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Author Topic: Microstock Co-Op For and By Photographers  (Read 33087 times)

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« on: December 23, 2009, 12:23 »
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photoco-op.com is available for $10 for anyone of you microstock photographers who has the balls to stand up and fight for your creative rights. Stop getting screwed by the companies that are in this for themselves and have no respect for the artists.

All you have to do is provide me with a reasonable plan to create a microstock photography co-op web site that the best in the business will want to join. That's it! I'm not looking to make money from this. I'm a graphic and web designer that dabbles in photography, but I use this stuff in my paying gigs and I keep seeing the prices go higher. Don't you want to see more money in your pockets instead of some computer hacks?

Maybe I'm a fool to think this can happen, I don't know. What do you all think?


« Reply #1 on: December 23, 2009, 12:26 »
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Our savior!

« Reply #2 on: December 23, 2009, 12:38 »
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Our savior!

I though he was supposed to be borned on Dec 25th?
« Last Edit: December 23, 2009, 12:45 by cybernesco »

« Reply #3 on: December 23, 2009, 12:49 »
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I think building a website for something like this is putting the cart before the horse. 

The real question is, who would be in favor of setting up a co-op?  Once a group of people take up the cause, lay out a mission and action items, and begin the recruitment process, then things like setting up an official website and how it would be paid for could be considered.

Myself, I'm skeptical of unions or trade groups.  I'm open to considering a proposal should someone want to put some time into it, but I've always preferred exercising my power as an individual.  If I feel that any of the agencies are treating me unfairly, I'll walk.  (This isn't my main source of income, so I can afford to take this stand... but I can see how others might have more vested interest in seeing something like this happen to protect their livelihoods.)

« Reply #4 on: December 23, 2009, 13:14 »
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I agree. I'm skeptical that a group would adequately represent my interests as well.

lisafx

« Reply #5 on: December 23, 2009, 13:15 »
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All good points PowerDroid.  

I have always maintained I would be happy to join a co-op or trade group, but I lack the skill set or time to devote to starting or running one.  

I suspect most of my fellow photographers are in the same boat :).

« Reply #6 on: December 23, 2009, 14:24 »
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What if the co-op web site worked something like the social media sites where photographers can manage their own work, profile, home page, etc.  All of their image search keywords would be aggregated and users could then purchase directly from the photographer with a very small (2-3%) going back to the co-op in order to pay someone to manage the site and other organizational minutia.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not interested in doing this myself, but I bet the co-op could be self-sustaining with enough buy-in from top contributors.

« Reply #7 on: December 23, 2009, 14:30 »
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I'd like to see some of your work (website designs) before committing to this project.

« Reply #8 on: December 23, 2009, 14:34 »
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A free for all site where everyone would try to undercut the next wouldn't work for me.  I like the stock portal system where price within a site is regulated.

dk

« Reply #9 on: December 23, 2009, 14:43 »
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I've given this some thought in the past and i think this could only work like a free flickr site with an add to cart option. It wouldn't possible to review all the files without paying reviewers so everybody can upload what they want with only an automatic plugin checking for excessive purple fringe, acceptable image size and resolution etc. As for a way to sort good files from bad files further every buyer could have the option to rate and comment on the file he bought.

About the prices, i think they should not be more expensive than the other micro agencies.
« Last Edit: December 23, 2009, 14:45 by dk »

« Reply #10 on: December 23, 2009, 16:09 »
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About the prices, i think they should not be more expensive than the other micro agencies.

For it to be successful, prices would have to be dramatically lower than the other micro agencies.

For any new product to get market share from a well-established product, it has to offer a big benefit to the customer.  The three areas to look at are quality, selection and price.  On quality... a co-op upstart could only strive to be on par with the big players, so no reason for the customer to switch on that point.  On selection... by definition a new site will have a tiny fraction what the big players have, so we'd get clobbered there.  Which leaves price... it's the only place in our control where we could make a compelling case for a buyer to get images from us and not the big players.   If a co-op offered images at half the price, maybe even a third of the price of the agencies, and only a few percent went back to the co-op for operational costs, perhaps we'd come out ahead.

A nice idea, but I'm afraid it's a pie in the sky.  Still, if anyone wants to take up the cause, I'd be willing to explore it.

« Reply #11 on: December 23, 2009, 16:35 »
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I'd like to see some of your work (website designs) before committing to this project.


