MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: wakecrazy on May 20, 2012, 20:20
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Hello all! I just wanted to introduce myself and let everyone know that I have a project that is launching on Indiegogo this week that I think you all will like! I have begun the development of a new website that is essentially going to marry istockphoto and behance.net (or dibbble.com) and provide contributors the ability to have their own "showcase" page.
I'll have all the details in the project, but I just wanted to post this and let everyone know that it is coming up in a few days.
I have a preview of the project that I can send out via link if you are interested in seeing it! Just reply and I'll send you the link!
Thanks everyone :)
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That could be interesting. I'm always interested in self promotion, so I'm curious to see what you have come up with.
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Thanks! I just sent you the link to the "preview" via DM. Let me know if you didn't get it.
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The one thing that isn't on the project preview yet is our contributor royalty rates. These will start at 35% and work there way up to as much as 70%. One of the things we will be doing at Creative Warehouse is really creating a community that helps regulate the content on the site and is very "hands on." We want everyone to feel a sense of ownership at Creative Warehouse, and we want to end the corporate feel that all microstock sites have. So the more involved you are in our community, the higher your royalty rate.
How can we sustain a 70% royalty rate? Well, it's really all in the numbers. If we don't have a huge corporate staff and have only the key people that we need, we don't have the massive overhead that all the other sites have. In addition, we are going to have other ways that 1 piece of artwork generates recurring income for a contributor, besides the obvious royalty from a consumer downloading the image. We can't discuss any of these tactics publicly yet because we are closing the first round of funding, but let me tell you; You'll love what we are building!
If you would like to see a quick preview of our project, DM me and I'll send you the link.
Thanks everyone!
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Thanks for the link. The video sounded interesting. I guess it all depends on the details. Food for thought, I doubt I would join a new site at 35%.
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I would like to see it, why don´t you post a link here?
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the project is still in preview mode, however it will go live this week. I'll post the link when we are live.
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I'd be interested to check it out.
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Me too :)
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Looks like just another micro from someone we've not heard from before, just with a contributor landing page:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1458494044/479670521 (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1458494044/479670521)
http://www.indiegogo.com/creativewarehouse (http://www.indiegogo.com/creativewarehouse)
BTW, to the OP, "contributers" is spelled "contributors".
'At Creative Warehouse we turned down the “token” or “credit” based systems that plague the micro-stock market. Why? Because we believe that $10 worth of art should always buy you $10 worth of art.'
... until we raise the price to something else.
"Ridiculously high royalty rates" don't mean anything until there are sales to fund those rates.
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We just went live at http://www.indiegogo.com/creativewarehouse (http://www.indiegogo.com/creativewarehouse)
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Looks like just another micro from someone we've not heard from before, just with a contributor landing page:
[url]http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1458494044/479670521[/url] ([url]http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1458494044/479670521[/url])
[url]http://www.indiegogo.com/creativewarehouse[/url] ([url]http://www.indiegogo.com/creativewarehouse[/url])
BTW, to the OP, "contributers" is spelled "contributors".
'At Creative Warehouse we turned down the “token” or “credit” based systems that plague the micro-stock market. Why? Because we believe that $10 worth of art should always buy you $10 worth of art.'
... until we raise the price to something else.
"Ridiculously high royalty rates" don't mean anything until there are sales to fund those rates.
Thanks for pointing out the spelling error. We actually saw that after we created the video and are revamping the video with the change.
I'd like to address a couple of your points (which are valid):
We are building this for the contributors, because we ourselves our contributors on large sites. I can't divulge our names because we are exclusive and will lose our exclusivity. I totally agree with the marketing and sales funding the royalty rates. That is one of the challenges with starting one of these sites, but we have a solid game plan on how to execute that part of our model.
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Robot translations does not make it trustworthy.
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I can't divulge our names because we are exclusive and will lose our exclusivity.
Them's the breaks.
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Interesting statement near the end of the video (at 3.21) that (to paraphrase) At the end of 2012 one of the largest microstock sites will stop paying a royalty percentage and just pay contributors "pennies per download". Anyone got a clue to whom they are referring? Regards, David.
