Hi - Yes I know there are a lot of posts (now and past) talking about a new site. But they seem to be a bit disorganized, so I want this one to be a bit different in that I'll update the main thread (this first post) with good ideas/useful feedback/etc to help formulate a plan.

New/Self Hosted Site Requests
- Easy upload, supports pictures & videos, meta tags, descriptions, etc
- Easy payment system integration (whether paypal, or custom payment provider)
- Fast (i.e., no wp plugin)
- Cheap/inexpensive

Challenges:
- If a 'co-operative', Verifying quality (i.e., preventing nude pics from being uploaded, "sensitive"/"gore", actual crap, etc).
- Marketing (cost effective way of getting buyers to the site). Do you do massive self promotion (time consuming), or pay for traffic (costly and requires work to make a profit on it?)

Possible Solutions?

a) Self hosted (you pay for domain, hosting + cost of software package to manage/upload/etc). Pricing (I've looked @ getting the lowest, but most reasonable prices for all of that) - you'd probably be looking at $30/month. (Which includes about 2,000 high quality images (5MB each) or 300 large 4k videos. Of course - there are better/cheaper solutions once you get higher images/volumes, but that requires more coding/a different software package).

Would you personally pay $30/month for that? (And about $50-$75/month if you went to 10,000 high quality images + 1500 large 4k videos?)

b) Marketing - while it would be 'nice' to market things as a co-operative - the main issue is quality. It would just take one person to say upload nude pics, etc that would ruin it for everyone else. So - you actually would either need (trained) curators & a system to ensure they do their job - OR... separate marketing...

So - if it WAS run as a co-operative - how could images/etc be reviewed 'cheaply' so you could market everything together?

OR - if it was separate marketing, there's 2 main option, paid & non-paid traffic. Someone going the "organic" route would have to do a lot of self promotion (youtube videos, instagram, writing articles, etc) - and there is no 'instant' results (you could work for 3-4 months without seeing anything significant) - and no guarantee your efforts would even produce results. (Most likely it would, but there is no guarantee).

Paid traffic challenge is - how to make more money than you spend. LOTS of people spending $ on that, few people actually making $. (And nowadays, because you are competing with 'smart' people - you need things like recurring revenue, sales funnels, etc to cover the cost of the traffic).

I think marketing is the big big challenge here... which sites like shutterstock currently benefit from (i.e., 'relationships' with google to position their content first)...

So... how do you market yourself effectively? I think that is the main challenge... Ideas?

To a point we have to study history past. Agencies do did their homework and learn by trial and error. This is valuable knowledge they offered us by treating like so. Payment delay, applying with original work samples, limited uploads leveling up by quality or downloads, refunds if neccessary (for thieves) etc.

I actually run a site as well. At our height, we had about 150k images which took a lot of storage and a separate server just for search. I'd say you're looking at a minimum of 250-500/mo for a self hosted solution (like AWS) that is scalable and provides a fast user experience. Plus the initial site development.

I've since changed our platform to a small collection and now can run it a lot more cheaply.

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Quote from: leremy on June 13, 2020, 09:35

Project Giving
---------------

1. Setup a company. This company will sign an irrevocable agreement that the maximum it can earn per year is $1million USD. Extra earned money will be divided back to the contributors as dividend. So, the founder of this company is only meant to make a maximum of USD1million per year.

Just my idea. What do you guys think? Please criticize as much as possible so I can give up thinking about it

That's crazy. As a company you would NEVER EVER impose a rule like that. It doesn't make any sense. Then it would be a charity, a non-profit organization basically. With the commercial mission of the company in mind (selling microstock licenses), that's a practically unworkable situation. You have countless costs running a company, so a good financial buffer is important to make this company viable and financially healthy. Self-imposing a limit on the amount of revenue totally goes against that principle.

The irrevocable agreement will be the sacrifice one made for getting the contributors support, fund, and trust. And the founder (company) will still be making 1 Million USD every year, which is enough for many. The earning of 1 Million USD have already deducted all the operating cost and will only serve as the reward for the founders for making the company successful.

If the site cost hundreds of thousands to setup, then no one will accept the 1 million dollar offer. The risk to reward ratio would be out of step with where else that money could go with much less risk. I realize some people don't think it will cost hundreds of thousands to setup a professional stock site. That is just my opinion.

Of course it does. Imagine hiring

Experienced IT Engineers x 2 ($2000 each)  = $4000
Experienced Web Designer = $1500
Office space = $500
Utilities = $200
Each month will cost at least $6200.
36 months = $223200 just for the company to keep running in 3 years without earning.

The above cost does not include cost of infrastructures like server/computer/furniture/first round marketing etc.

If I remembered correctly, Yuri Acrurs (https://peopleimages.com/) took him few hundreds thousands to build up. And the site is just for his own purpose only, which mean less complexity. We are not talking about using a Wordpress and a plug-in kind of thing here.

The $1million reward is not a lot of money for the founder if the site is a successful one in the future. For every successful site today, the reward for the founder is way way higher than that.

So... how do you market yourself effectively? I think that is the main challenge... Ideas?

Many of us on this forum exhausted ourselves attempting that a few years back, via Symbiostock.

From where I sit, life is too short to try it again.

Quote from: marthamarks on June 21, 2020, 13:11

Quote from: SuperPhoto on June 13, 2020, 08:30

So... how do you market yourself effectively? I think that is the main challenge... Ideas?

Many of us on this forum exhausted ourselves attempting that a few years back, via Symbiostock.

From where I sit, life is too short to try it again.

I have read before, your concept of time......

You're young. But I love that you give value to them. It is such a great gift. A pity the problems that sometimes hit, a pity those who do not value it for whatever reason. I have also had my crazy moments. But yes. Time is the most valuable possession we have.

Greetings and thanks for sharing your time.

Gracias, Tenebroso.