Again, I'm not really interested in creating or managing this by myself, but I wonder if there is enough interest in this idea among Microstock Group members to make it happen as a coordinated effort, maybe with some sort of community of designers and photographers contributing to the site's creation and maintenance. The idea of this thought exercise being that the best ideas (and wondering if this is one) will eventually percolate long enough and then produce something worthwhile.

If it matters, I'm a freelance designer working by myself and, at age 51, I have no illusions that this can be my big ticket/last hurrah. I'm more interested in the idea and willing to help some. I might even get the courage to submit some of my own photos. Thus far, I have just done some ad hock photography for promotional pieces (mostly for Print) and I'm not confident about their quality or universal appeal.

If you are still interested in some of my web site work, check these recent and not so recent sites out (please be Kind):
newbielink:http://finepotter.com/ [nonactive] (utilizes Wordpress)
newbielink:http://www.projectimplicit.net/fpi/ [nonactive] (I created the template and logo, no control over the content or navigation)
newbielink:http://www.virginia.edu/case/ [nonactive] (created logo, template and information architecture, although things have been altered somewhat since launch)
newbielink:http://markcollinswatercolors.com/ [nonactive] ( old school web design, but still pretty nice looking, I think)

alias

« Reply #12 on: December 23, 2009, 16:46 »
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There exists the possibility of creating some model by which photographers could deal directly with stock buyers. But first you have to solve two key issues which are crucial to buyer trust : quality control and proof of ownership. Maybe a big company could do it.

A co op isn't going to work. A manageable co op is not going to have enough images. And a site with enough images is not going to work as a co op. More than a few will argue making business impossible.

Co op is an old model which works where there is some underlying political or social link between the photographers or when they want to control how their work is used. It really does not apply to the world of stock.

m@m

« Reply #13 on: December 23, 2009, 16:51 »
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It seems I've heard this idea some place before!....uuum, let me think, was it last year or at the beginning of this year?...just can't say!...at that time it did not worked because the big portfolio contributors would not go for it (specially the IS exclusives)...why would it work NOW?!
Great original idea dude!!!!!!!! ::)

PS: Anyone remembers: Batman, Tan, Puravida, M@M and several others.......... :P
« Last Edit: December 23, 2009, 17:02 by m@m »

« Reply #14 on: December 23, 2009, 17:08 »
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I am all for doing something.  Wont be around much until the new year but I really think we need to find a better way to get our images to the buyers.  It costs far too much at the moment and the sites are cutting their costs and reducing our commissions.  I would like to show them we can do this by ourselves if we need to.

dk

« Reply #15 on: December 23, 2009, 17:15 »
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About the prices, i think they should not be more expensive than the other micro agencies.

For it to be successful, prices would have to be dramatically lower than the other micro agencies.


I agree that as a new product it would have to be cheaper to compete with the established agencies but if we do that we should soon expect lower prices at all the sites. Selling a little more expensive or at the same price we wouldn't undervalue our images further.

Alias is right proof of ownership is going to be hard without paying someone to take care of legal issues. About quality control though i think that the same way you can find good images through the mass of  photos on flickr you could find through this site too.
« Last Edit: December 23, 2009, 17:21 by dk »

« Reply #16 on: December 23, 2009, 19:20 »
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Co-op should have lawyers all around the world... Calgary especially so you really can fight rights...

Until then... I will just observe ;-)

« Reply #17 on: December 23, 2009, 21:12 »
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If you want to do this credibly, the first step is to find a number of photographers who are willing to act as trustees for the site, and form a legitmate trust under the law of certain country. The second step is to set up a trust fund in a credible bank so all the money paid by the photographers will go to the trust. The trustees can determine how the money are to be used, including those for the site development. I suggest that the initial trustees loan some money to the trust to get it going and retain a lawyer who is willing to give some  pro bono hours (working for free but will have the expenses reimbursed by the trust).

« Reply #18 on: December 24, 2009, 03:15 »
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The idea has been brought up here before. If this would be just another stock site, it will definitively fail. There should be an USP, that would set a coop image bank aside from the existing ones and would tackle some weaker points of those.

1. Invitation only. Contributors are co-opted in based on their general karma and existing portfolio. No reviewers: those contributors are matured enough in the business to review their own work. Reviewing costs eat up the bulk of the capital of any beginning site. Buyers should be able to inspect all parts of the image at full size (watermarked and windowed).