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Interesting statement near the end of the video (at 3.21) that (to paraphrase) At the end of 2012 one of the largest microstock sites will stop paying a royalty percentage and just pay contributors "pennies per download". Anyone got a clue to whom they are referring? Regards, David.
I noticed that too. I wonder how many pennies they are talking about.
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Interesting statement near the end of the video (at 3.21) that (to paraphrase) At the end of 2012 one of the largest microstock sites will stop paying a royalty percentage and just pay contributors "pennies per download". Anyone got a clue to whom they are referring? Regards, David.
I noticed that too. I wonder how many pennies they are talking about.
JP Morgan. H&F, Goldman and all the worlds leading banks. We are going to fund them with our extreme revenues. Oh, btw, their headoffices are down, Petticoat-lane, London, or was it Smithfields-market, cant really remember. ::)
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Interesting statement near the end of the video (at 3.21) that (to paraphrase) At the end of 2012 one of the largest microstock sites will stop paying a royalty percentage and just pay contributors "pennies per download". Anyone got a clue to whom they are referring? Regards, David.
Perhaps they're guessing that non-exclusives will be thrown off istock and will only be able to sell through Thinkstock? I doubt that will happen but it's the only big site that I can see trying something like that. I don't think it would be a disaster for contributors though, most of us would leave and take the buyers with us.
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The one thing that isn't on the project preview yet is our contributor royalty rates. These will start at 35% and work there way up to as much as 70%.
And from the website:
What Sets Creative Warehouse Apart?
High contributor royalty rates, I repeat, HIGH ROYALTY RATES.
35% is not high.
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The video puts me off a bit. The music is too loud and everything seems to be about contributors. What about buyers? There's some sites that have tried only accepting what they think are high quality images and they seem to have very few buyers. Reviewers aren't capable of assessing what buyers think is high quality. As review "standards" are increased, they have an amazing ability to accept images that don't appeal to buyers and reject those that do. My ideal site would be one that only rejects images for technical reasons but then deletes everything that buyers show no interest in after a year. I think that's the best way to improve quality, as soon as reviewers have to guess what's good and what isn't, it all goes wrong.
Those high prices look nice for us but will it attract buyers? Why should I pledge money for this when it doesn't look much different to lots of other failed sites? I don't believe new sites claims about lots of interested buyers anymore, we need to know there's something different about this site that has somehow attracted the attention of buyers that have so far been very reluctant to leave the established sites.
It looks too good to be true and lots of us have had bad experiences with new sites claiming they can do the almost impossible only to end up being very mediocre. I think you need to convince us a lot more that you can do what you claim and have buyers interested.
Just seen about the 35% commission to start with. Now my slight interest had been killed off.
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Nope, not interesting.
35% too low to attract anyone, even if you'd pay for uploading.
Then, I don't think you can make it. What do you offer to the buyers to attract them? Take a look at Stockfresh, people are starting to lose faith in them and some of them pulled their ports from the site (myself included). And this was started by the same guys who created Stockxpert which was great.
The video started boring and I couldn't watch it to finish. What's this, a microstock 101? We already know what it is, we've been at this for years. Why is the kid in the clip gesturing all the time and all the same?
You have to do better than this.
LE: yea, and music is too loud.
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Everyone,
Thank you for all the feedback, it's great to hear all of this (even though some isn't great feedback that I want to hear). I've really poured my heart and soul into this over the past year and it's finally coming to fruition. One of the reasons I wanted to post in this forum was to work through these objections and truly build a contributor built website. By listening to feedback that everyone has we can either kill off certain elements in the site, or build new ones in.
Although the royalty rates are direly important for a contributor, by saying that the lowest we pay out is 35% is really for the contributor who just uploads stuff for the sake of uploading it, with no tie to our community. We want to have the contributors involved in our processes and decisions that are made with regards to the website. There is no other website out there that does that (to my knowledge). By building more of a community, the buyers and the traffic will organically come to the website. We will have a very aggressive marketing and SEO budget that will drive the ads to get buyers to the site, but without great contributors, we don't have great content. By making the contributors a part of the review process for acceptance and having them involved in other areas of the website, we don't need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every month on "overhead." Therefore, we can afford to pay out really high rates (75-80%). We can't get to that point without everyone's help though.
