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Following on from the Photographers Collective thread how to proceed

Join together for leaverage
23 (31.9%)
Create a Collective Website
26 (36.1%)
Not Interested Wate of Time
23 (31.9%)

Total Members Voted: 59

Author Topic: Photographers - Collective which Direction  (Read 30644 times)

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« on: May 09, 2009, 01:14 »
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Following on from the recent thread about a Photographers Collective to give the Photographers more of a say in pricing and direction, there seems to be several options to go forward.

This is a simple Poll without getting into the detail

Option 1: Join together to talk to the Stocksite Owners and Stock Artists Alliance to get a representative voice and be able to put the Contributors perspective across to the agencies that manage our images

Option 2: There is a lot of marketing, programming, project management skills within the membership here and other photographers, also a wealth of experience of the stock imaging trade, should we try to pull these together to create a Fair Trade website owned by the photographers as shareholders where percentages are higher and retained earnings returned to the membership

Option 3: Do you think it is all just hot air and will never come together so we have to put up with the control the Stocksites have and make our own choices   


Milinz

« Reply #1 on: May 09, 2009, 06:16 »
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You didn't add one crucial part in your pool:

4. Stop supporting rip-off agencies ;-)

batman

« Reply #2 on: May 09, 2009, 07:33 »
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bold move David,
i feel it's a combination of all of the above. for several reasons , one being we have been hard wired (indoctrinated; socially weaned)  to let off steam as a way to destress ourselves , or to aid our denial of helplessness. you witness this often, eg during the transit strike or other public services such as nurses strike,etc. you bitch with your fellow passengers at the bus stop or emergency room, but as soon as the bus or nurse arrives you turn on a cheery smile to greet the object of your bitch with a "ello luv, 'ows it goin wit'ya !"
same here. we have by nature the attention span of a 3 yr old, and most if anything we say will come to pass . call it "vapour vent" or whatever, to plagiarize the term "vapour ware" we used every year at the Manufacturer Product Expo. always tons of great new gadgets presented at the demo booth but seldom if any of those things ever make it to the store.

i wish to be proven wrong, as i think it is time we respond to the abusive relationship we've been having. but again , we are like the abused spouse or the ubiquitous battered wife / gf situation (and gawd take my word for it, it seems to be so prevalent nowadays, every single neighbour i have is an S&M case with the abused female putting up and shutting up).
perharps it's in our genes , lol.  that's why most of us enjoy microstock, we need that abuse from Atilla and now Getty, rofl

btw, you have a couple of typo errors ie.  choice 1 :  leverage choice 3 waste
« Last Edit: May 09, 2009, 07:55 by batman »

batman

« Reply #3 on: May 09, 2009, 08:19 »
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found this on zazzle ;D

« Reply #4 on: May 09, 2009, 09:08 »
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Why are we here? cause we are photographers and illustrators.  Not businessmen.  If any of u have the cash and are willing to take a huge risk, then fine.    Let Flemish make an awesome site and then we jump over it like sharks ;)  It cant be owned by hundreds of photographers with different attitude and (portfoliosize) economy.     

I bet many of us cant even affort a plane ticket for a possible meeting. sadly :-[

( I havent read all of the 1000 posts tread about this)

« Reply #5 on: May 09, 2009, 10:00 »
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Sorry this is off-topic but whats with batman? Hes gone again??

« Reply #6 on: May 09, 2009, 10:01 »
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How much money would we need?  Most of the sites start of small and grow slowly.  None of the new ones have made much money but they probably don't cost much to run.  If there was 1000 of us willing to put in $100, that might be enough to get it started.  For that amount, I wont be too stressed if it doesn't work. 

New sites are struggling because they are offering something similar to the old sites.  If we could bring in some buyers and build a site that suits us all, we would be doing something different and it might work.  It would be better to try and fail than not give it a go.

« Reply #7 on: May 09, 2009, 10:32 »
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I think we should give a chance to some existing agency that plays fair enough. The agency need to be financially well supported and it has to invest as much as needed in marketing. We should make our terms and conditions and we should send our representatives to the agency, to see if we can make some good agreement. We HAVE to be strong, which means important photographers HAVE to be with us with their huge portfolios. This will help us in making agreement with the agency. After making an agreement, and submitting all our images to the agency, we should do everything we can to promote only our new agency through our websites and in every other way. The agency should do the same. After reaching some certain level of sales, we should quit all other agencies in a very short time to force buyers to come only to our new agency.

