MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: grafix04 on December 04, 2012, 09:34
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I haven't been doing much in microstock lately but I popped in here a few days ago and saw the Black Friday offer by PictureEngine. 90 days for free – I was tempted. But then I thought about it. 90 days in microstock goes quicker than beer turns to piss. We've all joined new agents who have promised us the world only to realize a year later that we'll never reach a payout. It's naive to swallow PE's sales pitch and believe that they'll be any different. Justin doesn't answer reasonable questions about marketing and how they'll attract buyers. Without the buyers, it's useless. $480 for something that’s proven to bring in the dosh could be reasonable if you have a decent sized port. But $480 on something new and unproven is throwing money down the pan. I'd rather put that towards something else - even money at the casino is better spent than money in the trash – even if I lose it at the casino. They really should consider lowering the pricing to get loads more contributors on board or have a pricing structure that is variable to the size of people's portfolios. Eg. Up to 500 images - $50. Up to 1000 images - $100 and so on, capped to a certain amount. That would make more sense because there are a huge number of contributors with smaller ports that simply can't justify $480. Losing $50 to support something that could eventually work for us is reasonable. Set at $50, they’ll have more signing up and that means they'll get loads of exposure. As people's portfolios grow, they pay more.
At the moment PE isn't worth the risk for most of us. Still though, thinking about the possibilities of PE gets me excited. Even if PE stick to their guns with their pricing, there'll be some people willing to throw their money away and hopefully there'll be enough to get them up and running soon. Unlike any agent, they're a search engine and therefore they don't need all of us contributors to sign up in order for the site to operate to its full capacity. Unlike any new agent, they'll have our images to provide buyers without us being part of it directly. That means the number of buyers using the site will grow over time and eventually it will become more worthwhile for the rest of us to sign up.
When it goes live, it has the potential to kick some of the big agencies in the teeth and it gives us some control over our image sales, even if we don't sign up or buy into the advertising plan. All we would have to do, for now (or when it goes live), is upload first to the agent who gives us the better return. We wait some time until the image is indexed on PE and then upload to the rest of them if we like. GL is the best one that I can think of since we can set our own pricing and our cut is 52%. If PE takes off, we can even pull our portfolios from the worst agencies or just stop uploading to them. Doing this might give the agents an incentive to treat us better. Instead of increasing their margins by reducing our cut, we could possibly have them all sweetening the deals to win us over so we can upload to them first.
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I think it is a great idea, but without any traffic at the moment he's looking for investors, not customers. Why pay the fee if you know there isn't a customer base using it yet? Until that traffic is there, there's no point paying out.
The only way it will work is to build the traffic by giving a completely free trial and prove the returns are there. You would then be crazy not to buy in. How he would cover the cost of that is anyone's guess.
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I agree, I would not invest $480 in PE. Not until/unless they are proven to bring in big sales. Since I have already invested considerable time and money in my own site, the advertising only plan, for $120 seems like a good deal to me. Unfortunately they still aren't supporting Ktools so that is not an option for me.
If Ktools themselves, or some other enterprising person were to set up something similar to PE only supporting the Ktools platform, they might really make a go of it.
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PE potentially could be great, or it might just be a money pit. They like to talk about how you get to keep 100% of the proceeds but that is not really true. Up to $480 their commission is 100% and your net is zero. You'd have to sell $960 worth to make the effective commission 50%. To relate it to iS, you would have to sell $565 on PE for you to net 15% or $600 for 20%. Anything above that and you're better off than at iS as an independent, but you would still make more off of equivalent sales at SS. That may be possible for you big players but not likely for us small fry. At how many small, new sites do you make more than $565 a year?
I wish PE well but will sit on the sidelines and watch what happens. At this point I'd rather a one-time fee to set up my own site than continuing charges for an unproven entity.
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I get the idea, and I think it has power. If a meta-search site like this started getting known and used by buyers, we'd have leverage to start redirecting buyers to agencies we prefer. In time this could become a big lever indeed.
$480, for most of us, is just nuts, so PE isn't going to be that site. But even if one did get going at a reasonable price, consider that we'd be tying ourselves to not just a few crappy agenices, but exactly 1 meta-search company, which then owns us and our socks (a phrase I once heard used by a bankruptcy lawyer). They won't remain nice guys forever and when they start increasing their cut, where do we go next?
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I agree, I would not invest $480 in PE. Not until/unless they are proven to bring in big sales. Since I have already invested considerable time and money in my own site, the advertising only plan, for $120 seems like a good deal to me. Unfortunately they still aren't supporting Ktools so that is not an option for me.
If Ktools themselves, or some other enterprising person were to set up something similar to PE only supporting the Ktools platform, they might really make a go of it.
Good plan or if there was some way to have a storage site of our own, without Photostore or any of the other places and he could still draw our data. Self hosting without any other access, should be something for anyone.
What I'm getting at is, say I don't want my own store like many people do. I could just have my images and data on my servers and PE could draw from that. Fairly simple?
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What I'm getting at is, say I don't want my own store like many people do. I could just have my images and data on my servers and PE could draw from that. Fairly simple?
Mmmm maybe. An agency will want to invest zero time in configuring their end, so the contributors' server access has to be identical for everyone. Maybe all your images, with unique file names, in a single folder, accessible via FTP.
Today's agencies won't like this, though, because they have legal responsibilities; for example, a buyer pays for an image but loses his copy and needs to download it again; meanwhile the photographer has quit the agency and changed his FTP logons. Or the buyer comes back for a larger size iimage for the big print run. Or even worse, your server is down and a buyer can't get the image he just paid for. I don't think the big agencies will accept these possibilities. They'll want copies under their control.
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PE potentially could be great, or it might just be a money pit. They like to talk about how you get to keep 100% of the proceeds but that is not really true. Up to $480 their commission is 100% and your net is zero. You'd have to sell $960 worth to make the effective commission 50%. To relate it to iS, you would have to sell $565 on PE for you to net 15% or $600 for 20%. Anything above that and you're better off than at iS as an independent, but you would still make more off of equivalent sales at SS. That may be possible for you big players but not likely for us small fry. At how many small, new sites do you make more than $565 a year?
I wish PE well but will sit on the sidelines and watch what happens. At this point I'd rather a one-time fee to set up my own site than continuing charges for an unproven entity.
Thats very similar to what I said in the other thread, but wasnt really agreed with. But I agree with what you say there.
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@ Grafix, I agree with your thoughts. Good piece.
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I did sign up for the free 90 days. Nothing to lose there. I was going to start uploading but while signing up to the paid for storage, I had second thoughts. Is there any point in paying for that before the site is live?
I think I'll wait until the site is fully functional. Wasn't it supposed to be close to going live over 6 months ago? I'm really struggling to get enthusiastic. PictureEngine should be getting us all excited but that's not going to happen when we're having to risk our hard earned money.
I signed up to the $480 a year option and thought it might be worth a punt, if there was reasonable sales towards the end of the 90 day trial but I would probably be better off waiting and going the ktools route, if it's ever an option.
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I don't see how something like this could get going without the company being prepared to lose money on it for a while. Otherwise, we're all just waiting for someone else to report success. Trying to get in the black right away with big up-front fees sounds pretty dodgy to me.
Anyway, they're obviously not interested in small fish so why do I even care....?
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With nearly 4K files on line I must say I find PE a bit late in the day to emerge. A couple of years back it would probably been Ok but now micro seems to be like flogging a dead horse. With the exeptions of SS, DT and IS, it just doesnt produce anymore. As many have said previously, micro is probably back in the hands of the amateurs, where it all started.
Where is PEs advertising, promotion, PR, etc? cant see anything in that area. How will they get the customers, the buyers? the idea is great but at the moment not much better then a low tier agency. Im out.
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With nearly 4K files on line I must say I find PE a bit late in the day to emerge. A couple of years back it would probably been Ok but now micro seems to be like flogging a dead horse. With the exeptions of SS, DT and IS, it just doesnt produce anymore. As many have said previously, micro is probably back in the hands of the amateurs, where it all started.
The missed point here I think is that PE isn't designed to be a "Microstock" site. While micro pricing is accommodated so is traditional RM and RF pricing. I think in the short term, at least, it will appeal more to professional picture buyers rather than the masses.
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JB talked about 40k potential buyers on an announcement a few weeks ago if I remember well
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With nearly 4K files on line I must say I find PE a bit late in the day to emerge. A couple of years back it would probably been Ok but now micro seems to be like flogging a dead horse. With the exeptions of SS, DT and IS, it just doesnt produce anymore. As many have said previously, micro is probably back in the hands of the amateurs, where it all started.
The missed point here I think is that PE isn't designed to be a "Microstock" site. While micro pricing is accommodated so is traditional RM and RF pricing. I think in the short term, at least, it will appeal more to professional picture buyers rather than the masses.
why? why would pros even look at a site that is an order of magnitude smaller than their current source? and how is anyone going to find them in the first place? when i've searched for stock images, i find my images that are represented by various agencies but almost never the ones on my smugmug or redbubble site:
http://cascoly.hubpages.com/hub/How-to-use-Google-increase-HubPages-traffic-and-microstock-sales (http://cascoly.hubpages.com/hub/How-to-use-Google-increase-HubPages-traffic-and-microstock-sales)
so most user who find pictures thru google are going to continue to be directed to the major agencies.
PE hasn't made any argument for how they'll overcome this basic problem - that's why the advertising only option seemed like a reasonable way to test them out - except it was only during the not-yet-even-beta phase and now they want $ while they try to launch
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With nearly 4K files on line I must say I find PE a bit late in the day to emerge. A couple of years back it would probably been Ok but now micro seems to be like flogging a dead horse. With the exeptions of SS, DT and IS, it just doesnt produce anymore. As many have said previously, micro is probably back in the hands of the amateurs, where it all started.
