Contributors' Collective

[tan510jomast]

never mind

[batman]

@tan510jomast

nobody is dismissing the prospect of a different model.

But in business people have to ask really practical questions. And for stock site or network to succeed it would need to have significant content at viable pricing + infrastructure + trust.

hey, this is only the first day and you want all of them to give you a full business plan?
If I had this business plan, you are the last person I will give it to. You and warren 

tan wasn't even here at the beginning, and now he is. we need the brains of our community.
but if everyone of us are just waiting to see what happens. oh well, like he said, "roll over and play dead?"  . maybe we all deserve 03 cents a download.

[melastmohican]

There is unlimited supply of new photos and limited number of potential buyers so site that treats buyers best wins. All attempts to create system fair for contributors eventually fail cause it will be too expensive for buyers. It's similar like trying to compete with cheap Chinese production Everybody want more features for less now. We are like workers in these factories. We can complain only but eventually we take whatever employer gives us :-)

[tan510jomast]

never mind

[m@m]

Right on Tan!!!...alias forgot like some others the idea comes first...lol  
the obstacles up front, of course...you know the wagon in front of the horse type thing. Yeah, I understand alias.  

[donding]

PhotoShelter was one. I was so enthused about them when they bravely stood up against Getty. But we know what happened. I think the CEO said, "no one wanted to give us a chance" or something like that. You were all waiting to see if PS succeeds before you join.

I personally was one of those who did join. You can still put your portfolio on there. You just have to buy the space, it's not free any more.

[melastmohican]

Macro stock still exists (yachts). Some people still pay hundred for same quality photo they could get from micro for cents. Majority does not own yacht they inflatable boat at Walmart for $9.99 which was made where? China.

[alias]

Right on Tan!!!...alias forgot like some others the idea comes first...lol  
the obstacles up front, of course...you know the wagon in front of the horse type thing. Yeah, I understand alias.  

I'm not putting up obstacles. What I am attempting to do is to ask some of the questions which would need to be answered.

You start by working out what the objectives are.
You consider what the model needs to accomplish.

You work through the questions and answers methodologically and you begin to sketch out the shape of the structure.

You make reasonable assessments of cost, turnover, traffic etc

You start by working out what some of the questions are which you need to answer.

-----------------

And if you do not do any of that then basically you are not serious to begin with and it will never work

[madelaide]

I am favorable to finding a new way, but I frankly have no idea.  There is a lot of marketing to reach buyers, and the big ones already have sites they can trust on, and I am sure they don't mind paying a bit more for that comfort.  

Are we willing to pull our portfolios from all sites to make our content exclusive to our site, then showing a differential in our service?  

I think we need to find a new market, a new niche, not to try to compete with the established companies.

What about countries in which microstock is not a well-established thing yet?  Do they exist?  Is there a potential market in South America, for instance, that the micros have not yet reached?

Are there buyers that do not know microstock yet?  What would they be interested in?  Prints maybe, instead of digital files?  

[melastmohican]

2786 x 500 = 1 393 000

There 2786 member of this forum. If we assume that by average we got 500 pictures online we control more than million pictures but how much contributor's revenue we control? How many top contributors are here and are they will to sacrifice their businesses to help us?

[batman]

2786 x 500 = 1 393 000

There 2786 member of this forum. If we assume that by average we got 500 pictures online we control more than million pictures but how much contributor's revenue we control? How many top contributors are here and are they will to sacrifice their businesses to help us?

Ok, your posting crossed mine so I will reply to this. Based on the response we had today? Not many. so I'm cutting out !  Good noite ! You all did Getty a great favour.

[donding]

Do any of you know anyone that has experience running a site?? I know there are some in this forum, but as to who they are I don't know. We really need to see their perspective on this...

Also need someone who knows web design and is good at it as well as marketing. We need to start asking around. I'm sure there are some that haven't even read this thread but could help with these issues.

[donding]

I am favorable to finding a new way, but I frankly have no idea.  There is a lot of marketing to reach buyers, and the big ones already have sites they can trust on, and I am sure they don't mind paying a bit more for that comfort.  

Are we willing to pull our portfolios from all sites to make our content exclusive to our site, then showing a differential in our service?  

I think we need to find a new market, a new niche, not to try to compete with the established companies.

What about countries in which microstock is not a well-established thing yet?  Do they exist?  Is there a potential market in South America, for instance, that the micros have not yet reached?

Are there buyers that do not know microstock yet?  What would they be interested in?  Prints maybe, instead of digital files?  

As for pulling protfolio's....the content of the site would have to be exclusive to that site. The buyers have already purchased what is on our ports now so they would want something new. That's the way I would think as a buyer anyway.

[elvinstar]

My wife and I started a microstock site a few years ago (justmacros.com). We were going for a niche market. It was tough going and didn't quite make it. I would love to be involved in this project!

[m@m]

I'm with you on that one batman...good night! 

[donding]

My wife and I started a microstock site a few years ago (justmacros.com). We were going for a niche market. It was tough going and didn't quite make it. I would love to be involved in this project!

Well you guys might have some perspective on what is involved...Think about what you did right and what you did wrong... The right as well as the wrong are very important. We wouldn't want to repeat the wrong's.
Think about it and give us some feedback..  

[donding]

I'm with Bat and [email protected]'m going to bed....hopefully some of you will dream of a solution..
sweet dreams all

[madelaide]

I am not saying we should give up.  I'm saying we should think of new ideas.  I don't think we should think of beating the micros where they have already planted their roots deep into the soil.