I am just afraid that we here...several hundreds of us, or say it even several thousands, can't really do something because there are more than 100 000 microstock photographers out there. I guess Getty doesn't really care if we all quit, because there will always be enough photographers willing to upload their images to Getty. We really need God's help.

« Reply #8 on: May 09, 2009, 10:51 »
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I agree with Whitechild. It also comes to my mind that we don't know how much money any of the agencies are making off of us. I say this as a citizen of the US. Everyone here has been burned by the current financial crises, and I'm probably a bit paranoid because of it. In some ways we all asked for it by being complacent after the boom years of the 1990s. We just all assumed while we were making money that everything would always be fine. I'll bet most microstock photographers and illustrators felt the same way before the drop in sales that came last summer when the recession hit. I'd be more than willing to work with the agencies that will show us their bottom line. If their % of profits are dropping, I'd be willing to work toward a compromise with any agency that will give us the numbers. As contributors we should have asked more questions upfront. It is their agency. They provide the structure that enables us to sell, but it's our product that fuels the profits. One really can't exist without the other. Keep in mind that we want these businesses to make money, and we don't want to go on a witch hunt. Hard times call for creative solutions. I was selling art during the 1980s when the oil bust hit in Texas. When the gallery business bottomed out in Santa Fe, I caved and stopped selling. I still wish that I'd had the foresight to work toward a creative solution to the problem.

As for the poll, I'm not sure yet.

« Reply #9 on: May 09, 2009, 11:06 »
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..I am just afraid that we here...several hundreds of us, or say it even several thousands, can't really do something because there are more than 100 000 microstock photographers out there...
I used to think that but the average portfolio size on shutterstock is 91.  It looks like the vast majority of the contributors have a very small portfolio and the sites need their bigger contributors more than we might think.  Anyone can be replaced but I think it would damage a site if 500 of their top contributors stopped uploading.  We have seen a few times than when contributors get upset, the sites make changes quickly.

m@m

« Reply #10 on: May 09, 2009, 12:03 »
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I agree, my thought exactly Whitechild, it sounds like that's the avenue that would gives us a bigger chance of success, Vs. starting a site from scratch which would require a large capital to start and maintain.

alias

« Reply #11 on: May 09, 2009, 12:28 »
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I'm going to keep saying this every few pages in any thread about this subject until I am officially told to shut my gob :)

I do not believe that we should be looking for another agency. I believe that we should be looking for a different model. One that provides an infrastructure, or links existing infrastructure, such that photographers sell direct to the clients.

When the right model emerges all RF images will be sold that way. Possibly all images. It would be something like a set of protocols.
« Last Edit: May 09, 2009, 12:31 by alias »

« Reply #12 on: May 09, 2009, 13:15 »
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I'm going to keep saying this every few pages in any thread about this subject until I am officially told to shut my gob :)

I do not believe that we should be looking for another agency. I believe that we should be looking for a different model. One that provides an infrastructure, or links existing infrastructure, such that photographers sell direct to the clients.

When the right model emerges all RF images will be sold that way. Possibly all images. It would be something like a set of protocols.
I agree, there has to be a better way.  What about peer to peer, like napster?  They started off free but they now charge pay per download and subscriptions.  It probably wont work the same way it does for music but there must be some way of getting direct access between buyers and sellers without having to pay big fees to a middle man.  I think it is really important to get buyers involved with this from the start.

« Reply #13 on: May 09, 2009, 13:15 »
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Sorry this is off-topic but whats with batman? Hes gone again??

Hes a she if you ask Tan510.   Server problems again... ;)

« Reply #14 on: May 09, 2009, 13:21 »
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How much money would we need?  Most of the sites start of small and grow slowly.  None of the new ones have made much money but they probably don't cost much to run.  If there was 1000 of us willing to put in $100, that might be enough to get it started.  For that amount, I wont be too stressed if it doesn't work. 

New sites are struggling because they are offering something similar to the old sites.  If we could bring in some buyers and build a site that suits us all, we would be doing something different and it might work.  It would be better to try and fail than not give it a go.

I agree - with that sort of money we'd be able to put something pretty decent together.

