Author Topic: "Because photographers don't need middlemen." (Read 28803 times)

cathyslife · « **Reply #25 on:** June 07, 2010, 09:36 »

Sounds interesting, I definitely will be checking it out.

Microbius · « **Reply #26 on:** June 07, 2010, 11:27 »

Would love to hear how people get on with this. Sounds very interesting!

Microbius · « **Reply #27 on:** June 07, 2010, 12:13 »

Quote from: cthoman on April 12, 2010, 14:35

Is it only photographers that don't need middle men or can illustrators not have them too? I've been looking at a couple of these make your own stock site systems, but I haven't been completely sold on any of them.

Yeah would be good to know, I guess all you'd need is to be able to have an eps or zipped file download as well as a jpeg when something is purchased. The thumbnails could still work in the same way as with the photos.

cthoman · « **Reply #28 on:** June 07, 2010, 12:25 »

Quote from: Microbius on June 07, 2010, 12:13

Yeah would be good to know, I guess all you'd need is to be able to have an eps or zipped file download as well as a jpeg when something is purchased. The thumbnails could still work in the same way as with the photos.

I'd exchanged an email with them a few weeks ago and they weren't currently doing any eps or vector files.

Microbius · « **Reply #29 on:** June 07, 2010, 13:32 »

That's a shame, thanks for letting us know!

Xalanx · « **Reply #31 on:** June 18, 2010, 16:59 »

I signed up, I am quite impressed with the features!

cathyslife · « **Reply #32 on:** June 18, 2010, 17:10 »

Quote from: Xalanx on June 18, 2010, 16:59

I signed up, I am quite impressed with the features!

I just tweeted, I am interested in looking around here.

PaulieWalnuts · « **Reply #33 on:** June 19, 2010, 20:30 »

I just spent some time running thought it and for a pre-release it's pretty nicely done.

Compared to Photoshelter it seems to be missing some SEO functionality but the Rights Managed pricing is way more configurable. It seems way better than LicenseStream.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

madelaide · « **Reply #34 on:** June 19, 2010, 22:33 »

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on June 19, 2010, 20:30

Compared to Photoshelter it seems to be missing some SEO functionality but the Rights Managed pricing is way more configurable.

Does it have a preset RM table converter (that is, you set a basic price and it automatically calculates all other usages/sizes) or do you have to enter all the prices yourself?

PaulieWalnuts · « **Reply #35 on:** June 19, 2010, 23:41 »

Quote from: madelaide on June 19, 2010, 22:33

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on June 19, 2010, 20:30
Compared to Photoshelter it seems to be missing some SEO functionality but the Rights Managed pricing is way more configurable.
Does it have a preset RM table converter (that is, you set a basic price and it automatically calculates all other usages/sizes) or do you have to enter all the prices yourself?

Photoshelter is based on FotoQuote pricing so the pricing is already set and you're limited to increasing or decreasing the standard FotoQuote pricing by percentages. So 100%, 110%, 90% etc.

With PhotoDeck it has an RM converter with their standard pricing but you can completely configure each of the pricing tiers as well as base minimum pricing. Pretty slick. So in a typical RM configurator there's region, layout, and a bunch of other calculation points. You can set each tier and it will calculate the pricing you set for each tier. The minimum pricing is nice because you can say "the minimum I'm willing to sell for is $X". So if a buyer tries manipulating the RM configurator you still have a minimum price set.

PhotoDeck seems to be on the right track here. But, the lingering question is, are serious buyers really using Google to buy direct from photographers. I set up a Photoshelter account to test direct sales. Most of the pundits/analysts claim there is a huge untapped market so we'll see.

PaulieWalnuts · « **Reply #37 on:** June 20, 2010, 07:21 »

Quote from: jfmphoto on June 20, 2010, 01:26

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on June 19, 2010, 20:30
I just spent some time running thought it and for a pre-release it's pretty nicely done. Compared to Photoshelter it seems to be missing some SEO functionality but the Rights Managed pricing is way more configurable. It seems way better than LicenseStream.Not bad. Not bad at all.

Paulie, I'd love to know what SEO functionality you think PhotoDeck is missing. (You can actually even configure the SEO.)

Yeah, I saw the SEO section and went through it. Nice! I said it seems to be missing some functionality. Like I didn't see anything for Google Webmaster verification for sitemap tracking and stuff like that. After going through it again I did notice a few new things.

The URL for individual image pages includes the image title, meaning http://[yoursite].photodeck.com/media/[image number]-business-people-in-a-conference-room. Niiice! Google looks at URL text for weighing rank and Photoshelter still doesn't have this even after their big refresh.

The themes are configurable with a WYSIWYG editor so you can customize the layout without having to code custom pages.

I'm not seeing any option for selling prints or integration to print vendors.

The administrative navigation seems a bit clunky. Like it was designed by a developer without user input and testing. Not a huge deal but Photoshelter's user interface is pretty dummy-proof.

Is there any info on pricing or release date?

PeterChigmaroff · « **Reply #39 on:** June 20, 2010, 09:57 »

It's unfortunate but for the most part stock photographers do need middlemen. I wish it weren't the case but this type of scheme or some variant of it has been tried many times in the past with little success. Even this scheme, in a mild way, is form of middleman. I do wish them the best.

PaulieWalnuts · « **Reply #40 on:** June 20, 2010, 15:38 »

Quote from: jfmphoto on June 20, 2010, 09:03

Check out the website:
(from http://www.photodeck.com/faq/)

Thanks. You might want to add some of this info and/or links in the administrative section where a lot of your potential customers are spending their time.