[batman]

You know, I was just finishing up my work to come back here for one last look.
It's been a good day of valuable lessons to know who your friends are. I enjoyed this experience .
I want to leave you with one famous saying I learned from studying the lives of successful people. They all had one favourite wise saying they treasure and repeat to themselves every morning. These same people were great achievers who succeeded in chasing their dreams and getting them done. I don't know the origin of this saying, but I know people from Bill Gates, to Bjorn Bork believed in it faithfully.
Maybe not the exact word, but the philosophy behind it:

THE MIND IS A DOUBLE EDGED SWORD. IF YOU THINK YOU CANNOT DO IT,
YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT.

bonne nuit.

[Kngkyle]

I am still not convinced that setting up our own micro site is the best route. I don't think many contributors would want to put up content exclusively on a start up site. I think forming some sort of co-op would be less work and easier to manage. Whether it would be effective or not is still a question. One problem that exists in doing this is whether members would actually do what is decided upon. For example, say Fotolia made some change that made submitting each uploaded image take 2 minutes (think Istock x2). All other negotiations failed, and the co-op decided to try an uploading embargo. Would people actually follow suit and stop uploading for x-weeks or months? Or another example... say Dreamstime did something like cutting our commissions and the co-op decided to try a policy of having each member disable 1 image (or a % of their images) every day/week/month and suspend uploading until a fair compromise is offered. Getting the members to actually go through with stuff like that would be probably one of the biggest obstacles.

As for the question someone brought up awhile ago on how such a co-op would determine who could join. Possibly just something simple like having at least 50 or 100 images accepted to any Microstock site?

[null]

Then the independent gets successful, is bought out and you get screwed, or they screw you.

Are you referring to iStockphoto / Getty / Jupiter? 

[null]

Ok, your posting crossed mine so I will reply to this. Based on the response we had today? Not many. so I'm cutting out !  Good noite ! You all did Getty a great favour.

Some people live on opposite sites of the globe Batman. While you're going to bed, others just woke up. Don't quit yet. I need some time to think it all over. The idea is very valuable and I think it is in the mind of most. There should be a wiki of the ideal site, and existing sites can try to match that idea, why not. You can have a loose confederation like the adult sites, or a unified empire like iStock. You will have to think more goal-oriented than means-oriented if you don't want Yet Another Microstock Site.

There are simple answers for the subs concept, the exclusivity, the QC, the LCV, the search engine. The key entity in the concept should be the buyer.

Some tiny examples of thinking out of the box:

- Why can't we buy out Cutcaster and hire John as our CME? After all, like Stacey said... it's our content.

- Exclusivity - nobody wants to give up his existing agents, but we can commit to upload our new images to site U as a first and keep it exclusive there for one month. After that, spread it out over the mob as you wish.

- QC - none. Contributors are elected in, then do their own QC. We know our stuffs, right? LCV will be no problem any more. Three strikes out on inferior uploads.

- Search engine: bias on newness and relevancy. Three kinds of keywords: essential (10), accessory (20), concept (10 from an exhaustive list) (replacing categories) _note. Keywords can be wiki-ed by fellow contributors. Tackling relevancy from the start is essential. The current sites are totally winded up in a Gordian knot about relevancy/best match since basically, all keywords are treated equivalently and no way to change that any more after 5M images. Relevancy/best match is patchwork.

Subs: replaced by "try at 1$ before you buy". Buyers need it for comps, don't take it away from them. If they want to use it for anything else than a sidebar or a blog (max 250px), they will need to buy the full license. Buyers can download full size at 1$ for inspection and comps. If they want to use it in a final product > 250px, then only they will have to download the full license.

Purchase: listen to buyers how they want to be invoiced.

Extended : exclusive buyout possible in the one-month exclusivity period - the buyer has the warranty that the image isn't sold to John Doe and 100 others.

...
______________________
_note - The current keywords field can be kept as it is, to ensure compatibility with the current sites.
Identification of essential and conceptual keywords can be done by repeating those keywords in an IPTC field that is not used by the current sites. Whatever is not defined there, is considered "accessory".

[Clivia]

Good post FlemishDreams,
I have just woken up to this and have not had time to think it through, but in principle I like the idea. It is exciting.
We have to bear in mind that a lot of us need the money from the micros. We cannot just stop uploading to them, but the one month head start for the new site is a really good idea.

The main drive has to be marketing. We need lots of fresh new marketing ideas.Like someone said earlier, designers only know the site they buy from. Why should they search for anything else when it works? We need to let them know there is a viable alternative.
One way is to target the CEO's not the designers. They control the spending in the company.

As to buying out Cutcaster, John may have something to say about that.

If we all can keep calm and stop our inflated artists ego's getting in the way, we may be onto something really good.

[null]

If we all can keep calm and stop our inflated artists ego's getting in the way, we may be onto something really good.

What started this is that our egos are underinflated. 
I don't have any idea about marketing, but using SEO can already solve a lot.

[Adeptris]

Let me play!

It looks like a good idea at first look, but there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Setting up any website you need to look at costs, consider hardware/hosting, development, legal, SEO, direct and internet marketing.

Then consider the content, why should a buyer use this new service, what is it's unique selling point, what are the risks and protection when buying, why buy an image here when they can get a similar image from an existing account without any problem, by purchasing an image that has been through QC to minimise any risk to the buyer, and a known company with a backroom staff.

Look at recent failures and the amount of venture capital that was used, Digital Railroad who charged for thier service got through $15 million, so you cannot setup a new venture with nothing.

Unique content would be required, so a set of exclusive images that could not be purchased anywhere other than the new site like C & G, the collective could have a portal per photographer but a common licence, payment and pricing structure not micro that was acceptable to all contributors to make it pay, a strict QC and marketing strategy etc:

David  (I already have the domains photographers-collective .com .co.uk and .net)