Author Topic: For people who sell their own images - invitation to join Stock Image Portal (Read 25166 times)

Elenathewise · « **Reply #50 on:** January 22, 2011, 16:48 »

Quote from: cthoman on January 22, 2011, 15:21

Quote from: Elenathewise on January 22, 2011, 14:58
Cthoman, I love your site and would love to have you on board. However, please consider this - if I already had an established site with high traffic, would I be asking for just 20 dollars to plug your link in? The cheapest relevant adverts we found are about 250 dollars, and that's the bottom.
Plus, you're not sharing your customers in this scenario. You are redirecting customers to other sites in case they don't find what they are looking for in your portfolio. So you're not losing a sale - you wouldn't have made it in the first place.

All understandable. I just wasn't crazy about the link exchange and link redirecting part and I didn't see the value in paying $20 a month at this time. If there was a test drive or it was based on affiliates, I'd be much more likely to sign up. I like the idea and I'll definitely keep an eye on it, but I have some other things I'd prefer to pursue first. That's just my 2 cents. I'm often wrong and am prone to changing my mind.

Cory, about affiliates - you'd be doing exactly what you don't want to do: driving traffic to other people's sites for free. You won't be losing sales, but why should someone who never spent a cent or made other effort to advertise their store benefit from your advertising? In the scheme I propose everyone will have to chip in to drive traffic to the common place. Only fair in my opinion.
And yes, I think we will do a trial run - offer a month for free while we're setting up, but after that we'll need cash to start marketing.

Elenathewise · « **Reply #51 on:** January 22, 2011, 16:49 »

I'll reply to everyone's PMs later tonight.

madelaide · « **Reply #52 on:** January 22, 2011, 16:58 »

Just an idea, maybe with a lower cost for everyone, and possibly inline with the discussions we had before.

Instead of each one having a selling site with Ktools or whatever, one single site with Ktools, several members - I suppose it is designed to accept several members and make the accounting per member. Would it be possible that each uploaded image would have a cost, so those uploading more would pay more? I have a very small microstock portfolio and US$20 a month would be very expensive. We could run with a very low commission at the beginning, so the site gets the cash for advertisement.

cthoman · « **Reply #53 on:** January 22, 2011, 17:15 »

Quote from: Elenathewise on January 22, 2011, 16:48

Cory, about affiliates - you'd be doing exactly what you don't want to do: driving traffic to other people's sites for free. You won't be losing sales, but why should someone who never spent a cent or made other effort to advertise their store benefit from your advertising? In the scheme I propose everyone will have to chip in to drive traffic to the common place. Only fair in my opinion.
And yes, I think we will do a trial run - offer a month for free while we're setting up, but after that we'll need cash to start marketing.

I'm confused. I meant my own affiliate program, so I would pay you a percentage for each sale you drove to my site. That way I'm paying for performance, and I don't have to worry about getting priced out of an advertising program. I haven't set up an affiliate program yet, so I'm open to suggestions on that. It would mean less upfront capital for you, but I think it would work better in the long run. You'll have sales statistics, so you can move your best performing sites to the top of the list and searches or as featured sites.

Also, I'd prefer not to have people leave my site for another similar site. Even if they can't find what they want, it is possible I can create it, so I'd rather have them contact me as opposed to leaving to find it somewhere else. Those are my concerns with the way you've described the setup.

RT · « **Reply #54 on:** January 22, 2011, 19:35 »

Quote from: Elenathewise on January 22, 2011, 15:34

The content will be highly regulated. I wouldn't share my advertising money with something that won't sell. The central search will not be available at first, but we might be able to implement it later.

Monitoring the content would be hard if not impossible to do, I think monitoring the content providers might be a better idea. Good to hear about the search, I'll be sure to check it out once you're up and running.

qwerty · « **Reply #55 on:** January 22, 2011, 21:27 »

Best of luck with your proposal. But it doesn't work for me. I don't want to have my own website I simply don't have enough time to run one.

In a perfect world what I would be looking for is a non-profit agency that provides 50% commission and uses the rest to run the site, make it better, advertise etc. No shareholder to provide an every increasing profit to.

The obvious problem is the start up period where there are lots of costs and no income. Microstock IPO ?

