Justin,
1: Functionality is coming soon for illustrations and vectors - will this be in the beta period or will I have to part with my $480 and hope it turns up soon?

Hi Kat,
Illustrations are on the site now, both from agencies and from PicturEngine platform photographers and can be uploaded within your account.  They are NOT, however, separated from the main image search, as they will be once we turn on the visual search and sorting.  We discouraged just one individual, who has 100% illustrations, from registering right now because the current search may not show his illustrations properly and in the correct order.  Also, our current image processor only accepts and processes Jpegs.  We are adding functionality every week. Our initial focus is photos and illustrations in Jpeg format, and we will then move to support footage after launch, and then vectors. 

2: If I take the risk and part with $480, I will be doing so because I don't currently have my own website but would like to sell directly, and not pay as much as 85% to some stock sites selling my work. As I don't have my own website, I don't have any personal EULA in place and, as I am not legally trained, I'm not sure I am qualified to write one. You say that we have the freedom to set our own prices but I can't find anything with regard to licensing agreements so can you enlighten me please?

PicturEngine utilizes the PLUS (Picture Licensing Universal System) Standards for image licensing.  Each image license and its usage terms are defined during the licensing process and agreed to when purchasing an image license.  Furthermore, the PLUS �LDF� (License Data Format) is embedded in each licensed image�s metadata and is specific to the usage rights granted to that client for that specific license.  Clients can take the �PLUS Media Summary Code� embedded in their licensed images� metadata and decode their specific license using the PLUS Decoder.
Organizations such as PLUS are here to make our lives easier, as we aren�t all lawyers. I recommend PLUS if you are making a go at it on your own.  I would definitely take full advantage of what the PLUS system offers.  http://www.useplus.com 

3: You mention a cost of $40 per month, (which is a little misleading if you have to pay it all upfront and can't actually pay it monthly without being charged extra), and there are additional cloud storage charges on top of this. Will I have separate access to this storage and be able to effectively use this as a cloud back-up for my own files?

This answer has several parts:
A. Our registration page clearly states �$40/mo billed annually.�  Monthly payment options will be available after launching the platform, but discount pricing will still be reserved for annual billing.  Please note that the Beta pricing gets you the best price we will ever offer and we start your 1 year clock the day we launch.  Beta users (who register before we launch) will always get the best price offered (period).

B. On the same registration page, we state �Unlimited Images*� and provide the definition and storage cost as you hover over the line item.  When you rent a car with �unlimited miles,� you get the car to drive as much as you like, but you still have to pay for the gas.  We are very clear that this is a pay ONLY for what you use system.  http://www.picturengine.com/beta/register_p.php

C. You register for storage on your own, and it�s your storage account.  We only gain access to your storage provider when you grant it to us via a secure API key.  You can use your cloud storage account any way you like, as it is yours.  We only ask that you not modify or change permissions on any of the folders we create for you, as that would break your image links on our platform.

D. If you are interested in a long-term image backup solution, I recommend taking a look at AWS Glacier.  Amazon Glacier is an extremely low cost (1 penny per GB/month for delayed retrieval offline storage vs. 10 cents per GB/month for instant access) storage service that provides secure and durable storage for data archiving and backup.  We are currently testing and configuring Glacier as one of our backup solutions and may soon offer it to our photographers as a secondary backup (and possibly a storage solution for images that don�t sell as often, however, the downside is an average of a 3 hour delay for image retrieval so this is not ideal for all images).  Glacier does involve and require a substantial knowledge of coding to implement correctly, and we hope to soon build an app to streamline these processes for you.  I am very excited about the advances in technology and availability of solutions like Glacier, lowering our expenses and making your lives easier.

4: As I am looking into the possibilities of having my own website in the not-too-distant future, I may wish to drop from the $40 plan to the $10 plan. Will that be possible, or will I be locked into the $40 plan for a full year?

If you register during the Beta for the RM/RF plan, you�re paying for a full year, locking in that price for life.  If you want to change to the Advertising Only plan, we can transfer the unused balance to your new account on a case by case basis.

If you want your own site with a search, you may like to know that we have options for our RM and RM/RF platform photographers to display a search of only your images on our site or (embedded results) on your site.  We will not build you a website, but we will however, offer the search capabilities of PicturEngine in an embedded private search link (PicturEngine branded for free or non-branded for an additional fee).  Here is the current photographer search link on PicturEngine to a couple of MSG members.  We have not yet enabled the embed site code, as this is just a test link with limited functionality.  When searching from these links, you�re searching through that photographer's images ONLY.

http://www.picturengine.com/p/Lao01
http://www.picturengine.com/p/Hoo01

You may also add a /{keyword} at the end of the URL to search for a particular keyword within a specific photographer�s image collection.  This is useful when sending a link to a buyer for a specific keyword search.

http://www.picturengine.com/p/Lao01/business

5: If I proceed, and you host portfolio so that I can benefit from %100 of the sale price, who collects the money? You mention PayPal fitting with your system, so are you collecting money on my behalf or will I be paid directly by the customer?