The missed point here I think is that PE isn't designed to be a "Microstock" site. While micro pricing is accommodated so is traditional RM and RF pricing. I think in the short term, at least, it will appeal more to professional picture buyers rather than the masses.
why? why would pros even look at a site that is an order of magnitude smaller than their current source? and how is anyone going to find them in the first place? when i've searched for stock images, i find my images that are represented by various agencies but almost never the ones on my smugmug or redbubble site:
[url]http://cascoly.hubpages.com/hub/How-to-use-Google-increase-HubPages-traffic-and-microstock-sales[/url] ([url]http://cascoly.hubpages.com/hub/How-to-use-Google-increase-HubPages-traffic-and-microstock-sales[/url])
so most user who find pictures thru google are going to continue to be directed to the major agencies.
PE hasn't made any argument for how they'll overcome this basic problem - that's why the advertising only option seemed like a reasonable way to test them out - except it was only during the not-yet-even-beta phase and now they want $ while they try to launch
Not sure I understand this. Have you been asked for money? I haven't.
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Not sure I understand this. Have you been asked for money? I haven't.
right, pretty much we have 3 months to test the waters, its just upload and done!
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earlier on they claimed the system was 'fully operational' - but turns out that did not include the advertising only option. so there's no way to test out the so-called-beta -- when they launch - they've said when it goes live, ad-only will have to start their paypal payments
so there was no beta for the ad-only function - we couldnt even see if they read out file info! no way to know how searches,etc would show up, how many views were generated,
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With the exception of a few, I think most of you either missed or dismissed the main point I was trying to make - leveraging, which stocktastic picked up.
PicturEngine need to recover some of their costs before they can go live but at the asking price, realistically, not many will sign up. However some will and they have. At some stage, they will go live. My main point, however, was that even if a lot of us don’t sign up to any of their plans, when or if PE does go live, we can use the site to our advantage without parting with a cent.
Until either such time as the site is proven to work for us or until they reduce their asking price, we can control which microstock site we upload to first, because the first site our image is placed on, will be the one that is indexed at PE, giving us all a chance to direct the buyer to the microstock site who gives us the most favorable return. For me that site appears to be GL. We can also spread the word about PE. A tweet, a FB and G+ post from a good number of us is really all it takes.
Eg: "PicturEngine: The new Google for stock images #microstock #rmstockphotos #rfstockimages #graphicdesign"
Buyers will catch on, so will contributors and some of them will sign up. Once buyers get word of a site where they can access images from all agents without duplicates, I bet they'll flock there. At least to check out the new toy. When they search, they'll find our images from the Microstock site that we prefer, without duplicates from the other sites, therefore giving us the opportunity to get the maximum return possible from the sale of that image.
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Until either such time as the site is proven to work for us or until they reduce their asking price, we can control which microstock site we upload to first, because the first site our image is placed on, will be the one that is indexed at PE, giving us all a chance to direct the buyer to the microstock site who gives us the most favorable return.
What do you with the existing images?
It would be better if Picturengine could override "the first placement" and instead used the "preferred site" (our own platform) for the image indexing and display.
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...Once buyers get word of a site where they can access images from all agents without duplicates, I bet they'll flock there. At least to check out the new toy....
Perhaps they will but if they're satisfied with the current sites they're using, perhaps they wont be interested? And the PE search is going to have to be amazing, as they'll have millions of low quality images with spam keywords in their huge collection. Until I see it in action, I'm not sure PE will work.
I also think that if PE did work and we all started uploading to the best paying microstock site, the other sites could easily switch their strategy. They wouldn't have to pay for advertising, PE would be sending them buyers. The most important thing for sites would be to get our images first. So perhaps we would see the reversal of commission cuts? Some sites used to pay 70% commission, if they had buyers using the sites, I think that could be sustainable.
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What if because of PE is redirecting to the site with the highest price (first placement on the site with best pricing) buyers will go to a cheaper agency to get the image? Same as with Alamy. Buyers zoom an image on Alamy and then get it from a micro (RF only)
If that makes sense.
I mean, you could out price yourself, because you are competing with your own images.
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With the exception of a few, I think most of you either missed or dismissed the main point I was trying to make - leveraging, which stocktastic picked up.
PicturEngine need to recover some of their costs before they can go live but at the asking price, realistically, not many will sign up. However some will and they have. At some stage, they will go live. My main point, however, was that even if a lot of us don’t sign up to any of their plans, when or if PE does go live, we can use the site to our advantage without parting with a cent.
Until either such time as the site is proven to work for us or until they reduce their asking price, we can control which microstock site we upload to first, because the first site our image is placed on, will be the one that is indexed at PE, giving us all a chance to direct the buyer to the microstock site who gives us the most favorable return. For me that site appears to be GL. We can also spread the word about PE. A tweet, a FB and G+ post from a good number of us is really all it takes.
Eg: "PicturEngine: The new Google for stock images #microstock #rmstockphotos #rfstockimages #graphicdesign"
Buyers will catch on, so will contributors and some of them will sign up. Once buyers get word of a site where they can access images from all agents without duplicates, I bet they'll flock there. At least to check out the new toy. When they search, they'll find our images from the Microstock site that we prefer, without duplicates from the other sites, therefore giving us the opportunity to get the maximum return possible from the sale of that image.
Wait a minute, ppl keep saying "buyers will catch on" yeah? where, how, from where? look, buyers are bloody conservative beings and its not at all easy to get buyers leaving one agency for another.
This affair takes tons and tons of advertising and promotion same as any new product.
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It's like trying to have a conversation with the cast of the Muppets, without the puppeteers in the room.
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It's like trying to have a conversation with the cast of the Muppets, without the puppeteers in the room.
I like Jim Henson and his muppets. :D
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It's like trying to have a conversation with the cast of the Muppets, without the puppeteers in the room.
I like Jim Henson and his muppets. :D
Yeh so do I. But without the movement and the voices, they're just a bunch of stuffed toys.
I'm trying to decide which Character you'd be if you were a Muppet. I think I'll go with Animal ;D Is Miss Piggy here? I'd like her to slap me senseless so I too can't follow the conversation and just type for the sake of typing.
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It's like trying to have a conversation with the cast of the Muppets, without the puppeteers in the room.
I like Jim Henson and his muppets. :D
Yeh so do I. But without the movement and the voices, they're just a bunch of stuffed toys.
I'm trying to decide which Character you'd be if you were a Muppet. I think I'll go with Animal ;D Is Miss Piggy here? I'd like her to slap me senseless so I too can't follow the conversation and just type for the sake of typing.
Sue is miss Piggy and Kermit? well must be Mantis. ;D
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Several of you are getting the point of PicturEngine and seeing that the forest extends beyond the trees. It’s very difficult to start a “new” agency/platform (or whatever) without breaking through the critical mass barrier first. Before reaching critical mass, it’s not worth the time and money advertising (for 100 niche photographers or even 500,000 niche images) because the biggest “bang for the buck” in advertising is NOT niche, it’s general, its everyone, and it’s BIG! PicturEngine solves this critical mass problem, from day ONE. With PicturEngine there is no need to target advertising to a highly specific group or niche, such as home related or travel related buyers, as we do with my other two agencies. Every image buyer is a prospective client to use PicturEngine. PicturEngine just makes image buying easier. Many who are asking about our advertising/marketing plan need to remember we already have a sizable image buying client base (over 40k confirmed image buyers and growing daily) from our established agencies. Many of our image buyers do specialize in houses/home lifestyle or travel/scenic, however, most of our buyers work for advertising agencies and have multiple clients. We’ve been doing this long enough to know what effectively generates traffic and licenses images, and are also smart enough not to share our knowledge with potential competition (that is surely monitoring these forums).
PicturEngine is a brand, just as Google is a brand. We go to a search engine to find what we need. We are not “new,” as I personally come from the background of both creating and licensing stock, and know the holes that need to be filled. We have studied other platforms, where they succeed and where they have failed, and are bringing PicturEngine to the market with eyes wide open knowing what needs to be done to succeed.
The purpose of our recent push for the PicturEngine photographer platform is to get content onboard that is NOT currently at agencies, bringing our image buying audience truly unique content, right alongside the “same ol’ stuff” they can find repeatedly at agencies, but with duplicates removed to make the search faster, easier, and just better. Our advertising campaign will be unique and insightful, not only advertising for the same agencies people already use, but image buyers will regularly return to see what new and wonderful things our photographers and smaller agencies are adding to the mix.
The PicturEngine photographer platform is not for everyone, just as stock photography is not for everyone. Studying years of hard data tells us PicturEngine becomes “cost effective” with collections of over 1,000 unique images. If you don’t yet have 1,000 unique images in your portfolio or collection, keep us on your radar for when you do. Some of you mentioned image storage as a factor. Storing 1,000 10MB Jpegs at Rackspace is about a dollar ($1.00 USD) per month. For the speed and peace of mind, $1/ month is not a high price to pay.
One last point I want to clarify, PicturEngine is NOT an agency. I am posting on this forum because some microstock photographers showed an interest and registered for the platform early on. They were tired of the current direction of the microstock industry and decided to do something positive about it. That’s what PicturEngine is all about.
Sorry for the repeat post, some of these questions were asked on the other "main" thread "Check Out PicturEngine"
Best,
JB
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The PicturEngine photographer platform is not for everyone, just as stock photography is not for everyone. Studying years of hard data tells us PicturEngine becomes “cost effective” with collections of over 1,000 unique images. If you don’t yet have 1,000 unique images in your portfolio or collection, keep us on your radar for when you do. ...
Right, thanks for letting us know now. I am glad I didnt sign up then with my 600 photos online. * thats vital information. I hope you also put that warning on the PE homepage.
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Several of you are getting the point of PicturEngine and seeing that the forest extends beyond the trees. It’s very difficult to start a “new” agency/platform (or whatever) without breaking through the critical mass barrier first. Before reaching critical mass, it’s not worth the time and money advertising (for 100 niche photographers or even 500,000 niche images) because the biggest “bang for the buck” in advertising is NOT niche, it’s general, its everyone, and it’s BIG! PicturEngine solves this critical mass problem, from day ONE. With PicturEngine there is no need to target advertising to a highly specific group or niche, such as home related or travel related buyers, as we do with my other two agencies. Every image buyer is a prospective client to use PicturEngine. PicturEngine just makes image buying easier. Many who are asking about our advertising/marketing plan need to remember we already have a sizable image buying client base (over 40k confirmed image buyers and growing daily) from our established agencies. Many of our image buyers do specialize in houses/home lifestyle or travel/scenic, however, most of our buyers work for advertising agencies and have multiple clients. We’ve been doing this long enough to know what effectively generates traffic and licenses images, and are also smart enough not to share our knowledge with potential competition (that is surely monitoring these forums).