I apologize if the music was too loud or you think the video is horrible. I didn't want to go out and spend $2,000 to have a video made, so I made it myself to the best of my ability.
I would also like to address the comment "Why should I pledge money for this when it doesn't look much different to lots of other failed sites?" Although right now, this looks like a replication of any other stock site, trust me when I say, this is going to go MUCH deeper. Please understand that we can't lift up our hood and show everyone the insides before it is built. In the public arena our idea would get ripped off in a heartbeat and we would be left with nothing. We have major plans for contributors to make royalties on much more than when someone just simply purchases and downloads their image.
Feel free to DM me and I will give you as much information as I can without the need to sign an NDA.
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Nope, not interesting.
35% too low to attract anyone, even if you'd pay for uploading.
Then, I don't think you can make it. What do you offer to the buyers to attract them? Take a look at Stockfresh, people are starting to lose faith in them and some of them pulled their ports from the site (myself included). And this was started by the same guys who created Stockxpert which was great.
The video started boring and I couldn't watch it to finish. What's this, a microstock 101? We already know what it is, we've been at this for years. Why is the kid in the clip gesturing all the time and all the same?
You have to do better than this.
LE: yea, and music is too loud.
The Microstock 101 was to appeal more to the people looking at the project that don't know what it is. Believe it or not, a lot of people have no clue what goes on in this world.
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"Although the royalty rates are direly important for a contributor, by saying that the lowest we pay out is 35% is really for the contributor who just uploads stuff for the sake of uploading it, with no tie to our community. We want to have the contributors involved in our processes and decisions that are made with regards to the website. There is no other website out there that does that (to my knowledge). By building more of a community, the buyers and the traffic will organically come to the website. We will have a very aggressive marketing and SEO budget that will drive the ads to get buyers to the site, but without great contributors, we don't have great content. By making the contributors a part of the review process for acceptance and having them involved in other areas of the website, we don't need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every month on "overhead.""
I'm sorry, what? Our job is producing and uploading content. It's not playing Flickr games or inspecting images or any other 'community' stuff and rates should not be based on that. Community is a by product of happy producers. Producers are happy when sales are good, rates are high, and there's no silliness like variable rates based on whether they post in a forum or not.
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Although the royalty rates are direly important for a contributor, by saying that the lowest we pay out is 35% is really for the contributor who just uploads stuff for the sake of uploading it, with no tie to our community.
I'm not really sure what that means either, but I guess there is not much point in speculating or guessing. When do you think you will have a functional site?
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Although the royalty rates are direly important for a contributor, by saying that the lowest we pay out is 35% is really for the contributor who just uploads stuff for the sake of uploading it, with no tie to our community.
I'm not really sure what that means either, but I guess there is not much point in speculating or guessing. When do you think you will have a functional site?
I really want to build this thing with everyone on board, so again, I appreciate all the comments. If you all don't think that having a scale based on involvement would work, that's fine, let's figure out something that will.
As far as a functional site, the firm building the website has begun Phase 1 and should be complete in the middle of July. Phase 2 is the development of The Showcase piece, which will be wrapped up by October.
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By the way, if anyone has Linkedin, feel free to add me as a connection.
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$150 For the Contributor
You will receive a 100% royalty rate for your first 100 sales.
how long till those 100 got into our account?? ::) ::)
seriously pull the base for 50%, I am sure you know many new agencies "giving us" those numbers, best of luck
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$150 For the Contributor
You will receive a 100% royalty rate for your first 100 sales.
how long till those 100 got into our account?? ::) ::)
seriously pull the base for 50%, I am sure you know many new agencies "giving us" those numbers, best of luck
I guess I'm not sure what you're asking. But are you saying the lowest contributor rate should be 50%? I totally understand about those agencies saying different things. I'm curious to know if any of the stock sites have been built by contributors?
