Microstock Photography Forum - General > General Stock Discussion
Is it possible to launch own subscription site?
charged:
Is it possible to launch own subscription site? I have a lot of photos, I sell a lot of photos. Like between 25,000 - 50,000 images, per year, mostly all subs. Most of my photos are of one genre that graphic designers use a lot of. If I just charged a $5 per month sub fee, and I got 4,000 people to sign up, that would be $20,000 per month, before expenses. My thought was that $5 per month is a rounding error for almost all advertising agencies. I think my content is good enough that I can get 4,000 people to sign up, BUT I earn enough from iStock's exclusive contract to be weary to experiment, it is the same reason I've never tried to sell to other sites.
Right now I'm just speaking out loud. It is fairly unlikely I'd try this, I don't feel like having my income plummet by going independent.
cascoly:
--- Quote from: charged on August 16, 2019, 11:17 ---... I sell a lot of photos. Like between 25,000 - 50,000 images, per year, mostly all subs. Most of my photos are of one genre that graphic designers use a lot of. If I just charged a $5 per month sub fee, and I got 4,000 people to sign up, that would be $20,000 per month, before expenses. ...
--- End quote ---
2 rather large 'IF's -- and why would an agency who already has a sub to search hundred millions of images buy another sub to search a few thousand??
Jo Ann Snover:
Possible, yes. Likely to be a profitable - very low chance IMO
The big issue for selling yourself is finding the buyers - if you sell subscriptions, you need to keep the buyers as well. Those tasks take time and/or cost money. As does running the site (those sub buyers will expect close to 100% uptime, $5 a month or no). As does handling credit card and payment issues and customer service, etc.
And as you point out, to a large ad agency, $5 a month is noise; but that also means there's no reason they'll balk at paying one larger monthly fee for having a choice of 300 million images (Shutterstock). You should do some searches there to see if your work is different enough from what's already there to think you could persuade buyers to add your subscription to the others they already have because of unique content. There's a lot of dreck on Shutterstock, but there's also a lot of very usable stuff that I'm guessing you'd have a very hard time competing with
And you'd have to give up exclusivity anyway unless you could somehow craft the license as RM (the only type of licensing you can do as an iStock exclusive). Is that what you were thinking? Exclusivity and your own sub site?
How sure are you that your income would plummet as an indie? Once upon a time that might have been true, but times have changed quite a bit for iStock exclusives.
Sean Locke Photography:
I really can't imagine you'd find four people, let alone 4,000. It's really hard to get buyers. And then once they download everything, they quit.
charged:
--- Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on August 16, 2019, 14:36 ---Possible, yes. Likely to be a profitable - very low chance IMO
The big issue for selling yourself is finding the buyers - if you sell subscriptions, you need to keep the buyers as well. Those tasks take time and/or cost money. As does running the site (those sub buyers will expect close to 100% uptime, $5 a month or no). As does handling credit card and payment issues and customer service, etc.
And as you point out, to a large ad agency, $5 a month is noise; but that also means there's no reason they'll balk at paying one larger monthly fee for having a choice of 300 million images (Shutterstock). You should do some searches there to see if your work is different enough from what's already there to think you could persuade buyers to add your subscription to the others they already have because of unique content. There's a lot of dreck on Shutterstock, but there's also a lot of very usable stuff that I'm guessing you'd have a very hard time competing with
And you'd have to give up exclusivity anyway unless you could somehow craft the license as RM (the only type of licensing you can do as an iStock exclusive). Is that what you were thinking? Exclusivity and your own sub site?
How sure are you that your income would plummet as an indie? Once upon a time that might have been true, but times have changed quite a bit for iStock exclusives.
--- End quote ---
Finding buyers - I go through periods where I travel a lot. So I could just look up agency's office and go have a chat. Or I could do a write up to some graphic design blogs. Or I could buy google ad words.
My work is very similar to millions of other images in the market place. It is actually one of the most frequent type of stock photo. Very easy to produce. Lots of people do it. What sets me apart is I have a lot of photos, more than most photographers. All my models are well dressed, as in they wouldn't look out of place in any major clothing brand's catalogue. I watch a lot of late night American comedy shows, all the major shows have used my stock photos at one point or another.
Yes I would have to give up exclusivity to test this idea out. I'm not keen to do that. I don't know for a fact that my income would plummet, but logic says it would. Indie get pay a lot less at iStock, they don't get promoted in the iStock search engine. Yes times have changed for iStock earnings, they are quite a bit less than they used to be, but it seems from reading on this forum, earnings for all sites are falling. I earn enough in stock to be equivalent to the average professional white collar full time office job in the United States. So the immediate drop in income from exclusive to indie would be quite hard to take.
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