September 8th. Dreamstime, the world’s largest stock photo community, announced the start of a celebratory month to mark its 20th anniversary this September. Dreamstime.com was registered in 2000 and disrupted the stock photography market by lowering prices manifold and enabling many photographers to join the industry. In 2004, it gained a top 3 position and has continued to experience sustained and rapid growth, evolving from a handful of photos to featuring 145+ million files in its online library and employing its own proprietary AI, PhotoEye, for filtering the now steady 3 million monthly approvals in 2020.
Since its inception, Dreamstime has continually transformed the stock photo business, launching a series of products and features to help creatives find fairly-priced visual content quickly and easily. From unique-in-the-industry licenses and dedicated apps to in-depth search optimization with AI-produced data, Dreamstime uses various innovative features to market the high-quality stock content generated by its dynamic and diverse community of over half a million photographers, artists, and videographers worldwide. Through its affiliate program network, Dreamstime has also enabled partners to scale up, providing easy-to-use tools to sell stock photography in more than 45 countries since 2005.
With the outbreak of the Covid19 pandemic, Dreamstime announced in March 2020 a series of company initiatives to help its customers, from pause plan options to free or discounted plans for NGOs and educational platforms in need of relevant visual content. Additionally, Dreamstime’s referral program enabled all users to access extra revenue, while the agency ensured contributors earn ongoing, intact royalties as they continued working remotely and safely.
In a time when visual creation is no longer a hard-to-reach niche, and people can easily find and download images from the internet, Dreamstime’s 20-year long success story proves that quality, innovation and a customer-centric approach make a considerable difference in the industry. Since 2010, Dreamstime has launched additional online stock photo resources that offer refined media choices based on user-driven Big Data – megapixl.com – and images specifically formatted to use on social media platforms – timelineimages.com . It also manages the world’s largest free collection of safe-to-use, model-released images – stockfreeimages.com
Reflecting on the agency’s two-decade journey, Dreamstime’s CEO, Serban Enache, said that “the past 20 years have been exciting, occasionally challenging, but mostly uplifting because we all love the visual arts. We live in a colorful library of millions of ideas from all six continents. We will continue working to keep Dreamstime as the artists’ friendly home and the designers’ favorite marketplace. And that is a dream worth dreaming for at least another 20 years.”
Dreamstime’s celebratory customer treats include a limited edition anniversary plan, a special 20% discount, and a curated collection of handpicked commercial images to be licensed for free, all scheduled to launch throughout September. After initiating a COVID-19 Relief Stimulus and awarding 10% extra royalties earlier this year, Dreamstime’s contributors will now enjoy an exclusive $15/user affiliate bonus and a dedicated anniversary photo contest. To mark its 20th birthday, the agency has also expanded its branded apparel line, adding new popular clothing items and accessories.