At the moment I'm supporting stockfresh hoping they can provide us with some fair royalties (until they get successful and cut our commissions)

Elenathewise · « **Reply #56 on:** January 22, 2011, 22:45 »

Quote from: RT on January 22, 2011, 19:35

Quote from: Elenathewise on January 22, 2011, 15:34
The content will be highly regulated. I wouldn't share my advertising money with something that won't sell. The central search will not be available at first, but we might be able to implement it later.

Monitoring the content would be hard if not impossible to do, I think monitoring the content providers might be a better idea. Good to hear about the search, I'll be sure to check it out once you're up and running.

I meant selecting providers, not monitoring every single file.

Elenathewise · « **Reply #57 on:** January 22, 2011, 22:56 »

Quote from: cthoman on January 22, 2011, 17:15

Quote from: Elenathewise on January 22, 2011, 16:48
Cory, about affiliates - you'd be doing exactly what you don't want to do: driving traffic to other people's sites for free. You won't be losing sales, but why should someone who never spent a cent or made other effort to advertise their store benefit from your advertising? In the scheme I propose everyone will have to chip in to drive traffic to the common place. Only fair in my opinion.
And yes, I think we will do a trial run - offer a month for free while we're setting up, but after that we'll need cash to start marketing.

I'm confused. I meant my own affiliate program, so I would pay you a percentage for each sale you drove to my site. That way I'm paying for performance, and I don't have to worry about getting priced out of an advertising program. I haven't set up an affiliate program yet, so I'm open to suggestions on that. It would mean less upfront capital for you, but I think it would work better in the long run. You'll have sales statistics, so you can move your best performing sites to the top of the list and searches or as featured sites.

Also, I'd prefer not to have people leave my site for another similar site. Even if they can't find what they want, it is possible I can create it, so I'd rather have them contact me as opposed to leaving to find it somewhere else. Those are my concerns with the way you've described the setup.

Now I am confused. I don't understand why I would be interested to drive traffic to your site in this scenario - to get a couple of bucks a month from your sales? I was talking about generating new traffic to the portal site so everyone benefits from new hits and we don't lose customers to outside because we can't provide required content. But I think I explained that already, no point in repeating.

cascoly · « **Reply #58 on:** January 24, 2011, 13:49 »

>>>>20 dollars a month is a ridiculously low price to pay for your site being advertised,

if i pay $20 to google, those ads go directly to my site - here i'm paying $20 / mo for ads that only go to my site x% of the time

other than pricing, i'm interested in the concept and would be wiling to work on a communal project or continue the brainstorming. i have several 1and1 accounts with extra bandwidth that could be used for prototyping

my website is http://pix-now.com run thru smugmug

stockmarketer · « **Reply #59 on:** January 24, 2011, 14:31 »

Do any of the agencies have a policy against its contributors forming a competing agency? I know you're not talking about starting a new agency in the strictest sense of the word, but if you're kicking around ideas such as aggregated searches and common licensing platforms, it looks more and more like a competitor in the eyes of the agencies.

If I joined, I would lose sleep over one or more of the big players seeing the site and deciding to shut down the accounts of its founding members. If I were Ford Motor Co, I wouldn't allow the guys starting Tesla to be on my payroll.

lightscribe · « **Reply #60 on:** January 24, 2011, 17:31 »

Quote from: stockmarketer on January 24, 2011, 14:31

Do any of the agencies have a policy against its contributors forming a competing agency? I know you're not talking about starting a new agency in the strictest sense of the word, but if you're kicking around ideas such as aggregated searches and common licensing platforms, it looks more and more like a competitor in the eyes of the agencies.

If I joined, I would lose sleep over one or more of the big players seeing the site and deciding to shut down the accounts of its founding members. If I were Ford Motor Co, I wouldn't allow the guys starting Tesla to be on my payroll.

No rules against this sort of thing....many of the top contributer are also partners in other stock agencies.....that is the benefit of being non-exclusive and Royalty Free you can do whatever you want with your images.

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Author Topic: For people who sell their own images - invitation to join Stock Image Portal (Read 25166 times)

Elenathewise

Elenathewise

madelaide

cthoman

RT

qwerty

Elenathewise

Elenathewise

cascoly

stockmarketer

lightscribe

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