We use PayPal Parallel Payments to pay multiple users from a single transaction.  The buyer performs only one transaction for images (from many photographers on the PicturEngine platform) and pays the PayPal transaction fees (about 2.9%), ensuring you receive 100% of the sale.  We only facilitate the sale through our platform and don�t receive any monies from the transaction.  Other payment methods are currently being tested as well.

PicturEngine is a platform to be built upon.  Many businesses and developers have already expressed interest in building modules or apps for the platform, everything from uploaders to pricing and payment gateways, and more.  This API / app process will be as �open� as possible to allow others to build upon the base platform.  If you�re a developer interested in building onto the PicturEngine platform, email [email protected] with the title �SDK list� to receive our Software Development Kit and Submission Guidelines when they�re released. 

I hope this helps answer your questions.

Best,
JB

snip......

Quote from: KuriousKat on November 03, 2012, 05:39

5: If I proceed, and you host portfolio so that I can benefit from %100 of the sale price, who collects the money? You mention PayPal fitting with your system, so are you collecting money on my behalf or will I be paid directly by the customer?

We use PayPal Parallel Payments to pay multiple users from a single transaction.  The buyer performs only one transaction for images (from many photographers on the PicturEngine platform) and pays the PayPal transaction fees (about 2.9%), ensuring you receive 100% of the sale.  We only facilitate the sale through our platform and don�t receive any monies from the transaction.  Other payment methods are currently being tested as well.

So you are going to surcharge buyers for using paypal? The merchant normally pays the fees, you cant change that. So you are going to increase the prices by 2.9% to compensate for that? How are you planning on doing that? Better make sure you accept credit card payments as well,  the buyers wont use paypal when its surcharged. Wonder how you sort the adaptive payments then, because with paypal they do it for you.

I can't help thinking that if there's 100 of us paying $480 a year for this, that's $48,000.  Wouldn't we be better of running our own site?  I'm sure we could do that for much less, get over 1 million images in it and get it listed for free with PicturEngine.

Hi Sharpshot,
First off, we will be happy to include your collection for FREE once you reach 1 million unique images.  Finding 100 great photographers with at least 10,000 good saleable images each, should be a snap.    We are looking forward to hosting your collaborative collection!

As an experienced business person in this industry, I caution you on your estimate of how far $48,000/year will take you.  In my experience, this is not even enough to cover your server expenses and bandwidth representing a million images for a year. 

We represent 872 photographers with just under 900,000 images between my two agencies (Corner House Stock Photo and Picturesque).  I am very familiar with the daily operating expenses of running a stock photo business.  I know the day-to-day costs involved and we have priced the PicturEngine platform appropriately, all while providing photographers 100% of their image licenses. 

PicturEngine offers photographers an excellent platform at the best possible price, all while including the other platforms providing services in the marketplace.  If you are already on one, there is no need to change, just add our Advertising Only plan.  If your platform is not on our list, it will be soon.

I have made this promise to our Beta photographers:  Your price as a Beta photographer will NEVER go up and will always be the LOWEST we ever offer (period).  When we hit critical mass and are able to offer a lower price for our services, our Beta users will be the first to be lowered.

I am not trying to be (too) condescending here.  It is very frustrating to read a post like yours and not respond.  I recommend you get onboard and actively help make changes to the way our industry does business, or stop complaining about your current situation.  The future is bright and possibilities are endless if you choose to make the steps toward it.

Best,
JB

My first thought on reading the Alamy news this morning was that it is time to sign up at Picturengine.  It seems to me when even Alamy is comfortable cutting rates, the long term writing is on the wall.  Dollar amounts for traditional licenses have fallen so low the only way I can see this being sustainable for the photographer long term is if we are keeping 70% or more of the license.  I can live with the new reality of lower prices but I can't live with the reality of giving most of it away to the "agencies" who represent us.  Let's make technology work for us for a change.  Is a place like Picturengine the answer?  I don't know if it will be them or someone else who makes a difference in the end but I'm inclined to to support the organizations that are trying to make our lives as image creators better.

I'm gonna put my money where my mouth is.

P.S. I have absolutely no affiliation with Picturengine

I am keeping an open mind but ................

what is your "basic" marketing plan and budget for year one, two and three?

What hidden expenses do you have (Paypal fees, gigabyte storage, etc)

How does the system determine image cost?

PicturEngine is by Justin Brinson (http://www.linkedin.com/in/justinbrinson).

He also owns:

1.  http://www.pornstockphoto.com - Porn Stock Photo
2.  http://www.picturenginegroup.com - PicturEngine group
3.  http://www.gstockphoto.com - G Stock Photo
4.  http://www.thebrinsongroup.com - The Brinson Group
5.  http://www.cornerhousestock.com - Corner House Stock
6.  http://www.genericstockphoto.com
7.  http://www.mybigfind.com - My Big Find
8.  http://www.cornerhousestockphoto.com - Corner House Stock Photo
9.  http://www.picturesque.com/ - Picturesque

This also really bothers me.