2. Warranty: by the contributors themselves. The recent trend to warrant images by the agents induced a lot of red tape, overhead, undue rejects, and costs. The contributor warrants that all recognizable people have been released, and that he did his best to remove or avoid copyrighted elements. Based on these promises, the buyer should take his own responsibility based on the image content.

3. Freedom of content, the end of LCV rejects. The contributor decides what might have commercial value, not the site. This will bring in unique content, something that buyers have been asked for a long time.

4. Temporal content exclusivity: contributors are committed to offer all their new content exclusively on the co-op site for a reasonable period of 14days-1month, before they start uploading to the vested agents.

5. All contributors should have a confidential oversight of sales, gross income, and costs. They should decide the individual earnings percentage, based on these numbers, and all business decisions should be made by them, by majority vote.

6. The site itself should be buyer-centered, simple and very easy to use. No annoying sidebars or fields with bargains, free offerings, news. Commodity: for the pay-as-you-go purchase, no registration should be required. Prices should be higher than on existing sites. The competition should not be about price, but about content (see 3,4).

7. The heart of any site is about the search engine. Instead of addressing the search algorithm as the lowest priority (what killed YAY), it should be the highest one. There should be at least 2 options: ranked by relevance, and ranked by popularity/sales within relevance.

8. The site should not compete with our existing fine agents, rather complement them. Buyers can have a normal car for day to day commuting, and have a SUV for occasional weekend fun. The non-competition intent is further clear by the higher prices.

Perhaps we are talking about the next generation stock? But are we ready?

alias

« Reply #19 on: December 24, 2009, 04:27 »
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1. The best artists and authors in the world still need editors and curators.

2. You are going to need good insurance to give that warranty any value.

3. See 1.

5. If you have enough contributors to provide adequate content (millions of images)  then they will never reach consensus on anything.

Perhaps we are talking about the next generation stock?


I doubt it.

« Reply #20 on: December 24, 2009, 06:55 »
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So, this all sounds like "Blend Images".  Group of photogs gets together, starts agency, splits revenues, etc.  I'm surprised someone hasn't come along to point that out ;).

« Reply #21 on: December 24, 2009, 09:04 »
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I am all for doing something.  Wont be around much until the new year but I really think we need to find a better way to get our images to the buyers.  It costs far too much at the moment and the sites are cutting their costs and reducing our commissions.  I would like to show them we can do this by ourselves if we need to.

I am all with you.

Kone


hqimages

  • www.draiochtwebdesign.com
« Reply #22 on: December 24, 2009, 09:33 »
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There is a web site being developed currently for free images, made for and managed by the photographers themselves.. it won't be online for a while, but it is developing very fast, and that site could evolve to include a paid section along with the free images.

As regards legalities, it is a legal minefield if everyone own's the web site (co-op), if you get sued what happens? 500 of you have to go to court? That's why it's generally better to have one person responsible for the web site.. I don't know what the solution is but it will be interesting to see how this web site works out that problem and I'll post a link and more info here when it's launched!

« Reply #23 on: December 24, 2009, 09:52 »
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So, this all sounds like "Blend Images".  Group of photogs gets together, starts agency, splits revenues, etc.  I'm surprised someone hasn't come along to point that out ;).

Yeah it seems like that, but the only difference would be that it wouldn't be a group, it would rather be a mass of photographers - at least 30-50 thousand in my opinion for it to work. Then the game would change. We can offer the images slightly above the commission that we receive now, and we'll be much cheaper than the current stock sites and still retain the current revenue.

I'm also all for doing something. Remember, if someone told you several years ago that most of the people in the world would be connected via the Internet, and they would share their thoughts, ideas, pictures in a way Facebook operates, many of us would have laughed at the idea. I'm sure Mark Z. laughs at us now.




« Reply #24 on: December 24, 2009, 10:00 »
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There is a web site being developed currently for free images, made for and managed by the photographers themselves.. it won't be online for a while, but it is developing very fast, and that site could evolve to include a paid section along with the free images.

As regards legalities, it is a legal minefield if everyone own's the web site (co-op), if you get sued what happens? 500 of you have to go to court? That's why it's generally better to have one person responsible for the web site.. I don't know what the solution is but it will be interesting to see how this web site works out that problem and I'll post a link and more info here when it's launched!

Woo!  Free images!  Whose smart idea was that?


 

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