PicturEngine is a brand, just as Google is a brand. We go to a search engine to find what we need. We are not “new,” as I personally come from the background of both creating and licensing stock, and know the holes that need to be filled. We have studied other platforms, where they succeed and where they have failed, and are bringing PicturEngine to the market with eyes wide open knowing what needs to be done to succeed.
The purpose of our recent push for the PicturEngine photographer platform is to get content onboard that is NOT currently at agencies, bringing our image buying audience truly unique content, right alongside the “same ol’ stuff” they can find repeatedly at agencies, but with duplicates removed to make the search faster, easier, and just better. Our advertising campaign will be unique and insightful, not only advertising for the same agencies people already use, but image buyers will regularly return to see what new and wonderful things our photographers and smaller agencies are adding to the mix.
The PicturEngine photographer platform is not for everyone, just as stock photography is not for everyone. Studying years of hard data tells us PicturEngine becomes “cost effective” with collections of over 1,000 unique images. If you don’t yet have 1,000 unique images in your portfolio or collection, keep us on your radar for when you do. Some of you mentioned image storage as a factor. Storing 1,000 10MB Jpegs at Rackspace is about a dollar ($1.00 USD) per month. For the speed and peace of mind, $1/ month is not a high price to pay.
One last point I want to clarify, PicturEngine is NOT an agency. I am posting on this forum because some microstock photographers showed an interest and registered for the platform early on. They were tired of the current direction of the microstock industry and decided to do something positive about it. That’s what PicturEngine is all about.
Sorry for the repeat post, some of these questions were asked on the other "main" thread "Check Out PicturEngine"
Best,
JB
Good luck to you - I hope you pull it off and we can all benefit. It's certainly a positive step forward and we watch with interest!
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JB does that mean we need 1000 unique images to do 41$/month?
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JB does that mean we need 1000 unique images to do 41$/month?
LOL. I am better off at SS and FT then ;D
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Several of you are getting the point of PicturEngine and seeing that the forest extends beyond the trees. It’s very difficult to start a “new” agency/platform (or whatever) without breaking through the critical mass barrier first. Before reaching critical mass, it’s not worth the time and money advertising (for 100 niche photographers or even 500,000 niche images) because the biggest “bang for the buck” in advertising is NOT niche, it’s general, its everyone, and it’s BIG! PicturEngine solves this critical mass problem, from day ONE. With PicturEngine there is no need to target advertising to a highly specific group or niche, such as home related or travel related buyers, as we do with my other two agencies. Every image buyer is a prospective client to use PicturEngine. PicturEngine just makes image buying easier. Many who are asking about our advertising/marketing plan need to remember we already have a sizable image buying client base (over 40k confirmed image buyers and growing daily) from our established agencies. Many of our image buyers do specialize in houses/home lifestyle or travel/scenic, however, most of our buyers work for advertising agencies and have multiple clients. We’ve been doing this long enough to know what effectively generates traffic and licenses images, and are also smart enough not to share our knowledge with potential competition (that is surely monitoring these forums).
PicturEngine is a brand, just as Google is a brand. We go to a search engine to find what we need. We are not “new,” as I personally come from the background of both creating and licensing stock, and know the holes that need to be filled. We have studied other platforms, where they succeed and where they have failed, and are bringing PicturEngine to the market with eyes wide open knowing what needs to be done to succeed.
The purpose of our recent push for the PicturEngine photographer platform is to get content onboard that is NOT currently at agencies, bringing our image buying audience truly unique content, right alongside the “same ol’ stuff” they can find repeatedly at agencies, but with duplicates removed to make the search faster, easier, and just better. Our advertising campaign will be unique and insightful, not only advertising for the same agencies people already use, but image buyers will regularly return to see what new and wonderful things our photographers and smaller agencies are adding to the mix.
The PicturEngine photographer platform is not for everyone, just as stock photography is not for everyone. Studying years of hard data tells us PicturEngine becomes “cost effective” with collections of over 1,000 unique images. If you don’t yet have 1,000 unique images in your portfolio or collection, keep us on your radar for when you do. Some of you mentioned image storage as a factor. Storing 1,000 10MB Jpegs at Rackspace is about a dollar ($1.00 USD) per month. For the speed and peace of mind, $1/ month is not a high price to pay.
One last point I want to clarify, PicturEngine is NOT an agency. I am posting on this forum because some microstock photographers showed an interest and registered for the platform early on. They were tired of the current direction of the microstock industry and decided to do something positive about it. That’s what PicturEngine is all about.
Sorry for the repeat post, some of these questions were asked on the other "main" thread "Check Out PicturEngine"
Best,
JB
Wait, what? This is a joke right? Let me get this straight. Not only do you want us to have 1,000 unique images, but you want them to be images that have not been uploaded to any microstock site. If that's the case, which I believe you've made clear it is, why are you wasting your time (and more importantly ours) with your ridiculous sales pitch on a forum where contributors discuss microstock agents?
I get you saying 'don’t bother if you don't have 1,000'. For $480, we probably need 10,000 on a new site just to even have a chance at recovering the cost or joining you. You say that you're not "new" and that you already have your 40K buyers confirmed and lined up waiting to use the site, blah blah blah. If you're so confident that you have the buyers, why don't you go live now? You're not an agent after all, you're a search engine. That means, aside from needing contributors to fund you, you don't need them to actually operate the site. You've already spent the money, so why not take the risk yourself instead of trying to pass it onto us and just go live? We don't know anything about you and the way you'll operate. For all we know, you might strike a deal with the agents and start making referral money that further reduces our cut at their sites. We don't know anything about you. Open your doors, operate for a while so we can judge you. I have 1,000 images that aren't on any microstock sites and I can tell you now, I will not put them on your site. Not now, not ever. They will remain unique on MY site, not yours. The advertising plan is the one I may be interested in the future IF you prove to me that your site works.
Justin, you're in the wrong forum, Pal. I suggest you stop wasting your time on MSG and target photographers who ONLY sell direct. Since that is the only content you want. I really don't know why you copied and pasted your post in here from the other thread. This thread clearly isn't about joining you. This thread is about keeping an eye on you and your performance and USING you to our advantage, without giving you a dime. This thread is about organizing the images we have at the agents we contract with, in a way that will direct buyers from your search engine to the site that we prefer. So please keep your useless sales pitch in the one thread. I say 'useless' because here you are annoying us with your marketing hype, when you don't even want our 'same ol' stuff on your site.
Hold on though. Wait a minute. Surely you don't expect us to risk $480 by joining you AND leave the agents that currently do put the food on the table. Surely that is not what you're asking. If that's what you're asking of us, then you're a real funny guy ;D
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I can't believe he means 1,000 images that aren't on other sites?
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Huh, and here's another thought I just had. For all we know, this 'may' even be a scam. For all we know, there may never be any intention to go live but to collect money with the promise of doing so. For all we know, the site doesn't even work. For all we know PE could be set up to appear to be a search engine but it isn't. If it's a search engine, why is only 'picking' up corbis and deposit photos? Where's the rest of them? We don't know anything about Justin, PE or their other sites that they're supposedly connected with.
For all we know, the 90 day free trial period 'may' also be a scam. If anyone signed up, I suggest you log into your PayPal account, go to Profile, click on My Money and then look to see if there are any automated payments set up to pay PE the full amount annually after the 90 day free period. I've been caught out with hosting companies doing dodgy things like that. Please go and check. If there's something there, block it. Also read any fine print very carefully.
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Sorry PE, you lost me at hello.
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I can't believe he means 1,000 images that aren't on other sites?
Ideally, I think if you had that you would probably get the best results. It seems like an honest answer. Especially for their advertise only plan. The more competition (SS, IS, DT, etc.) you have for a particular image, the less likely you are to get it downloaded somewhere where you get 100% royalty (Ktools, PE, Photoshelter, Photodeck, etc.). I think most contributors should be holding images back for themselves.
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EVEN if we accept the highly questionable claims thatare being made, what happens at the end of the 90 day 'free' period when contributors decide to pull out -- what percentage of their 'unique' content will disappear?
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I can't believe he means 1,000 images that aren't on other sites?
Ideally, I think if you had that you would probably get the best results. It seems like an honest answer. Especially for their advertise only plan. The more competition (SS, IS, DT, etc.) you have for a particular image, the less likely you are to get it downloaded somewhere where you get 100% royalty (Ktools, PE, Photoshelter, Photodeck, etc.). I think most contributors should be holding images back for themselves.
i STRONGLY encourage everyone to hold back from submitting their best images to SS, DT and the others, especially if they're similar to what i've submitted
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Jeez dude, why the hostility? Your questions below have been addressed already in this and other PE threads. If you don't like it, don't participate....it's just that simple.
Huh, and here's another thought I just had. For all we know, this 'may' even be a scam. For all we know, there may never be any intention to go live but to collect money with the promise of doing so. For all we know, the site doesn't even work. For all we know PE could be set up to appear to be a search engine but it isn't. If it's a search engine, why is only 'picking' up corbis and deposit photos? Where's the rest of them? We don't know anything about Justin, PE or their other sites that they're supposedly connected with.
For all we know, the 90 day free trial period 'may' also be a scam. If anyone signed up, I suggest you log into your PayPal account, go to Profile, click on My Money and then look to see if there are any automated payments set up to pay PE the full amount annually after the 90 day free period. I've been caught out with hosting companies doing dodgy things like that. Please go and check. If there's something there, block it. Also read any fine print very carefully.
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I can't believe he means 1,000 images that aren't on other sites?
Ideally, I think if you had that you would probably get the best results. It seems like an honest answer. Especially for their advertise only plan. The more competition (SS, IS, DT, etc.) you have for a particular image, the less likely you are to get it downloaded somewhere where you get 100% royalty (Ktools, PE, Photoshelter, Photodeck, etc.). I think most contributors should be holding images back for themselves.
