Quote from: Colette on November 25, 2010, 04:06

No, I am not thinking of StockXpert. They were not a new and they were not a small agency.
And no, I don't think that new agencies are in for a 'quick buck'.
As John Griffin from Cutcaster wrote a while ago: "I am working my butt off..."
Perhaps some of these agencies are going to make it, but it's not easy money. Not for us and not for them.

and if new small agencies arent in it for a quick buck??  they must seriously think that as a new player they can compete with the established ones? which ofcourse is impossible, so why are they in it?  for the fun of it?
I happen to know a few guys who ventured into Micro only a few years back and they were certainly in it for a quick couple of years revenue

Why do you care?  I think you are way over analyzing this.  The idea for contributors is to sell images over and above what they cost to make.  As long as the additional labor involved in uploading to an additional site is covered by additional sales I don't see what you are going on about.   

Another consideration might be that the smaller agencies tend to charge contributors less for selling their images.  This should be something contributors want to encourage.  The more agencies there are competing for images the more they will pay to get images.

fred

I wonder if it really is possible to enter this business only in hope of getting big money quickly and then close the doors loaded with money, the costs for starting, and especially for maintaining and developing proper online selling system, database, marketing etc is are high that serious guys must have rather big money in their pocket when starting as the way is and always will be rocky in the beginning. Some time ago there might have been people who tought it is easy to just put images online and that would easily and automatically change into big money, but I honestly believe people now now there is much more behind that.

Someone here said the agency is as good as the search engine on the website. I partly agree with that saying; the better search engine is, the happier the users will be. But no matter how great the search engine is, keywording plays huge role, too so we must ourselves do it carefully, it is not possible for the reviewers to check each and every image uploaded, and it is quite difficult for a human eye to properly catch all wrong keywords afterwards; that work is much easier if checking is done when adding keywords.

Pixmac has both relevancy search (photographer can state the 5 most relevant keywords). Above that there is already now possibility to show first the images that have sold best, that have been added into lightboxes, that have been opened to the preview page by the users. There is also quite unique similar search function which makes it possible not to show all similar images from one shooting in search result; check this sample > make search "aurora boroealis" (pls. forgive me for putting the link to Pixmac Finnish language page, I do it because I want to show you also how Pixmac is very local in multiple countries): http://www.pixmac.fi/pictures/aurora+borealis;collection:all > on page there you can find image http://www.pixmac.fi/kuva/revontulet+loistaa+yli+snowcovered+mets%C3%A4/000040496761 > now if I was a user who likes this image in question but would like to see more similar kind of pix I could use Find Similars function (pink link below the preview) and automatically get a selection of similar images http://www.pixmac.fi/variantti/000040496761/objectId/000040496761.

The similar search is based on Visual similarity (colour, style, content, shape etc) and keywords. It is big success among users, over 80 % of Finnish users tell they are using it daily.

Pixmac had rocky beginning, it still is rather small, but growing every single month. It is not just "some new agency" but people behind it are image industry professionals, have been running successful trad.agency around 15 years, still are, and are very seriously in microstock, too. That is why they invest lot of money in developing the website, search engine, new functions andmake great SEO all the time. Now that iSyndica is not working anymore, Pixmac is again opening direct upload accounts to photographers. Uploading is possible either via FTP or browser, keywords can be in IPTC fields so no need to make keywording on photographer platform (but it is possible if wanted). No need to use categories. And I am getting good results with my images there.