I am coming from the stock video perspective, so forgive me if my references to things aren't quite spot on. I see this discussion often in different micro stock site forums. So far, there is little evidence I can find that creating ones own site to vend your own footage has yielded results. It seems like a tempting concept (keep the cash yourself!) but I haven't seen a lot of people having success (or any) and therefor not a lot of reason for doing it. Here's the main reason for not doing it and wasting vast amounts of your own time:

Why and how are people going to find you? Buyers are coming to the major stock sites because they are marketplaces. They are already established. If they aren't coming directly to the sites, they are doing an on-line search. Since the search engines rank the searches by relevancy, duration, etc, those searches for popular images and clips are going to go to the existing players. which are large agencies. Traffic drives traffic. The only major exception to this is this - exceptionally rare or unique images or video clips. If you search for "Bangkok riots video stock footage" on Go ogle, you're going to be directed to my existing footage on various agency sites. In this case, I might consider using something like smugmug for niche footage. Otherwise, for portfolios with lots of competition, it's a waste of time. Any evidence to the opposite would be appreciated.

. Do you find that many people buy a download or they just link back to you in exchange for a free image? As I understand the site, you can link back to various size images (so the image will show in a web page, but they haven't actually got the file itself. If they want to buy a downloaded file they pay $1 etc. depending on size and usage?

Steve

exactly - most people to the site dont buy - but it's worth it for the links and the occ'l adsense clicks

Quote from: lagereek on April 15, 2011, 00:57

My RM stock outlet is purely based on a good client/photographer relationship and trust ofcourse.

Hearing from lots of old timers this seems to be the case. But ironically when you get them talking you hear about all the old tricks e.g. reselling images in violation of RM licenses etc. and how it wasn't considered a big deal because you were never caught.
I think one guy said he'd been doing it for 20+ years without a problem and if he was ever caught he'd just say oops sorry my mistake. I guess there wasn't much fear of getting caught pre internet and it was all too tempting to exploit those cozy relationships. But then again those were the days when a camera was a license to print money.... sigh.... 

ETA. realized that this might read as if it's about you specifically, which it definitely isn't, just a generally about what the old RM market was like

I cant speak for them but I have got my own rights-controle computer. Youre right however, you have got to police this 110% on e slip up and it could become very costly.