I agree except that he's not referring to the advertising only plan (which isn't even set up for the most popular platforms). He is referring to the photographers platform with content directly uploaded to PE. If the site isn't a scam and does work, it could have potential. But giving him $480 for an unproven site is not worth the risk. This guy was operating a pornography site, wasn't it? Do you really trust him with your money? At this point I wouldn't even give him $10 until I see something working. He could take your $480 along with your images and sell them somewhere else, you don't know.
Even if it's all legit and the site does go live, it might be horrible and slow and nothing like we expected. His 40K supposed buyers that he has lined up might tell him to shove it. We can't even see how the site works yet he's in here banging his drum about how great it is saying 'Give us $480, you won't regret it'. Let us see it first. At this point, I don't even trust him or the site even for the advertising plan.
The idea behind PE is great. Until we see it in action, it's still just an idea - or something dogdy.
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Jeez dude, why the hostility? Your questions below have been addressed already in this and other PE threads. If you don't like it, don't participate....it's just that simple.
Huh, and here's another thought I just had. For all we know, this 'may' even be a scam. For all we know, there may never be any intention to go live but to collect money with the promise of doing so. For all we know, the site doesn't even work. For all we know PE could be set up to appear to be a search engine but it isn't. If it's a search engine, why is only 'picking' up corbis and deposit photos? Where's the rest of them? We don't know anything about Justin, PE or their other sites that they're supposedly connected with.
For all we know, the 90 day free trial period 'may' also be a scam. If anyone signed up, I suggest you log into your PayPal account, go to Profile, click on My Money and then look to see if there are any automated payments set up to pay PE the full amount annually after the 90 day free period. I've been caught out with hosting companies doing dodgy things like that. Please go and check. If there's something there, block it. Also read any fine print very carefully.
Nothing hostile about my post. They are just thoughts about being cautious. And they are MY thoughts which is what this thread is about. If YOU don't like it, don't participate :)
And the 'questions' will not be addressed until the site goes live and I see with my own eyes how it works. And I don't care what he addresses. I'm not going to trust a guy operating a porn site asking me for $480 based on a promise. It has scam written all over it and it's his job to show us and prove it's not.
In the mean time, this thread is NOT about joining PE. It's about IF or WHEN it does go live and it's legit, to work with the agents that give us the best deal so that those images are indexed on the PE site (if it's legit).
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perhaps we should ask them to provide us with a copy of their passport? :D
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perhaps we should ask them to provide us with a copy of their passport? :D
Nah, you can pick up a fake one for $50 in most Asian countries :D
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LOL, I am sooooo confused!!!
Let me get this straight in my head...
I choose which agency I upload to first as PE will index from there for the "unique" image it shows of mine.
PE will direct the buyer to that site so they can buy and I pick up the highest % commission as that was the site I chose to upload to first.
For example, if buyer wants to buy my image they found on PE and I selected Agent A because they pay 50%, then the buyer will buy through Agent A an I receive my 50%.
Assuming this is correct, this is where I am getting confused...so what I am receiving is 100% of the 50% that agency pays me anyway, all PE is doing is making sure the buyer buys from thhe agent I uploaded to first?
Assuming this is correct, that means I am paying PE $480 per year to ensure I get the 100% of the 50% I would have got had the buyer purchased from that agency anyway, so for $480 per year they direct buyers to my nominated agency?
So in effect, All You Can Stock, who pay 70% I believe, should become a top agency as a lot of contributors will nominate them and upload to them first to get the indexing? But what happens with that agency? They get all this traffic they were not expecting and can't cope - servers fail, review times are into weeks, etc, etc. So now I am paying $480 to PE for crashing the site I uploaded to first and making review times too long which in turn means I am not uploading to the other sites until my nominated agency reviews my images, which means my images are not showing on PE in the first place.
As a smaller agency paying a higher commission to contributors, I personally would contact PE and offer to make a deal whereby I increase commission rates to make sure I am the nominated agent for most contributors and when all the sales come through I pay PE a referral commmission. No cost to me as thhe agent as I can now scrap my advertising budget and plan as PE doesit all for me for nothing.
I assume I am wrong here somewhere, or everywhere, but I am struggling with this whole concept.
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LOL, I am sooooo confused!!!
Let me get this straight in my head...
I choose which agency I upload to first as PE will index from there for the "unique" image it shows of mine.
PE will direct the buyer to that site so they can buy and I pick up the highest % commission as that was the site I chose to upload to first.
For example, if buyer wants to buy my image they found on PE and I selected Agent A because they pay 50%, then the buyer will buy through Agent A an I receive my 50%.
Assuming this is correct, this is where I am getting confused...so what I am receiving is 100% of the 50% that agency pays me anyway, all PE is doing is making sure the buyer buys from thhe agent I uploaded to first?
Assuming this is correct, that means I am paying PE $480 per year to ensure I get the 100% of the 50% I would have got had the buyer purchased from that agency anyway, so for $480 per year they direct buyers to my nominated agency?
So in effect, All You Can Stock, who pay 70% I believe, should become a top agency as a lot of contributors will nominate them and upload to them first to get the indexing? But what happens with that agency? They get all this traffic they were not expecting and can't cope - servers fail, review times are into weeks, etc, etc. So now I am paying $480 to PE for crashing the site I uploaded to first and making review times too long which in turn means I am not uploading to the other sites until my nominated agency reviews my images, which means my images are not showing on PE in the first place.
As a smaller agency paying a higher commission to contributors, I personally would contact PE and offer to make a deal whereby I increase commission rates to make sure I am the nominated agent for most contributors and when all the sales come through I pay PE a referral commmission. No cost to me as thhe agent as I can now scrap my advertising budget and plan as PE doesit all for me for nothing.
I assume I am wrong here somewhere, or everywhere, but I am struggling with this whole concept.
Yes, you're a bit off track. Let me outline it for you.
Think of PE as just a search engine for the moment. They’re just like Google images, except they only display stock images without any duplicates. The single image that is indexed is the one that you upload to one of the agents first – according to them. You don’t pay anything for this. They are a search engine and will display all stock images regardless of us signing up. That’s the search engine bit.
Now on top of that, for a fee, they provide us two additional options. This is what their sales pitch is about.
The first option is the 'advertising only' plan which is $10 per month - $120 per year upfront. This is for those photographers who sell direct on their own website. With this option, the image that is indexed on PE is the one from your site and all microstock sites are ignored. The buyer is directed to your site, and they purchase the image from there. You get paid 100% of what you would normally be paid from your website. The $120 is just an advertising cost. This is the plan I'm interested in but only if I see that the site is legit and working properly. They don’t even have ktools up and running along with some other popular sites – like Smugmug I think.
The second option is the Photographers platform which costs $40 per month - $480 per year upfront, plus some storage costs which are minimal. This is what the 90 day free period offer was about (which has passed). This is for photographers who don’t have their own website and want to upload their images directly to PE who host them with a third party. With this option, you received 100% and the transaction is handled by PE. This could have potential if the site is working, if you have a large portfolio and if the site becomes popular with buyers. This is the biggest risk of course. It's quite possible you won’t recover the $480 plus if the site folds, you're left out in the cold.
So I started this thread to say - hey, forget about options one and two for now, especially option two. For those of us who aren't willing to throw away $480 or $120 on an unproven site and want to wait around to see what happens, lets ignore the sales pitch and focus on their primary service, which is to operate as a search engine. If we direct buyers to the site we prefer, then the micros might stop treating us poorly and start * up to begging us to upload to their site first. They might stop lowering our commissions. They might even raise them if we play this right - provided PE works out of course. It won’t cost us a cent and we can still upload to the rest of the sites if we want – we just have to wait a little bit before we upload to the rest.
I thought about All You Can Stock, but have you used the site? It’s crap. I'’s very slow and very glitchy right now. That's not the one I will be choosing first but I might choose a few images just to test to test things out. What I definitely won't do, is upload to sites like DP first (I've dropped them anyway). Anyone with a low RPD should be left last. They'll still get the images but they won't benefit from PE and if PE does because become a huge success, in the long term, this strategy will hurt the greedy sites and they might sweeten the deal with us.
Edited to fix errors.
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Yes, you're a bit off track. Let me outline it for you.
This the best explanation so far....
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...If anyone signed up, I suggest you log into your PayPal account, go to Profile, click on My Money and then look to see if there are any automated payments set up to pay PE the full amount annually after the 90 day free period....
That was made quite clear when I signed up. There's an automated payment to PE for $480 after 90 days. There's nothing sneaky about it. I presume that could be reversed by Paypal, if someone forgot to cancel it or was unable to access their Paypal account?
My big concern is that the search was supposed to be going live months ago. I can't remember the exact words used but I thought it was going to be live at least 6 months ago. So I'm not seeing a reason to use the free trial, unless I'm given 90 days after the site goes live.
I do have other concerns but until the search is live, they aren't worth thinking about.
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Thamnks Grafix, great explanation, now I understand, appreciate you taking the time to reply.
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Veneratio, no problem.
...If anyone signed up, I suggest you log into your PayPal account, go to Profile, click on My Money and then look to see if there are any automated payments set up to pay PE the full amount annually after the 90 day free period....
That was made quite clear when I signed up. There's an automated payment to PE for $480 after 90 days. There's nothing sneaky about it. I presume that could be reversed by Paypal, if someone forgot to cancel it or was unable to access their Paypal account?
My big concern is that the search was supposed to be going live months ago. I can't remember the exact words used but I thought it was going to be live at least 6 months ago. So I'm not seeing a reason to use the free trial, unless I'm given 90 days after the site goes live.
I do have other concerns but until the search is live, they aren't worth thinking about.
Sheesh, I'm glad I brought it up. What slimebags!
