Quote from: LesPalenik on March 21, 2014, 14:51

He gets a lot done. How many people in IS software department?


BTW, he just mentioned in related FAA thread:
I know what I'm doing. This is going to work. Why? I've got all the time and patience in the world to make it work, and I don't have to treat our sellers like garbage like every other company in the space.
Quite refreshing approach.

I think he's essentially a good guy - but he may not realise the can of worms he's opened up and might drop "his sellers" into.

There are a number of logical errors in his interpretation of the microstock market, and now he's suggesting that anybody who doesn't agree to his understanding of the market is "100% wrong".

The "I'm right, you're wrong" school of management isn't noted for its successes.

I always worry about essentially one-person companies (from previous non-stock experience).
Wonder if he's got something firmly in place for expediencies if he burns out, or worse.

Are sellers supposed to do their own advertising for FAA?
If so, people would be better off on Symbio, for sure.

Everything about FAA is do it yourself marketing...

Oh, good. So a terrible plan to frustrate buyers with multiple license types and infinite price points, on top of zero marketing efforts. Brilliant.

If I said before that I think there is very little chance this will work, I'd like to amend that to say that there is zero chance this will work.

Quote

I always worry about essentially one-person companies

There is always a great element of risk in these situations, but often one competent and motivated designer can accomplish more than a team of mediocre demoralized programmers. Examples include not only Sean Duff, but also Leo Blanchette, Linus Torvalds, Thomas Knoll, and others.

The famous programmer productivity study that was conducted in late 1960's found the ratio between the best and worst programmers was about 20:1, of program size 5:1, and program execution about 10:1.

This experiment was done with professional programmers with an average of 7 years experience who were committed enough to come on their own time and spend whole weekend doing the test. If you have programmers with less experience and less motivation, the differences could easily approach 50:1. Sounds incredible, but I've seen it. Not mentioning that a great many software projects are aborted altogether before they are finished.

Not questioning his programming ability.
Worried about health etc. Working 24/7 is no good for anyone.
And if someone is so dedicated to programming, they're not on top of everything else which is necessary, most obviously in this case, marketing and release/IP issues.

I think this will fail for sure. Multiple licenses, custom licenses, infinite possible prices, it's a nightmare for buyers.

Buyers want simplicity, uniform pricing, and being able to go to a site and knowing beforehand roughly what they're about to pay. And also know that licensing is consistent. This new system is the opposite of all if that.

They want something like IS with 80 sites and 100 different licenses? The self announced artists on FAA don't like this plan, people will upload stock or pictures that aren't worthy of hanging on a wall. This comes from people who don't understand copyright law but are worried that we will come to their fancy little illegal warehouse of infringment. Maybe somebody will notice all the illegal art on FAA and start asking questions.

The famous programmer productivity study that was conducted in late 1960's found the ratio between the best and worst programmers was about 20:1, of program size 5:1, and program execution about 10:1.

Sorry for being totally OT, but can you give me a hint where I can find that study (or something similar from more recent times?).
thanks.

So many businesses failed in the dot.com era because people thought all it took to run a business is to have a bunch of programmers write code.

This guy actually accomplished more than most people on this board, so he must have some understanding of business.

Interesting it says $3 and then I clicked and it's $2.80 for blog size. So what price did you set and are they just rounding to the nearest dollar, or up, to make it easier?

Good point that whole watermark thing, because FAA doesn't encourage the use of them.

As I said earlier, no way to know if this will be a useful convenience for buyers - the ability to license a digital version of the image as well as buy prints - but I've added a license to a handful of my images just to see how it works. In case anyone else is interested, here's an example:

http://pixels.com/featured/apache-trail-roadside-jo-ann-snover.html

I don't see this as a market primarily for stock, but if you were there for art and wanted to license an image - say for a blog post about the art you're using - it's a ton easier to just buy from FAA than try and figure out where else the image is (if anywhere) and go there, buy credits, yada yada yada.

And yes, it'd be nice to have a better watermark to discourage anyone from thinking it's OK to use the preview in a blog just 'cause you bought a print or two

In case anyone else is interested, here's an example:

http://pixels.com/featured/apache-trail-roadside-jo-ann-snover.html

I cannot see the prices for stock licensing. Am I missing something?

One of the major issues I see with this is the lack of proper watermark since a lot of sales are XS and S on the other agencies. The images on white background will basically be available for free. This is one of my biggest concerns.

I'm also concerned that this might affect the print side of the business, where we sell, since like others have said it will flood FAA with completely unsuitable images for wall art and bury the good images killing the business. And the lack of reviewing, the questions about IP, copyright infringements, unscrupulous people reselling our work, etc are a real question.

Having said that, and considering that at other agencies things are so bad, we're at the point of having very little to lose.

As an example we've licensed at Alamy 10 images this month so far. 5 of them were under $4, 4 under $14 and the highest $33. An average of $9 commission per sale! A +90% drop when compared to 2008!

Not to mention the offer of 35 million images from Getty to blogs. The way things are going it will soon be more profitable to offer our work for free and ask for donations...

Maybe we will try this idea with all it's faults. It can't be worse than the next 3 or 4 atomic bombs the agencies are probably preparing to launch next week...

I would make a little less from an FAA sale than I would from my own site, but then I don't have the alexa ranking that FAA has

But it's difficult to imagine that a lot of their current audience would be interested in licensing stock.
Unless they wanted the pictures to print out, etc, themselves at a more reasonable rate.

(Not directed at Jo Ann) Talking of which, did they ever do anything about finding a European/UK fulfilment partner? I'm not on their boards much and I could have missed any announcement. The last I read, they had missed their New Year deadline for announcing same.

Ok, Sean from FAA is confusing EL with RM, he is getting in over his head.

Someone needs to call Harvard Business School and let them know that their services are no longer needed!