FD · « **Reply #42 on:** July 16, 2010, 13:09 »

Quote from: jfmphoto on July 16, 2010, 11:30

A heads-up: PhotoDeck is now fully open - no invitation required, opening an account takes a few seconds only. www.photodeck.com

This looks like what Clustershot should have been. Nicely designed, but of course, the question remains how to get found by buyers. Right now it's just a nice front for remote backup. I'm going to try the integration out in a while.

Update:
- Just like Veer (and LO earlier, and BigStock till SS reprogrammed it) an older version of the IPTC title field is taken if you changed it later. I don't keyword with Adobe but with Irfanview. There are several ways to import IPTC.

- The bad habit of Flickr and Clustershot is copied to import the location IPTC tags in the keywords. That might be fine for travel snapshooters, but I use that info also for studio location if it's indoors. The address is irrelevant. I have to take it out picture by picture. If location is relevant, I put it in the keywords, like all stock sites accept it.

- Oh well, I have no idea how to bring my images in a gallery, like Home. Tried it many ways but it failed.

- As to integration, I couldn't find any usable info or tutorial. I'll check it out later, when the site is more mature. Maybe. I have my own hoster with several domains and I can't afford yet another paying service parallel to it.

alias · « **Reply #43 on:** July 16, 2010, 14:00 »

The site talks about people building their "own brand". This seems almost disingenuous to me since I do not believe that there are many (perhaps not any) stock photographers who are realistically likely to build their businesses into brands. Although I can see that this idea potentially taps into how many people would like to imagine the world.

I do not see how these one - man - brands can offer buyers a better solution than the agency model. For example an agency provides access to a much wider variety of work.

More importantly, I cannot see how this approach can provide any of the sorts of legal protections, quality controls and guarantees for buyers which a staffed and well financed agency can provide.

What is to stop people trying to sell stolen content ? What is to stop people selling content which is inadequately released ?

If it really is just about people building their own brand (as the site suggests) then I firmly believe that Flickr is a much better way of getting noticed.

dnavarrojr · « **Reply #44 on:** July 16, 2010, 14:16 »

I have to agree with an earlier comment... How many "BUYERS" are using Google to search for image? Most people I know who use google to find images are looking for free stuff or stuff to steal, not buy.

Therefore, for this to be worthwhile you will have to spend a significant effort marketing it yourself. As much as I hate giving anyone else a percentage, this is the primary reason why we do... the existing microstock sites spend a ton of money on marketing to get in front of buyers.

I can understand paying more for more storage, but why limit features based on price? Why not give users the ability to use every feature and simply pay more for their storage needs. If the site is truly going to be successful, users will quickly be upgrading their storage requirements. After all 10 gigs is only 25 to 40 images. If an artist uploads their best 25 images and they start selling, they would quickly upgrade their account to add more images. Hamstringing them with a limited set of features is setting them up for failure and a bad experience.

The overall idea is a pretty good one, I just think it's doomed to fail from poor implementation.

Dreamframer · « **Reply #45 on:** July 16, 2010, 14:43 »

Quote from: dnavarrojr on July 16, 2010, 14:16

After all 10 gigs is only 25 to 40 images.

Sorry, maybe I didn't understand...

J-F // PhotoDeck · « **Reply #46 on:** July 16, 2010, 14:59 »

FD-regular, thanks for the feedback.

Here is the intro tutorial (there is link to it from the dashboard when you log in), it should address many of your questions:


Get started with PhotoDeck HD

A few things have changed since the tutorial was made (we got a much nicer design now

, but it is still valid.

cthoman · « **Reply #48 on:** July 16, 2010, 15:14 »

Quote from: jfmphoto on July 16, 2010, 15:04

Actually 10 GB is 1000 high-res images @10MB each. Most high-res JPGs are less than 10MB.

Bare hosting often costs more than that.

Sounds good to me. Now, all you have to do is get the vectors up and running, and I'm there!

Snufkin · « **Reply #49 on:** July 16, 2010, 15:15 »

It looks promising. If I can customize it the way I want I will give it a try.
I like the nested galleries, but from what I see photodeck offers only a pbase.com-style navigation, i.e. you see a thumbnail of the gallery, when you click on it you go deeper into the nested galleries. What I need, is a sidebar navigation that works like a category tree and is expandable/collapsable. For example if you click on parent-gallery "animals" it would expand into child-galleries: "birds, fish, mammals etc." Clicking again on the parent item would collapse the view.

I was planning to build such a site based on Drupal or Joomla during the cold winter evenings, but now obviously photodeck does offer some advantages and would save me time.

My question to jfmphoto is: is it possible to set up gallery navigation as I described (as an expandable/collapsable sidebar with parent/child galleries)? If not, will such an option be implemented later? I supply a niche market and quick navigation for the buyers is essential to me. It is very easy to set up in Drupal or Joomla, but as I said photodeck does have some advantages.

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Author Topic: "Because photographers don't need middlemen." (Read 28803 times)

cathyslife

Microbius

Microbius

cthoman

Microbius

J-F // PhotoDeck

Xalanx

cathyslife

PaulieWalnuts

madelaide

PaulieWalnuts

J-F // PhotoDeck

PaulieWalnuts

J-F // PhotoDeck

PeterChigmaroff

PaulieWalnuts

J-F // PhotoDeck

FD

alias

dnavarrojr

Dreamframer

J-F // PhotoDeck

J-F // PhotoDeck

cthoman

Snufkin

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