Sharpshot, unless you're happy to go ahead with them after the free trail period, your main concern right now should be that $480 automated payment that you agreed to. It is sneaky. PayPal won't reverse it, you need to block it both on the PE site somewhere AND on PayPal. This is how they get you. When the time comes the funds will be paid to them. Even if you don't have enough funds in your PayPal account, PayPal will automatically draw it from your linked account. They won't ask you about it because you've already agreed to it. You'll be notified AFTER it's done and you won't be able to get that money back because you agreed to it. If you cancel the automatic payment on PayPal and don't turn it off somewhere on the PE site, they'll still issue the invoice and you'll have to pay it. If you don't, you could have debt collectors after you like 1and1[dot]com do to people over a lousy $10. It's bad practice but many dodgy sites do it. I've been caught out once, never again.
Just go to PE and see if you can find somewhere that you can turn off the automatic payment. Take a screenshot of it because some of them like 1and1 turn it back on.
Then on PayPal do this:
click on 'Profile'
click on 'My Money' on the left
click on 'update' on 'My pre-approved payments'
click on 'PicturEngine' or whatever it's called
next to 'Status' click 'Cancel'
Thank me later when all the stories come flooding in about people being ripped off $480 - sneakily but unfortunately legally.
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Yes, you're a bit off track. Let me outline it for you.
This the best explanation so far....
+783463
I was close in understanding but I missed that part in the first paragraph about PE being a search engine without having to pay. So that means I do not need any subscription, if all my images are indexed anyways.
I think Graphix also expressed my concerns about PE as well. Good piece.
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Veneratio, no problem.
...If anyone signed up, I suggest you log into your PayPal account, go to Profile, click on My Money and then look to see if there are any automated payments set up to pay PE the full amount annually after the 90 day free period....
That was made quite clear when I signed up. There's an automated payment to PE for $480 after 90 days. There's nothing sneaky about it. I presume that could be reversed by Paypal, if someone forgot to cancel it or was unable to access their Paypal account?
My big concern is that the search was supposed to be going live months ago. I can't remember the exact words used but I thought it was going to be live at least 6 months ago. So I'm not seeing a reason to use the free trial, unless I'm given 90 days after the site goes live.
I do have other concerns but until the search is live, they aren't worth thinking about.
Sheesh, I'm glad I brought it up. What slimebags!
Sharpshot, unless you're happy to go ahead with them after the free trail period, your main concern right now should be that $480 automated payment that you agreed to. It is sneaky. PayPal won't reverse it, you need to block it both on the PE site somewhere AND on PayPal. This is how they get you. When the time comes the funds will be paid to them. Even if you don't have enough funds in your PayPal account, PayPal will automatically draw it from your linked account. They won't ask you about it because you've already agreed to it. You'll be notified AFTER it's done and you won't be able to get that money back because you agreed to it. If you cancel the automatic payment on PayPal and don't turn it off somewhere on the PE site, they'll still issue the invoice and you'll have to pay it. If you don't, you could have debt collectors after you like 1and1[dot]com do to people over a lousy $10. It's bad practice but many dodgy sites do it. I've been caught out once, never again.
Just go to PE and see if you can find somewhere that you can turn off the automatic payment. Take a screenshot of it because some of them like 1and1 turn it back on.
Then on PayPal do this:
click on 'Profile'
click on 'My Money' on the left
click on 'update' on 'My pre-approved payments'
click on 'PicturEngine' or whatever it's called
next to 'Status' click 'Cancel'
Thank me later when all the stories come flooding in about people being ripped off $480 - sneakily but unfortunately legally.
When I log in to the site, I can't get to a page to cancel it. I'll email them about this.
Edit:- this doesn't look like a problem, as all you have to do is cancel it through PayPal. I looked around and that's worked with similar pre-approved payments for other sites.
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Ponke, just be clear, if you have your own site it won't be indexed, even if you upload to it first.
Sharpshot, The dodgy ones always make it hard if not impossible to change it. Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky! How many others from here have signed up for the 90 day free trial?
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grafix04
It appears you understand the platform from your post.(http://www.microstockgroup.com/general-stock-discussion/picturengine-some-thoughts/msg283170/#msg283170 (http://www.microstockgroup.com/general-stock-discussion/picturengine-some-thoughts/msg283170/#msg283170)) You also understand how PicturEngine can make the industry better for everyone, even those not actively participating, that’s the goal!
I want to address one thing, then I’ll leave you to your scheming. :)
My statements are clear when taken “in” context. (Anyone can change the meaning of a statement when taking text “out” of context.)
“The PicturEngine photographer platform is not for everyone, just as stock photography is not for everyone. Studying years of hard data tells us PicturEngine becomes “cost effective” with collections of over 1,000 unique images. If you don’t yet have 1,000 unique images in your portfolio or collection, keep us on your radar for when you do. Some of you mentioned image storage as a factor. Storing 1,000 10MB Jpegs at Rackspace is about a dollar ($1.00 USD) per month. For the speed and peace of mind, $1/ month is not a high price to pay.”
Stock Photo 101:
The quality and quantity of images in a portfolio directly affects the number of sales and potential number of sales. This should not be “big news.” I consider this to be common knowledge or just math. I’ve had the pleasure of representing several thousand stock photographers in my career. It’s a fact, and should be no surprise, photographers with more unique images, make more money. Over a decade of compiled data tells me, on average, stock photographers with 1,000 unique images in their portfolio will make more sales/money than photographers with say, 200 images in their portfolio. This was not always the case, in the 90’s a smaller portfolio often yielded successful (money making) results. Today, however, with everyone carrying a digital camera at all times, it’s harder to find unique images. You simply must produce a greater quantity of quality content to make the same amount of money. (The factors of price and license type are not addressed in this example to keep it simplified.)
I will try to stay out of “your” conversations on this thread unless asked a direct question. I will need to respond, however, if misquoted.
Best,
JB
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Thanks for the post Justin, could I just check, by "unique images" you mean salable as opposed to exclusive right?
That is how I read your post but just want confirmation as I am considering whether I am likely to recoup if I subscribe.
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Thanks for the post Justin, could I just check, by "unique images" you mean salable as opposed to exclusive right?
That is how I read your post but just want confirmation as I am considering whether I am likely to recoup if I subscribe.
Correct. Unique salable images.
Best,
JB
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Justin, I just skimmed through your post because you waffled on about crap without really addressing any real issue raised. I have no problem with the 1000 unique images, nor do I have a problem with this line that you wrote which implies you now want exclusive content:
The purpose of our recent push for the PicturEngine photographer platform is to get content onboard that is NOT currently at agencies
I have no problem with it because I don't intend to sign up as a photographer on your site - ever. What I do have a problem with is that you just sprung these new terms on everyone. After months of spinning the same hype, nowhere have you mentioned, nor does it say anywhere on your website, that you want 1000 unique and exclusive images. Now after all this time you come up with that? Out of the blue? Why waste people's time?
As for the microstock 101 crap that your wrote, that is quite insulting and implying that we don't know microstock when we've been doing this for years, is not going to win you any fans.
I am not interested in joining your site as it stands. I don't know anything about you or how the site will operate when it goes live. All I have is the word of some stranger who's previously been in the porn business, pushing to get us to hand him over $480 without any proof that the site works or that there are buyers eager to use the site. Again, this could possibly be a scam. And speaking of which, do you want to address the issue about the automated payment of $480 with sharpshot - in the another thread please. That way we can get back to 'scheming' :)
And by the way, I don't like the look of your site. It also runs like a dog. I have a feeling when you go live, it will be much worse. If the live system looks anything like it does now, I doubt buyers will use it. And no microstock contributor with any sense is going to invest $480 in a site looking and running like that. Compare PicturEngine with any popular image search engine out there now and you just don't measure up. So you can write all the BS you like but at the end of the day, your site still looks pretty useless as it is.
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Ponke, just be clear, if you have your own site it won't be indexed, even if you upload to it first.
I know, but it finds my images at SS and the like, so thats all I need. I thought I had to pay a tenner a month to get indexed at agencies.
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He never addressed the question how he is going to handle charbebacks etc on his paypal account. He says he wont be the middle man, basically for 480 euro a year he lets you sort out any crap with payments yourself.
Sounds way too dodgy for me.
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I think we shouldn't be too harsh on PE. Might as well let it launch and wait a year. It will either be a big flop or it will succeed. The odds aren't good and they'll have enough problems without people here "scheming".
My communications with them have been good. I knew what I was doing when I signed up for the trial, it was all very clear. I only cancelled because it doesn't seem worth doing right now. I've had 2 emails confirming that my account will be closed in 48 hours. I wish them well and hope that I'll want to join again in the future.
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He never addressed the question how he is going to handle charbebacks etc on his paypal account. He says he wont be the middle man, basically for 480 euro a year he lets you sort out any crap with payments yourself.
Sounds way too dodgy for me.
If he's the one accepting the payment, the chargeback goes to him. Pretty simple.
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No, Ponke's right. It's against PayPal's terms. Where Justin stuffed up is that he publicly admitted that he's passing the "PayPal fee" to the buyer. If buyers ever get wind of this and complain to PayPal, PE could have their account closed and then how would the photographers get paid? He shouldn't have said a thing or he should have said they bump up the original price with a handling fee which is allowed. Silly! For someone that's been using PayPal since 2006, he should know better. It's probably been quoted all over the place and too late to retract it now.
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No, Ponke's right. It's against PayPal's terms. Where Justin stuffed up is that he publicly admitted that he's passing the "PayPal fee" to the buyer. If buyers ever get wind of this and complain to PayPal, PE could have their account closed and then how would the photographers get paid? He shouldn't have said a thing or he should have said they bump up the original price with a handling fee which is allowed. Silly! For someone that's been using PayPal since 2006, he should know better. It's probably been quoted all over the place and too late to retract it now.
When I buy at Target and use my charge card, and Visa gets 3%, where do you think that comes from? The price of the stuff I bought. Of course the fees are passed one to me/included in the price.
What you can't say is "This item is $5, and if you want to use Paypal, then that will be an extra $1, but if you want to send a check, it's only $5". If that's what he's doing here, forgive me, but it seems like there is a price, however you pay, and fees are paid from that income.