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$150 For the Contributor
You will receive a 100% royalty rate for your first 100 sales.
how long till those 100 got into our account?? ::) ::)
seriously pull the base for 50%, I am sure you know many new agencies "giving us" those numbers, best of luck
I guess I'm not sure what you're asking. But are you saying the lowest contributor rate should be 50%? I totally understand about those agencies saying different things. I'm curious to know if any of the stock sites have been built by contributors?
there is warmpicture, irockstock.. again my question is when will you return my 150$?
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$150 For the Contributor
You will receive a 100% royalty rate for your first 100 sales.
how long till those 100 got into our account?? ::) ::)
seriously pull the base for 50%, I am sure you know many new agencies "giving us" those numbers, best of luck
I guess I'm not sure what you're asking. But are you saying the lowest contributor rate should be 50%? I totally understand about those agencies saying different things. I'm curious to know if any of the stock sites have been built by contributors?
there is warmpicture, irockstock.. again my question is when will you return my 150$?
I would expect to see a return within the first month of the site being live. It also depends on how many images you load. The larger your portfolio, the faster you will be able to make that back (and more). For example, 100 downloads at an example price of $5 is $500, so you made more than double the original $150.
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I guess I'm not sure what you're asking. But are you saying the lowest contributor rate should be 50%? I totally understand about those agencies saying different things. I'm curious to know if any of the stock sites have been built by contributors?
I think he is saying 50% would be a good starting point. 50% is generally considered a fair rate, and many agencies offer that now. I really don't look at many new agencies to submit to unless they offer that (among other things). I know of a few agencies that were started by microstock contributors, and many contributors run their own personal sites (mine is in my signature). I guess in a way most of microstock was built by artists (as owners, buyers and contributors).
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I guess I'm not sure what you're asking. But are you saying the lowest contributor rate should be 50%? I totally understand about those agencies saying different things. I'm curious to know if any of the stock sites have been built by contributors?
I think he is saying 50% would be a good starting point. 50% is generally considered a fair rate, and many agencies offer that now. I really don't look at many new agencies to submit to unless they offer that (among other things). I know of a few agencies that were started by microstock contributors, and many contributors run their own personal sites (mine is in my signature). I guess in a way most of microstock was built by artists (both as owners, buyers and contributors).
That really is a great point. Well to be honest, all of your points are great. I really enjoyed looking at irockstock, I didn't realize that was run by you. You should be very proud. I really do appreciate all the feedback. I've just felt a lot of frustration from other contributors on big sites like istock and we all wanted to band together to actually make a difference out there. I do have several people involved in this, but again, they couldn't risk losing their exclusivity until this is a functioning site. You have to pay the bills at the end of the day you know?
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$150 For the Contributor
You will receive a 100% royalty rate for your first 100 sales.
how long till those 100 got into our account?? ::) ::)
seriously pull the base for 50%, I am sure you know many new agencies "giving us" those numbers, best of luck
I guess I'm not sure what you're asking. But are you saying the lowest contributor rate should be 50%? I totally understand about those agencies saying different things. I'm curious to know if any of the stock sites have been built by contributors?
there is warmpicture, irockstock.. again my question is when will you return my 150$?
I would expect to see a return within the first month of the site being live. It also depends on how many images you load. The larger your portfolio, the faster you will be able to make that back (and more). For example, 100 downloads at an example price of $5 is $500, so you made more than double the original $150.
I will make 500$ on the first month? oh boy...
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I really enjoyed looking at irockstock, I didn't realize that was run by you.
That's not me. This is me:
http://mystockvectors.com/ (http://mystockvectors.com/)
Don't want any rumors to start at the water cooler. ;D
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The thought of reviewing other people's images has never appealed to me. I also think it's going to be hard for the average contributor not to just press the reject button on images similar to their own. Editing and keywording my own images is enough work for me. I would rather spend more time taking photos.