The more I think about it though, the key problem are the top exclusives on IS and that Getty is able to leverage this exclusive content so that they are somewhat immune from the competition from other sites. I suspect a large number of IS exclusives are also significant buyers - its unlikely that they'll change their buying patterns unless they also relinquish their exclusivity.

On the other hand if there were some mass move to non-exclusivity, many of the non-exclusives would loose a lot of sales through increased competition on the non-exclusive sites. If you look at the IS charts, its interesting to see just how much revenue comes from exclusive contributors - just browsing through the top 50 - if you ignore non-exclusive contributors in that list and those who have got anonymous stats, you get to about 8% of total daily downloads from only 26 contributors.... work out what the top 100 or so exclusives bring in and I think it would be a very substantial % of total revenue.  

I would suggest that a sensible step for any further action would be to somehow anonymously gauge the feeling of the top contributors and see if there is any concern or desire to improve conditions from them. If they're not on board, then its pretty much game over for any collective approach anyhow.

« Reply #15 on: May 09, 2009, 13:41 »
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If there was a way of drastically bringing down the cost of delivering an image from a contributor to a buyer, I think everyone would be interested.  I think it costs far too much at the moment and someone will come up with a better solution.

m@m

« Reply #16 on: May 09, 2009, 13:48 »
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Sorry this is off-topic but whats with batman? Hes gone again??

Hes a she if you ask Tan510.   Server problems again... ;)

I don't  know Magnum, John from CC and batman showed up at similar times, could batman be John? or even Milinz?


« Reply #17 on: May 09, 2009, 14:14 »
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Its kinda obvious who Batman is ( was ) :o.  But I think youre wrong about John and Milinz

m@m

« Reply #18 on: May 09, 2009, 15:14 »
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Its kinda obvious who Batman is ( was ) :o.  But I think youre wrong about John and Milinz

You seem to know alot about batman, and very sure that you know who he/she is, ARE YOU SURE YOU'RE NOT BATMAN?
« Last Edit: May 09, 2009, 15:15 by m@m »

« Reply #19 on: May 09, 2009, 15:30 »
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Ha ha. I saw that coming.  wrong again ;)

digiology

« Reply #20 on: May 09, 2009, 15:56 »
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Its kinda obvious who Batman is ( was ) :o.  But I think youre wrong about John and Milinz

I am pretty sure I know who batman is too. In order to protect Gotham I will never reveal it.  ;)

« Reply #21 on: May 09, 2009, 16:07 »
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Talknig about Batman...  what happened to " Hatman " ???

alias

« Reply #22 on: May 09, 2009, 16:28 »
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i appear to have double posted. Not sure how.
« Last Edit: May 09, 2009, 16:34 by alias »

alias

« Reply #23 on: May 09, 2009, 16:28 »
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I'm going to keep saying this every few pages in any thread about this subject until I am officially told to shut my gob :)

I do not believe that we should be looking for another agency. I believe that we should be looking for a different model. One that provides an infrastructure, or links existing infrastructure, such that photographers sell direct to the clients.

When the right model emerges all RF images will be sold that way. Possibly all images. It would be something like a set of protocols.
I agree, there has to be a better way.  What about peer to peer, like napster?  They started off free but they now charge pay per download and subscriptions.  It probably wont work the same way it does for music but there must be some way of getting direct access between buyers and sellers without having to pay big fees to a middle man.  I think it is really important to get buyers involved with this from the start.

Sorry for the big quote but I want to keep my reply in context.

I think it is certainly worth mentioning Napster. And you have to remember where Napster fits into the history of what happened to the music industry. Look at the dates and then look at what happened next. And remember that the music industry had the opportunity to buy Napster but chose instead to launch legal action. Which was a huge and pointless distraction for them.

I do not have the exact answer. But if you took Wikipedia, Napster, microstock and possibly eBay and put them in a blender then I think the result would be approaching what I am trying to get at. I hope that someone with clearer vision than me will find the missing pieces and have a eureka moment sooner or later.

Focus people! The answer is not another agency.
« Last Edit: May 09, 2009, 16:35 by alias »

« Reply #24 on: May 09, 2009, 17:07 »
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Can I mention the broker model again? Works well in other industries.

Photographers put images on their own sites.
Photographers set own prices.
Brokers emerge (independent of us and each other)
Brokers catalogue (sorry, I'm Aussie) range of sites and provide search and purchase interface for customer
Broker takes 10% commission for brokering the sale, photographer gets 90%.


 

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