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No, Ponke's right. It's against PayPal's terms. Where Justin stuffed up is that he publicly admitted that he's passing the "PayPal fee" to the buyer. If buyers ever get wind of this and complain to PayPal, PE could have their account closed and then how would the photographers get paid? He shouldn't have said a thing or he should have said they bump up the original price with a handling fee which is allowed. Silly! For someone that's been using PayPal since 2006, he should know better. It's probably been quoted all over the place and too late to retract it now.
When I buy at Target and use my charge card, and Visa gets 3%, where do you think that comes from? The price of the stuff I bought. Of course the fees are passed one to me/included in the price.
What you can't say is "This item is $5, and if you want to use Paypal, then that will be an extra $1, but if you want to send a check, it's only $5". If that's what he's doing here, forgive me, but it seems like there is a price, however you pay, and fees are paid from that income.
I get what you're saying Sean. But PayPal is really finicky with this stuff. Accounts have been closed over this. He can bump up the price to whatever he likes, that's not the problem. But it's clear in the terms that he's not supposed to pass on the fee to the buyer. The problem is that he dobbed himself in. Yeah, I know that it's a stupid policy, but if buyers complain, he could lose his account, Especially if they complain on a massive scale. He shouldn't have said it. There was no need to even mention it when he knows, or should have known that the policy exists.
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"No Surcharges. Under Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express regulations and the laws of several states, including California, merchants may not charge a fee to the buyer for accepting credit card payments (often called a "surcharge"). You agree that you will not impose a surcharge or any other fee for accepting PayPal as payment. This restriction does not prevent you from imposing a handling fee in connection with the sale of goods or services, as long as the handling fee does not operate as a surcharge (in other words, the handling fee for transactions paid through PayPal may not be higher than the handling fee for transactions paid through other payment methods). Nor does this restriction apply to Pound-denominated transactions by sellers residing in the United Kingdom listing items for sale on a UK-based website."
He can either add a handling surcharge for all payment types, or include it in the price. You just can't get to checkout and say "Oh, paypal? That's an extra $2".
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I think we shouldn't be too harsh on PE. Might as well let it launch and wait a year. It will either be a big flop or it will succeed. The odds aren't good and they'll have enough problems without people here "scheming".
My communications with them have been good. I knew what I was doing when I signed up for the trial, it was all very clear. I only cancelled because it doesn't seem worth doing right now. I've had 2 emails confirming that my account will be closed in 48 hours. I wish them well and hope that I'll want to join again in the future.
Not sure what this talk about 'scheming' is. It's just planning so that our images from a preferred site is indexed on their site. This wouldn't be a hindrance to PE. If anything this would help them because we would promote them since we want to get the sale that gives us the best return. If we're going to sit on the sidelines and watch, we may as well participate indirectly. There's no scheming but if their was, it would be against the microstock agents, not PE.
Despite Justin being a bit of a smartypants and despite me not trusting him or his company (at this stage) I actually like their model. I want them to be legit and be successful. I want the site to go live so I can check it out, monitor it over time and hopefully hear some success stories. And if they do flop, I'd like someone else to continue in their footsteps. Preferably someone big. I can see Google possibly doing it. They have the funds, the resources, they already have the search engine.
I just don't like the guy's attitude or his background but I'm willing to give them a go if they prove themselves. To be completely honest, I trust them as much as I trust microstock companies these days - I don't trust any of them one bit. They're all out to bleed us dry :D
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it appears that buyers & sellers are being told 2 different things - sellers are told we can direct the search to our preferred site or agency, but buyers are told " Image buyers get the best image at the best price with access to all outlets from which the image can be licensed."
here are extracts from the PE website :
=======================
picturengine to buyers:
Search, find and license images. It’s that simple! The world's stock photos consolidated into ONE search! Some images are exclusive to a single stock photo agency, some are listed with multiple agencies and some are available directly from the photographer. Image buyers get the best image at the best price with access to all outlets from which the image can be licensed.
....,.
The option to choose not only which image to license, but also from whom to license it, assures images buyers the best image at the best price. We include all representatives licensing a particular image and allow the image buyer to make an informed purchasing decision.
Once you find and image, we show you all available sources to license that image
============================
picturengine to photographers:
Does PicturEngine compare prices?
Last Updated: Aug 17, 2012 10:58AM CDT
NO. PicturEngine does NOT compare prices.
We know buyers demand good prices. The only way to get the best price on ANY good or service, is to reduce the distance from the producer to the buyer. We DO NOT compare prices, instead we send the buyer to the base agency (where the image was uploaded FIRST) or directly to the photographer (if they are on the PicturEngine platform). Sending the buyer directly to the base agency or photographer, effectively removes unnecessary expenses added to the sale. Our goal is to help both photographers and image buyers get the most out of each transaction.
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Am I competing with my agencies?
Last Updated: May 05, 2012 10:34PM CDT
No. If an image is listed with an agency, and the photographer lists the same image on the PicturEngine platform, buyers see only the image listed by the photographer on the PicturEngine platform.
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"No Surcharges. Under Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express regulations and the laws of several states, including California, merchants may not charge a fee to the buyer for accepting credit card payments (often called a "surcharge"). You agree that you will not impose a surcharge or any other fee for accepting PayPal as payment. This restriction does not prevent you from imposing a handling fee in connection with the sale of goods or services, as long as the handling fee does not operate as a surcharge (in other words, the handling fee for transactions paid through PayPal may not be higher than the handling fee for transactions paid through other payment methods). Nor does this restriction apply to Pound-denominated transactions by sellers residing in the United Kingdom listing items for sale on a UK-based website."
He can either add a handling surcharge for all payment types, or include it in the price. You just can't get to checkout and say "Oh, paypal? That's an extra $2".
Sean, about the processing/handling fee is basically what I mentioned a few posts up. That's all good. I'm saying the problem here is that he blabbed that he's passing the paypal fee to the buyer, even giving the percentage away. The problem is, if a buyer reads it on this forum someday and complains to paypal, he can't then turn around and say "oh, that's the handling fee". He should not have said that he's passing on the 2.9% paypal fee or however much it was. I know what you're saying and I agree. It's all ridiculous because it's the same thing but PayPal is a bit ridiculous when it comes to this policy. And they do close accounts over it if buyers complain. I'm not worried about it though. If he lost his account, he'd have to find another way to pay the contributors or do some serious grovelling to to PayPal and get his account back. I think people are worrying more than they should but I'm just saying technically, Ponke is right and it is a risk because he said it.
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cascoly makes a disturbing observation.
Overall, the concept is starting to make sense to me. Speaking only for myself, here's what I'd want to do: sign with PE, at the base level (no storage or direct marketing). Have PE index my images, and set GL as my preferred agency; buyers using PE can then find my images on an equal basis with those on SS, for example, but will be directed to GL to buy them. At some point, I might even remove my stuff from the other agencies, leaving only GL.
Is this just a beautiful dream, or could it really work this way?
I note however that any popularity-based search ranking you may have accrued at these agencies is apparently dropped in this scheme. Will PE prioritize newer images, or start building its own internal popularity ranking? Apologies if this was covered in earlier posts.
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it appears that buyers & sellers are being told 2 different things - sellers are told we can direct the search to our preferred site or agency, but buyers are told " Image buyers get the best image at the best price with access to all outlets from which the image can be licensed."
here are extracts from the PE website :
=======================
picturengine to buyers:
Search, find and license images. It’s that simple! The world's stock photos consolidated into ONE search! Some images are exclusive to a single stock photo agency, some are listed with multiple agencies and some are available directly from the photographer. Image buyers get the best image at the best price with access to all outlets from which the image can be licensed.
....,.
The option to choose not only which image to license, but also from whom to license it, assures images buyers the best image at the best price. We include all representatives licensing a particular image and allow the image buyer to make an informed purchasing decision.
Once you find and image, we show you all available sources to license that image
============================
picturengine to photographers:
Does PicturEngine compare prices?
Last Updated: Aug 17, 2012 10:58AM CDT
NO. PicturEngine does NOT compare prices.
We know buyers demand good prices. The only way to get the best price on ANY good or service, is to reduce the distance from the producer to the buyer. We DO NOT compare prices, instead we send the buyer to the base agency (where the image was uploaded FIRST) or directly to the photographer (if they are on the PicturEngine platform). Sending the buyer directly to the base agency or photographer, effectively removes unnecessary expenses added to the sale. Our goal is to help both photographers and image buyers get the most out of each transaction.
---------------------
Am I competing with my agencies?
Last Updated: May 05, 2012 10:34PM CDT
No. If an image is listed with an agency, and the photographer lists the same image on the PicturEngine platform, buyers see only the image listed by the photographer on the PicturEngine platform.
:o
Well done!
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cascoly makes a disturbing observation.
Overall, the concept is starting to make sense to me. Speaking only for myself, here's what I'd want to do: sign with PE, at the base level (no storage or direct marketing). Have PE index my images, and set GL as my preferred agency; buyers using PE can then find my images on an equal basis with those on SS, for example, but will be directed to GL to buy them. At some point, I might even remove my stuff from the other agencies, leaving only GL.
Is this just a beautiful dream, or could it really work this way?
I note however that any popularity-based search ranking you may have accrued at these agencies is apparently dropped in this scheme. Will PE prioritize newer images, or start building its own internal popularity ranking? Apologies if this was covered in earlier posts.
You can't sign up and have them index preferred sites at microstock. You can only upload your images to your preferred site and wait for them to be indexed at PE. There's no need to sign up with them.
However after reading Cascoly's post, I don't know how it will work. I think it's safe to say them might be playing us lol
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He never addressed the question how he is going to handle charbebacks etc on his paypal account. He says he wont be the middle man, basically for 480 euro a year he lets you sort out any crap with payments yourself.
Sounds way too dodgy for me.
If he's the one accepting the payment, the chargeback goes to him. Pretty simple.
Should is the keyword but what if he passes on the chargebacks to the contributors? Like IS, there is no way to dispute it at paypal.
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Thanks cascoly, going to be interesting to see how they try and explain that one away. Don't think I could ever trust them after reading that.
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If it shows 4 places to buy the same image, and the price at each, buyers will click on the one marked "Preferred by the Photgrapher because he submitted it there first", right? Oh wait. They'll click on the cheapest one. Or if PE doesn't explicitly show the prices, the buyer will just click on all 4 in turn and compare.
