I thought it doomed to failure but I didn't want to rain on your parade.

I thought it doomed to failure but I didn't want to rain on your parade.

Thanks for the reply, likely the same one that many start ups have had, some fail some do well that is the way of it, there was a guy who's idea was giving away images for free, just imagine that for free, he started a website called istockphoto, I wonder what happened to that idea, it could never work but maybe as things went on he may have monitized it in some way.

David  

It is different and it might work.  There will always be people saying it will never work and sometimes they will be spectacularly wrong.  I know someone who used to work for IBM and thought microsoft were a joke

I'm willing to listen ... maybe even participate.  What the Heck ... I buy Lotto Tickets.

You seem to have identified storage costs as the reason agencies can't or won't pay more to contributors. What data do you base this on?

Do you plan to have an inspection process? Or a free for all like SV?

And why is this better than Featurepics? which pays 70%

You need to think outside of the Agency concept, your images are assets which at the moment many scatter to the different servers owned or rented by websites all over the world, as someone has said today what happens if one of the sites you upload to goes bang, and the servers loaded with your assets which are often abroad are sold on in a fire sale.

Photographers assets have a value that we do not protect enough, we allow other to control these assets.

The revenue that you receive from your assets is classed as royalties, stock imaging websites licence your images and hold your royalties until you have reached a royalty level, one that they have set to pay you out, if you never reach the payout point they keep your royalties is that right.

The concept of the model I would like to look at is where the Photographer has full control over their Assets until point of transaction, where you upload once to a standard template which includes licence type, keywords, release information, price band etc:, this data and a thumbnail is submitted to a search engine not the prepared image, which stays under your control you agree that the image will be available and if you withdraw it from sale there would be a 48 hour notice period to inform any agency that is hosting your image.

Instead of you uploading to many agencies you upload once, the agencies then search for images they want rather than inspecting images that they do not need, from the search results they can then invite your image thumbnail or comp into thier library, and that is all they need to sell your Image, when a sale takes place they request by automation the full size image, the transaction is recorded and metadata added to your image and then copied across to the agency.

When the Agency request the full size image they have agreed to the price you have set, they make the commision they have added to your sales price.

The Photographers would have the control of thier assets back, less work uploading, more time to take photgraphs, the agencies will have a search engine where they can search for specific images within a price band and add them to thier library without having to store full size images that they really do not want.    

David  

I f&^cking LOVE this idea, well done David for putting it to paper..

Many years ago a group of photographers got together and founded a little company called Magnum. They came up with a 'new' concept, that instead of having the client dictate the price and keep rights to all photos shot under contract, the photographer should set the price, keep the copyright, and sell TO MULTIPLE clients. The idea was new, the usual people said it would never work, and those people are now posting to microstock enoying the copyright these people brought abaout, and they are still saying ideas like this will never work.

Time to get a backbone and take power back from the agencies. THEY SHOULD NOT BE SETTING THE PRICE, YOU SHOULD BE!!!!!!!!!!! I really hope this idea works.. also another two cents, I would much prefer a yahoo or google group if possible? I haven't heard of the other site and I'm imagining most people have to sign up to join the group..

Google Group now setup http://groups.google.com/group/digital-media-artists-alliance

It will be a lot of effort.. and with no investment/money won't work.. Don't know how that will get sorted but, that's what the group is for!

I did already build my own web site to sell my images, and I could do it for anyone, but it's HARD, it takes weeks to do, it costs money.. and I can't see microstock contributors paying my fee, or even half of it to be honest.. and there's no way I'm building web sites for people for free.. it's just to hard, it takes too much time, and it's a headache.. especially with the kind of functionality that we need.. but.but.but. It is possible in theory, that each contributor could have their own web site, with prices set per image, and have a communal web site that searches all the web sites in the 'group'.. takes time, takes money, in fact, it's a full-time job for approx 3 people..

Can't do that, well, the way I see it..

Each photographer should have their own web site with full check-out functionality for image buyers. The price for each image is set on that web site. They can promote it locally, they are not competing with anyone else, their web site is for their images only.

They then allow potential distributors to sell their images, kind of like a referral scheme, the price is already set, and you give a % of the sale price for each referral sale.. that's how I see it working..

Then you need to have an api or some way that a distributor could take the images from the entire group of web sites (they would need to be hosted with the same hosting company to make things easier), and display them/sell them on their own web page.. this would be open for anyone to do..

Just found 3 Restful framework for PHP: http://semwebdev.keithalexander.co.uk/blog/posts/rest-frameworks-php

I guess Google will not "see" images on users websites, otherwise anybody could download them for free. Our search engine will only index sites that are registered with it and offer API a.k.a backdoor to see images :-) There must be some sort of handshake between legitimate search engine and the site.

It's not really a global search engine, I think an api is a better word to use, you want a way for distributors to be able to display the images, whether via a global search, or categorised thumbs, or both.. you just want as many re-sellers as possible to plugin to the group's images in exchange for their commission based on the sale price (set by the image owner)..

Thats correct, I have created a simple graphic overview model and posted it on the group site, so you can get a better idea of the flow in a visual format.

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/digital-media-artists-alliance/web/model-overview

It is not a website but a search and logistics tool, the API would not be public there would be some form of registration, the API would only grant access to metadata and thumbnails until a transaction takes place, the agreed price bands would cover all media RM, RF, Micro Midstock and Macro the Artist woud decide where each image fits, keywording would have to be an agreed  CV controlled vocabulary, the scope is massive when you think about digital media delivery this way, from Bloggers, Agencies, Merchants, Organisations and Direct Client Sales

These are some of the issues that need to be sorted out, Warren asked what is in it for Him, the concept is what share of work you put in, you get that same percentage share of the enterprise, there are a lot of options, one missing member at the moment is the marketing and business head.

The database indexes the metadata including the location of the images, and an indexing engine stores and retrieves the data, at the moment the best starting option is a product called Zebra, if it kicks in big time then a more commercial engine could be looked at.

David