I don't think many people will pledge money to start another microstock site. The problem is, we've heard it all before. Albumo was going to spend lots of money on an aggressive marketing campaign. It never happened. Lots of us wasted time uploading our portfolios only to find that there were no sales. They did pay us for uploading but the site closed after a couple of years. Since then, there's been lots of new sites promising all sorts of things and they end up making hardly anything for us.
So I think most of us wouldn't want to invest money to start a new site, unless it was a genuine cooperative with us having a stake in the company. I like taking a gamble sometimes but if microstock sites were horses, most of them have fallen at the first hurdle and that's not much fun when you have money on it.
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Nope, not interesting.
35% too low to attract anyone, even if you'd pay for uploading.
Then, I don't think you can make it. What do you offer to the buyers to attract them? Take a look at Stockfresh, people are starting to lose faith in them and some of them pulled their ports from the site (myself included). And this was started by the same guys who created Stockxpert which was great.
The video started boring and I couldn't watch it to finish. What's this, a microstock 101? We already know what it is, we've been at this for years. Why is the kid in the clip gesturing all the time and all the same?
You have to do better than this.
LE: yea, and music is too loud.
The Microstock 101 was to appeal more to the people looking at the project that don't know what it is. Believe it or not, a lot of people have no clue what goes on in this world.
Maybe you should be counting to get the support of the serious (professional) stock artists, rather than on the lot that has no clue about what's going on in this world. The vast majority of the valuable content on any agency comes from people who know their way around this business.
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I like taking a gamble sometimes but if microstock sites were horses, most of them have fallen at the first hurdle and that's not much fun when you have money on it.
no no I will get the 150$ help with 500$ on the 1st month ;D
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Just to let everyone know, we made some updates to the project (outlined our updated base contributor rate, etc...)
http://www.indiegogo.com/creativewarehouse (http://www.indiegogo.com/creativewarehouse)
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Just to let everyone know, we made some updates to the project (outlined our updated base contributor rate, etc...)
[url]http://www.indiegogo.com/creativewarehouse[/url] ([url]http://www.indiegogo.com/creativewarehouse[/url])
nice job, looking forward to see it live ;D
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The thought of reviewing other people's images has never appealed to me. I also think it's going to be hard for the average contributor not to just press the reject button on images similar to their own. Editing and keywording my own images is enough work for me. I would rather spend more time taking photos.
I was a reviewer for about 1 1/2 years, and don't ever want to do it again. The idea of reviewing in exchange for higher royalties? No way. Nuh-uh. Never again.
Sharpshot makes a good point about average contributors, too. On sites that have ratings systems, I've seen plenty of people give bad ratings to people they don't like, images that compete with theirs, or images that don't suit their particular taste, which in turn has decreased the sales potential for those images. In the end, contributors end up losing income on perfectly acceptable images, all because of petty BS. It wouldn't surprise me if the same kind of shenanigans happened with a contributor-based review system. I can see it now...get in a fight with someone on a forum, and then go in and sabotage their portfolio.
The thing about actually hiring reviewers is the agency has control over this kind of nonsense. If a reviewer is targeting contributors, the agency has a better chance of discovering it than if the reviewer is just a member of a huge community.
In regards to a "community," I think the only folks that will appeal to are those who loved IS for its community and are sad it's gone so downhill. Personally, I could care less. I don't participate on forums, etc., for a sense of "community" or to be a part of some happen', cool website. I participate strictly for business reasons, not fun and games. Higher royalties isn't going to change that for me.
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Just to let everyone know, we made some updates to the project (outlined our updated base contributor rate, etc...)
[url]http://www.indiegogo.com/creativewarehouse[/url] ([url]http://www.indiegogo.com/creativewarehouse[/url])
nice job, looking forward to see it live ;D
The project is live :)
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Just to let everyone know, we made some updates to the project (outlined our updated base contributor rate, etc...)
[url]http://www.indiegogo.com/creativewarehouse[/url] ([url]http://www.indiegogo.com/creativewarehouse[/url])
nice job, looking forward to see it live ;D
The project is live :)
I got that, will we get there? 50k?
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Just to let everyone know, we made some updates to the project (outlined our updated base contributor rate, etc...)