This system will evolve to serve the needs of whoever is actually paying for it. So who is it - buyers or sellers? It can't be both.
Of course, we can't stop meta-search/price comparison sites from operating. Once they get going, the only way to fight back would be to remove our images from all but one preferred agency.
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Does Justin and PE really believe that contributors will be willing to pay to be part of a service that effectively sends buyers to the cheapest source of their images? Is that what PE will offer for buyers? I've been convinced by Justin thus far, but my confidence is seriously shaken by this revelation. Justin, I'd really like to hear your explanation...?
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As stated previously in post :
http://www.microstockgroup.com/general-stock-discussion/picturengine-some-thoughts/msg283239/#msg283239 (http://www.microstockgroup.com/general-stock-discussion/picturengine-some-thoughts/msg283239/#msg283239)
...
My statements are clear when taken “in” context. (Anyone can change the meaning of a statement when taking text “out” of context.)
....
I will try to stay out of “your” conversations on this thread unless asked a direct question. I will need to respond, however, if misquoted.
Best,
JB
Does Justin and PE really believe that contributors will be willing to pay to be part of a service that effectively sends buyers to the cheapest source of their images? Is that what PE will offer for buyers? I've been convinced by Justin thus far, but my confidence is seriously shaken by this revelation. Justin, I'd really like to hear your explanation...?
Monty’s answer: Sadly, some users of this forum appear to be on a witch hunt, taking my old posts, removing a word here and there until my words (out of context, of course) say what they want them to say. It’s called libel.
We are and always have been crystal clear regarding price comparisons. Let me spell it out, W-E D-O-N-’-T! Furthermore, buyers see only ONE place to license an image. Please, please review the PicturEngine support center.
Look, I love this industry. I love photography. I have profound appreciation for photographers. It’s what I’ve wanted to do all my life. I want this industry to survive. I want this industry to succeed! Every day I get up motivated to do everything I possibly can do to save, and ultimately reinvent this dying industry before it’s dead. I’m simply offering an alternative, a fantastic alternative, to the status quo. If you’re not looking for an option to constantly decreasing commissions, lower image prices, buyers frustrated by image duplication and marketplace chaos, and on and on, then don’t join PicturEngine, it’s that simple. I understand skepticism and questions. Hey, I’m skeptical and ask tons of questions every day of my life, and that’s simply being smart and savvy. But outright libelous accusations, are just not productive to our common goal. May I ask that we keep the discussion based in reality by first reviewing the PicturEngine support center resources, and secondly by reading original posts rather than concocted and false misquotes. If after reviewing these resources, something remains unclear, please PLEASE, by all means, ask me!!
Please try to keep in mind that I’m a photographer, I think like a photographer, I know what it’s like to be a photographer. We’re on the same team. Your success is our success. Please join me on this positive journey. Together we CAN create a bright future for the stock photo industry.
Best,
JB
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Hi Justin, thanks for your reply. From what I see Cascoly has done a cut and paste from PE to illustrate that PE will offer a service that enables buyers to source the cheapest supplier of any given image returned by a PE search. Is that the case? It certainly appears that way!
You claim that your words are being taken out of context but, as I see it, your words appear to have been taken directly from the text on your website. Do you dispute that?
Kind regards,
Monty
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it appears that buyers & sellers are being told 2 different things - sellers are told we can direct the search to our preferred site or agency, but buyers are told " Image buyers get the best image at the best price with access to all outlets from which the image can be licensed."
here are extracts from the PE website :
=======================
picturengine to buyers:
Search, find and license images. It’s that simple! The world's stock photos consolidated into ONE search! Some images are exclusive to a single stock photo agency, some are listed with multiple agencies and some are available directly from the photographer. Image buyers get the best image at the best price with access to all outlets from which the image can be licensed.
....,.
The option to choose not only which image to license, but also from whom to license it, assures images buyers the best image at the best price. We include all representatives licensing a particular image and allow the image buyer to make an informed purchasing decision.
Once you find and image, we show you all available sources to license that image
============================
picturengine to photographers:
Does PicturEngine compare prices?
Last Updated: Aug 17, 2012 10:58AM CDT
NO. PicturEngine does NOT compare prices.
We know buyers demand good prices. The only way to get the best price on ANY good or service, is to reduce the distance from the producer to the buyer. We DO NOT compare prices, instead we send the buyer to the base agency (where the image was uploaded FIRST) or directly to the photographer (if they are on the PicturEngine platform). Sending the buyer directly to the base agency or photographer, effectively removes unnecessary expenses added to the sale. Our goal is to help both photographers and image buyers get the most out of each transaction.
---------------------
Am I competing with my agencies?
Last Updated: May 05, 2012 10:34PM CDT
No. If an image is listed with an agency, and the photographer lists the same image on the PicturEngine platform, buyers see only the image listed by the photographer on the PicturEngine platform.
If you're going to quote someone you need to link to the original source. Where are you getting this from?
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Carried on from this thread:
http://www.microstockgroup.com/general-stock-discussion/check-out-picturengine/msg283495/?topicseen#new (http://www.microstockgroup.com/general-stock-discussion/check-out-picturengine/msg283495/?topicseen#new)
« Reply #266 on: Today at 06:06 »
0
Found it with advanced Google search. They've removed it, here's the Google cached version, better get some grabs if you want it before the cache goes:
[url]http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MEQb7BTJQtgJ:support.picturengine.com/customer/portal/articles/415464-how-does-picturengine-work#[/url] ([url]http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MEQb7BTJQtgJ:support.picturengine.com/customer/portal/articles/415464-how-does-picturengine-work#[/url])
I guess this is the new edited version with the "show you all of the available sources to license that image" bits removed.
[url]http://support.picturengine.com/customer/portal/articles/415524-how-does-it-work-[/url] ([url]http://support.picturengine.com/customer/portal/articles/415524-how-does-it-work-[/url])
It now seems a bit harsh to have accused someone of libel on the strength of quite accurate quotes, could you not have just said you have changed the way Picturengine was supposed to work (if that is what has happened)?
« Last Edit: Today at 06:14 by Microbius »
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I think for everyone being suspicious and calling this a witch hunt and libel, the screenshot posted by grafix should cover that area. No words were twisted or removed, its there. Everything from made up buyers, the non existent marketing plan, pushing fees onto buyers, lying to us about not offering the cheapest image, the ktools debacle and all of a sudden the need for a 1000 unique images should be enough for everyone to be cautious about signing up and drop 480 euros in a hole.
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It's interesting to note that when we first heard about PE, Grafix, as far as I remember, was all over the idea. At that time, being a natural cynic, I wondered if this was a scam. $480 was more than I was prepared to give to someone I didn't know, for something that doesn't exist.
Now it seems that Grafix has completely turned around and is violently opposed to the idea, and in my opinion has become quite poisonous in his opposition, and I am curious to know why the change?
It does seem to be taking a long time to get started, but haven't we complained many times about IS pushing out revisions to the site without fully testing them?
I still have my doubts, but I have decided to give it a go, mainly because of the way we are treated by the agencies.
I do agree that Justin doesn't do himself any favours, but we should remember that he must be very busy, and the site is still in Beta. It's not really surprising that there are contradictory statements on the site, my guess is that Justin changed his mind along the way about how to set the thing up, and hasn't yet sorted out the wording.
If this is a scam, there won't ever be any customers, and since the customers won't directly be paying for PE, there would be no need to write the paragraph about finding the cheapest image, which is in full view and easy for contributors to find.
I can't help thinking about Colemanballs. You may have to be old and English to know what these are, but you can Google for it. I think these could be labelled Justinballs - unintentional, to be fixed before launch.
Also, if this a scam, there isn't a lot of money in it. How many people are going to be paying $480 before launch? I can't imagine it will be enough for an American to bother taking the risk.
If anyone is going to flame me for this, please do something you seem to have not bothered doing before, and read my comments in full, don't skim, make a guess at what you think I said, and start ranting. It's very clear that people are commenting without fully reading what's gone before, and without thinking.
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PicturEngine is in open photographer beta, meaning that we're not yet open to the public. The purpose of beta is testing the site, looking for areas of improvement, bug fixes, etc. We are actively asking for feedback from photographers in an effort to make PicturEngine the best it can be BEFORE advertising publicly. We do NOT compare prices, period. I apologize that one word on one page of our website led some people to believe otherwise, despite numerous other places which clearly articulate the fact that we do NOT compare prices. We have updated the page in question to more clearly state the fact that we do NOT compare prices. Thank you very much for bringing this concern to our attention. We greatly appreciate constructive, professional, and productive criticism/feedback, which will enable us to more quickly complete the beta process and launch publicly. Again, thank you. If you find any other inconsistencies, please email our support center so we can review the issue and get it resolved.
Best,
JB
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Why do you keep pushing the beta? When are you going live or think you go live?
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We have advertising scheduled for first quarter 2013, and possibly sooner if we are able to get the Advertising Only finished up quickly. We are working every day to get PicturEngine fully launched!
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It's interesting to note that when we first heard about PE, Grafix, as far as I remember, was all over the idea. At that time, being a natural cynic, I wondered if this was a scam. $480 was more than I was prepared to give to someone I didn't know, for something that doesn't exist.
Now it seems that Grafix has completely turned around and is violently opposed to the idea, and in my opinion has become quite poisonous in his opposition, and I am curious to know why the change?
It does seem to be taking a long time to get started, but haven't we complained many times about IS pushing out revisions to the site without fully testing them?
I still have my doubts, but I have decided to give it a go, mainly because of the way we are treated by the agencies.
I do agree that Justin doesn't do himself any favours, but we should remember that he must be very busy, and the site is still in Beta. It's not really surprising that there are contradictory statements on the site, my guess is that Justin changed his mind along the way about how to set the thing up, and hasn't yet sorted out the wording.
If this is a scam, there won't ever be any customers, and since the customers won't directly be paying for PE, there would be no need to write the paragraph about finding the cheapest image, which is in full view and easy for contributors to find.
