes $10,000 a month
Dreamstime.com is one of the largest stock photography websites, ranking number two in Alexa’s top 10 stock agencies, ahead of industry leader Getty Images.
Dreamstime.com numbers:
- 1,5 million users
- 6 million images
- 70,000 photographers
- 300,000 unique visitors/day
The Student – Entrepreneur
Eugenia Cosinschi: You have graduated from the Faculty of Architecture in 2000, than from the Faculty of Landscape Architecture in 2001. How did you switch to online, and straight to owning a web agency?
Serban Enache: Studying Landscape Architecture was a personal decision, it had nothing to do with the company I had founded. It was related to creation rather than business. The following year I had taught CAD workshops at the same faculty, a personal experience as well.
In 1997,while I was still a student, I founded, together with my friend and colleague Dragos Iancu, a web agency called Archiweb Design. Our graduation paper was on a rather “fashionable” topic at the time, startup incubators. A lot of them came to life then, even more exist now – some successful, others not so much .
Archiweb Design was one of the top web agencies of that time, with a portfolio which included clients like Xerox, Unilever and hundreds of other companies, mostly from the US. The most successful project we had was Dreamstime. The website was launched in 2000 and then redesigned in 2004. Soon after, it took over the whole company, Archiweb servicing exclusively this project.
“When you don’t feel any satisfaction from what you are doing, it’s time to look for a change.”
E.C.:How was life as a student-entrepreneur and what would you advice others who are taking the same path?
S.E.: The most important thing is to enjoy what you are doing, whether it’s your own business, or you are an employee. To be motivated to get up every day and go to work. Don’t just go with the flow, it doesn’t help if you don’t feel the passion.
People who are truly happy have their hobby as a job. When you don’t feel any satisfaction from what you are doing, it’s time to look for a change.
It’s very important to learn something new every day and to better yourself. Short-term targets are much more important than the long-term one, to us at least. You can track them more easily and you can adjust faster to anything that comes along.
It’s wrong to think your business can’t succeed without initial funding. All our projects started with an idea and 0 capital. They didn’t all make it, although we worked just as hard for all of them. But failures teach you even more than successes do.
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E.C.: How did you come up with the idea behind Dreamstime?
S.E.: Archiweb needed images for its web projects. Since we couldn’t afford to use stock photos at the time, we bought a digital camera and start shooting our own photos. We then realised our competition had the same problems, so we decided to publish online all the photos taken.
E.C.:How was the market then, was there any competition?
S.E.: We had a lot of competitors, bust most of them had a different business model, the traditional one. The only business model similar to our was that of Istockphoto, who were the pioneers in stock photography. Although we didn’t come up with the concept of community in stock photography, we were among the first that implemented.
A lot of features you find today at most stock agencies, including the traditional ones, were first launched by us. But we still have the most relevant search engine for photos.
Traditional agencies kept prices up for a long time and were a little conservative when it came to accepting photographers. Dreamstime allows any photographer to contribute, no matter his experience. Of course, results depend a lot by their performance, but the website is accessible to anyone.
We started out with very low prices, since technology was as advanced as it is today, which was reflected in a poor quality of the photos. Our first digital camera was a 2MP Kodak, considered a joke by professional photographers. Luckily, although ignored by professionals, digital photography was embraced by new-comers. Soon after, prices started to grow and images became of better quality. But we still have the smallest prices in the industry, charging $1-2/image.
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“Strong Competition Keeps You Motivated”
E.C.: What were the hardest challenges?
S.E.: A strong competition is probably the hardest challenge for stock agencies, but it’s also a plus, because it keeps you alert, motivated. We have permanently improved our services and launched almost weekly new features.
E.C.:You are very active in web2.0: you have members’ blogs, twitter account, facebook group and a facebook app. What were results did social media produce?
S.E.: You know a lot about us, congratulations.
E.C.: Thank you 
S.E.: Dreamstime is a stock agency 2.0, the community being one of our most important engines for development, long before social networking websites had the popularity they have know. It would be a big mistake to ignore this medium. Exactly how much we get out of social media I couldn’t say, but it is an important channel.
If you offer very good services, you will get good viral marketing and word of mouth. Users are less and less attracted by classic ads, but if you offer something of value, they will come.
A top Photographer Makes $10,000/month
E.C.: How much can a photographer make on Dreamstime
S.E.: An average photographer makes from tens to hundreds of dollars a month. Top photographers make more than $10,000/month.
EC: Thank you for this interview.