[url]http://www.indiegogo.com/creativewarehouse[/url] ([url]http://www.indiegogo.com/creativewarehouse[/url])
nice job, looking forward to see it live ;D
The project is live :)
I got that, will we get there? 50k?
Lol it was a play on words now that I look back. I read it as live not as live (as in alive).
To answer your question, if we can get this viral I think we can raise $150k plus. It just has to have everyone onboard.
There is a news station in San Diego that might pick up the story and broadcast it. They want to cover a story about crowdfunding and I have a couple connections there.
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Just to let everyone know, we made some updates to the project (outlined our updated base contributor rate, etc...)
[url]http://www.indiegogo.com/creativewarehouse[/url] ([url]http://www.indiegogo.com/creativewarehouse[/url])
nice job, looking forward to see it live ;D
The project is live :)
I got that, will we get there? 50k?
Lol it was a play on words now that I look back. I read it as live not as live (as in alive).
To answer your question, if we can get this viral I think we can raise $150k plus. It just has to have everyone onboard.
There is a news station in San Diego that might pick up the story and broadcast it. They want to cover a story about crowdfunding and I have a couple connections there.
best of luck, really appreciate your effort like I do on all agencies working for better royalties. Regarding us (contributors) in order to "contribute" to this project, I really don´t know but I would say quite hard once we have already many agencies paying nice royalties over 50% but not much return
p.s: I believe it is the first time we see an agency asking for money
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Coming out of my forum retirement for a minute just to say that I've had the chance to speak with Sean and I'm impressed with what he's doing. Enough so to throw a few bucks into the project myself.
Creative Warehouse is the real deal. Sean and his team know what they're doing, they've got great ideas, and I think they're going to do well with this project. They're not trying to compete head-to-head with the likes of istock. They're doing things differently, they know this business, and they are contributors themselves who know how to do right by the contributor community.
This is not just another microstock clone start-up. Creative Warehouse is going to be doing things that have never been done in this business before.
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Coming out of my forum retirement for a minute just to say that I've had the chance to speak with Sean and I'm impressed with what he's doing. Enough so to throw a few bucks into the project myself.
Creative Warehouse is the real deal. Sean and his team know what they're doing, they've got great ideas, and I think they're going to do well with this project. They're not trying to compete head-to-head with the likes of istock. They're doing things differently, they know this business, and they are contributors themselves who know how to do right by the contributor community.
This is not just another microstock clone start-up. Creative Warehouse is going to be doing things that have never been done in this business before.
hmmm.. thats what we want :D nice job on the 150$ too
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hmmm.. thats what we want :D nice job on the 150$ too
I figured since I stormed out of here in a huff I had better make a significant gesture coming back in. I was asking people to support something positive before, so maybe this was a sort of "put up or shut up" kind of move.
Edited to add: I'm not exactly "coming back". Just popping my head in from time to time. This was something well worth commenting on.
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not going live right?
just seen only 1430$ from 50k
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I talked to Sean about it while the funding was still going on at Indiegogo. The $50k was additional funding, not the whole development budget. In fact the site was costing them quite a bit more, well into the 6 figures I believe, and the Indiegogo money was just to help with the costs. They are putting their own money into it as well to cover the costs of building the site.
The Indiegogo project not reaching the goal isn't stopping the site development, at least as far as I understood this.
I think there are too many people invested in the project to kill it. Some istock exclusives are involved, folks who will be dropping exclusivity once the site launches. Sounds like they are very motivated to make this work.
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Are you sure it is still ongoing? I mean creativewarehouse.com is owned by some video production company. You'd think they would own and be holding onto a url of some sort if it was still going ahead and I can't find any variations of the name that could be them.
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The .com domain name was already taken long before Sean started his company, so I'm assuming there are other plans for that. Possibly the .net that is still available (better grab that, Sean).
Worst case, they could always go with another name. I doubt they'd scrap the whole thing just because of a domain name issue.
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I didn't think they would scrap it because of that, but thought it could be a sign that they had scraped it for other readons. If they never had it in the first place, my bad.