Paypal fees are with the seller not the buyer. You can only pass on the fees to the buyer on a personal paypal account and if they cop on you are using a personal account for business they lock you down.

You either going to have the surcharge the buyers for using paypal, or pay the fees yourself.

If you surcharge by upping the prices, buyers will walk. They dont want to pay for using paypal.
If you pay the fees yourself, the photographers will not get the full 100% for their image.

If you sell single photos for under 10 dollar, the regular fees will be too high. You need to apply for micro payments to get lower rates for these low priced items.

Also your merchant rate will vary and is based on how well you did in the previous month. How are you going to apply that fluctuating fee to the image pricing?

https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees

YOUR MONTHLY SALES     YOUR FEE PER TRANSACTION      EXAMPLES
 
$0 to $3,000                       2.9% + $0.30                       $3.20 fee on a $100 sale
$3,000+ to $10,000            2.5% + $0.30                       $2.80 fee on a $100 sale
$10,000+                             2.2% + $0.30                       $2.50 fee on a $100 sale
$100,000+                         Call 1-888-818-3928

https://micropayments.paypal-labs.com/

Merchant Rate                                     Micropayments 5% + $0.05    Regular 2.9% +$0.30
Payment size                                              $2                                               $2
Cost to receive payment                           $0.15                                        $0.36
Total cost to receive 100 payments            $15                                             $36
 
https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=ua/UserAgreement_full#8.%20Fees%20and%20Currency%20Conversion.

Fees are based on whether you are making a Purchase Payment, a Personal Payment or a PayPal Business Payment. Some fees are expressed as a percentage of the payment amount. All Fees are in U.S. Dollars unless otherwise stated.

For Purchase Payments, the recipient of the payment will always pay the Fee. Unless a personal account, which you are not allowed to use for business.

I keep pointing this out because I think its important to know for your contributors on how you are going to apply the fees, and if you get the lowest fees possible.

Still no Ktools support? 

I keep clicking on these threads hoping for some progress on this and always being disappointed.  I feel like Charlie Brown, tricked into kicking Lucy's football once again...

Our whole �goal� is to stay OUT of the �middle,� and out of your business and sales!  By doing business transactions this way, we eliminate any �accounting� on our end, for �your� image sales, thus keeping our expenses lower and passing the savings to you as a flat fee platform.  Buyers get a great price (you can afford to give them a great price and still be competitive when you keep 100%).  It�s a winning formula.

Without going into excessive detail, I will say this... I am not new to the stock photo industry.  I have been here since the days of printed catalogs, FedExing film to clients, when research was done in house, when we (agencies) provided customers REAL �service.�  Most of you know I own two traditional stock photo agencies, Picturesque and Corner House Stock Photo.  Both have grown and evolved with our ever-changing industry.  Four years ago, after the housing market crash, I knew it was time for a change, and that�s when I started building the PicturEngine model.  We utilized polling and surveys from our more than 40k active image buying clients to truly understand the essential elements of what clients and photographers need to succeed.  Over 16k active image buyers returned surveys, and most surveys were completed directly after an image sale to ensure the feedback provided represents actual buying clients� opinions and needs.  Our client research shaped the concept behind PicturEngine into what you see today.  The stock photo industry will continue to evolve and change, and PicturEngine is designed to evolve and change rapidly with the industry, as it is a platform to be built upon, not an agency. 

We�re living in a fast paced, connected, get everything instantly and get everything cheap society.   We built this platform to benefit both image buyer and photographer, providing a direct pathway, saving the money in the middle. 

...

What hidden expenses do you have (Paypal fees, gigabyte storage, etc)
--Paypal sales fees are passed onto the buyer. There will be other payment gateways added later, however PayPal is doing a great job and gives us everything we asked for.
--Storage fees are clearly defined on the site (we are currently using Rackspace Cloud files - 10 cents per GB per month, that�s about $1 a month per 1,000 10MB Jpeg images).  This is listed several places on PicturEngine.  More storage providers will be added later, but Rackspace checks off all of the boxes we were looking for in regards to security, price, speed, service, and overall usability.
...
How does the system determine image cost?
You set your own prices.  We show you crowdsourced pricing from other photographers on the PicturEngine platform (high, low, and average prices) when you click on the �Need Help Pricing?� link in your image pricing area.  Also, after launch we will enable active sales pricing, where you can see crowdsourced data on the (high, low, and average) actual current selling prices on the platform. 

Please read my posts over again.  We are building this platform with both Image buyers and photographers in mind, to adapt and change with the ever changing stock photo marketplace.  Prices in our marketplace change daily.  We can just agree to disagree.

Best,
JB