I can't help thinking about Colemanballs. You may have to be old and English to know what these are, but you can Google for it. I think these could be labelled Justinballs - unintentional, to be fixed before launch.
Also, if this a scam, there isn't a lot of money in it. How many people are going to be paying $480 before launch? I can't imagine it will be enough for an American to bother taking the risk.
If anyone is going to flame me for this, please do something you seem to have not bothered doing before, and read my comments in full, don't skim, make a guess at what you think I said, and start ranting. It's very clear that people are commenting without fully reading what's gone before, and without thinking.
If you read through the other thread you'll see the turning point where I started to have my doubts. It just got worse from there.
The fact that I was all over the idea and probably the most supportive of PE from the beginning and then changed my tune about PE (not the idea), should tell you something. Saying I'm "violently opposed to the idea" is taking it a bit far. I like the idea. The idea is great, it's getting it (and seeing) working that's become the issue. I now have my doubts because of the way Justin has handled himself, because of the BS we've been fed, and possibly because of his background. At the beginning I was sold on PE because I really wanted it to work out for us. I still do. I would like nothing more that to see this industry - which has squeezed the life out of every photographer and has taken the enjoyment out of it – evolve into something new that gives us back some freedom and control over our own property. But unfortunately, Justin has destroyed my enthusiasm about PE being the site that does that. I'm still hopeful it will work out. I like the idea and if PE isn't the site that saves the day, I'm hoping something similar will pop up.
If you read through the other thread you’ll see the disappointment unfold but since we've moved to this thread, let me summarize it here:
First it was the ktools issue. Justin came in here telling us how great he is, that he's been in this industry for years, has interviewed buyers and contributors and as a result came up with PE, and that he has been working on PE for four years. After all the hype we find out he doesn't even have ktools set up. Surely, if he had researched this properly, he would have known that ktools is a popular platform used by us to sell direct. We were then told he would work on setting it up. Later we were told that if we have ktools, the $120 advertising plan doesn't apply and that we would have to sign up as an agent and would have to pay more than $120. He told us the amount would be decided on an individual basis. That there lost my interest but I remained hopeful. Lisa has been pushing him to set up ktools and Justin finally turned around and pretty much told Lisa that if she wants it, she should chase ktools for it herself. That put me off. She did that and we still don't have ktools.
Then there's the issue about site comparison. We were told from the beginning that buyers would not be able to compare prices between agents and that only one agent (the first indexed) would show up on PE. Now we find out that's BS. I don't know where cascoly pasted that stuff from but what was cached by Google is as recent as a couple of weeks ago. I can understand him changing his mind along the way, but this isn't changing his mind, this is saying one thing to buyers and something completely different to us – from the beginning.
Then there's the bit about having 40K buyers lined up waiting to use the site. I don't know if that's true or not but even if it is, he obviously won them over by promising them that they'll be able to use PE to find the image with the cheapest price. I'm assuming what cascoly posted is legit but even if it isn't what is cached is enough to tell me that we – both buyers and photographers- have been played.
Then there's the constant sales pitch to push us to purchase a plan before it goes live but here we are, almost approaching a year later and it's still in beta. He knows most of us here are waiting for ktools or smugmug and he still hasn't done anything with those. I suspect he’s delaying them on purpose so that we ditch our own sites and pay him $480 instead of $120+.
Then there was the 90 day free trial offer which is useless. Signing up for free to test out a site that isn't even working yet, is pointless. He should go live and give us 12 months free to test out a fully operational site.
Then Justin comes into this thread and tells us not to bother unless we have 1000 unique images to supply him exclusively – see his reply #27 on this thread and my reply #32 where I quoted the relevant bits in red but I’ll copy them again. He wrote:
The purpose of our recent push for the PicturEngine photographer platform is to get content onboard that is NOT currently at agencies, bringing our image buying audience truly unique content, right alongside the “same ol’ stuff” they can find repeatedly at agencies
[/quote] If you don’t yet have 1,000 unique images in your portfolio or collection, keep us on your radar for when you do.[/quote]
So basically, he's wasted most people's time because most people either don't have 1000 'unique' images or if they do they don't want to upload them to PE exclusively. Then he comes in here all defensive saying that his words were taken out of context. Do you see anywhere that I've taken his words out of context? I simply quoted his EXACT words.
Then there's his background which I ignored and shouldn't have. He has a porn site directed to PE. How unprofessional is that? I don't want my images and my associated with porn! Lol, so far, this has been his only marketing plan. If this is the only way he get can draw attention to his site, forget it.
And now finally, there's cascoly's post. I don;t know where it came from but Justin did imply that it does exist but just like the 1000 unique images, he's claiming we've taken his words out of context lol. He's even gone so far as to call this a witch hunt and made accusations of libel, even though it's quite obvious that he's been telling a few big fat 'whoppers' along the way.
Then there's all his smartass comments, eg "microstock 101". Lol, could he be any more patronizing, condescending and insulting? There are photographers in here that were doing this while he was still in diapers.
I shouldn't forget the PayPal issue where he blatantly announced he'll be passing on the PayPal fee to the buyers, which is against PayPal's terms. I know sellers are allowed to bump up their prices and charge the buyer a processing/handling fee that is less than the PayPal fee, but Justin writing in a public forum that the buyers will pay the PayPal fee puts his PayPal account (and the PayPal account of the Photographers supplying him) in jeopardy. If he’s been in this industry for that many years and has been dealing with PayPal since 2006, he should know better.
So now do you see why I have doubts and suspicions. Had he come in here being honest from the beginning without being condescending, my support for his site would have continued. Instead I've wasted my time thinking about this. I'm still hoping it pans out but I'm going to be hopeful on the sidelines and let other guinea pigs take the risk and possibly the fall. Most of us here can't do anything anyway because we're waiting on ktools – which looks like he won’t be setting up anywhere in the near future, if at all.
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Picturengine is the tool we have been waiting for a long time. I think we shall give Justin a chance to make it, and of course everything cannot be perfect from scratch. I can imagine the difficulties in making things working properly, I think we shall let him work on the project.
I was one of the few (4 or 5) that indicated in a specific thread that Ktool compatibility was highly wanted. If we are only 5 I can understand this cannot be a priority for Justin, if we are more we should maybe tell him all of us so to get Ktool on board asap......
For now I have taken the 3 month free option and I'm presently uploading my pictures as a test. I have a Ktool store and I intend to stop the test once the 3 months free period is over and from than I will wait on Ktool compatibility....unless the 3 first months sales are enough to justify to stay as it is....
jean
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The more I think about it the less bothered I am.
For all intents and purposes just another agency that has come up with a clever way to get past the collection size barrier to entry in the industry.
So we pay a flat fee rather than a percentage, all that means is that the agency will have less motivation to market our work.
I would rather they just take a percentage, host our work and let us set our own prices.
Anyone who uploads direct gets listed first in the search results.
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PicturEngine is in open photographer beta, meaning that we're not yet open to the public. The purpose of beta is testing the site, looking for areas of improvement, bug fixes, etc. We are actively asking for feedback from photographers in an effort to make PicturEngine the best it can be BEFORE advertising publicly. We do NOT compare prices, period. I apologize that one word on one page of our website led some people to believe otherwise, despite numerous other places which clearly articulate the fact that we do NOT compare prices. We have updated the page in question to more clearly state the fact that we do NOT compare prices. Thank you very much for bringing this concern to our attention. We greatly appreciate constructive, professional, and productive criticism/feedback, which will enable us to more quickly complete the beta process and launch publicly. Again, thank you. If you find any other inconsistencies, please email our support center so we can review the issue and get it resolved.
Best,
JB
before you start calling people names maybe you should do some ALPHA testing -- the quotes, which i accurately noted were directly from your website, were longer than 'one word' and were NOT simple misstatements or taken out of context - they were 2 COMPLETELY different sales pitches -- not only did they absolutely contradict each other, one was the opposite of what you were pitching here
you keep saying it's a photographer's beta, but there'sNOTHING there to even hint at a 'BETA' - etter do some more research to what a beta test actually is - when we sign up for 'ad only' there's almost NOTHING there - no indicatin of how the system will work - how can this ossibly be a beta when there's nothing to test?
and it's NOT photographer only, since 1 also registered as a buyer and got to see the pages which i quoted here
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i thought the idea you initially described was of interest and i spent time trying to see if it would work - i even PAID for a photoshelter acct to test it out since you dont support smugug. only after i wasted my time creating galeries on PS did i discover i wasnt going to be able to 'test' them on your system, since your current system DOES NOT DO ANYTHING! and yo then declared that i'd have to start paying before i could actually see anything on your site.
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If you're going to quote someone you need to link to the original source. Where are you getting this from?
sorry for any confusion, but all quotes were taken from picturengine.com website [i thot everyone in this thread wold know that's what the 'pe website' is - i changed NO WORDS and used ellipses to shorten some lenght, but nothing was out of context
the buyer & photographer sections told 2 compeltely different stories - i dont know what justinj's talking about when he said they were able to fix it by changing 'one word' -- the differences were major.
maybe some of this was from a older idea of the site and no one bothered to actually read their own site before letting other people in, but justin hasnt said that to date either. the entire pitch to buyers was to say we can get you the best images at the cheapeast rates. since there's nothing to actually test, we may not know until they let the system go 'live'
i tried to pull up the site picturengine.com just now, but dont get anything. it may be my slow wifi while traveling. i've saved the original quotes on my home computer.
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ok, using site:picturengine.com i was able to find the new pages;
http://www.picturengine.com/beta/static.php?page=link2&type=buyer (http://www.picturengine.com/beta/static.php?page=link2&type=buyer)
Features
Search, find and license images. It’s that simple! The world's stock photos consolidated into ONE search! Some images are exclusive to a single stock photo agency, some are listed with multiple agencies and some are available directly from the photographer. Image buyers get the best image at the best price with access to direct outlets from which the image can be licensed.
Individual photographers licensing images directly through PicturEngine receive 100% of the image license fee, and are encouraged to price images competitively. No middleman means the best images at the best price.
======================
http://www.picturengine.com/beta/static.php?page=faqbuyer (http://www.picturengine.com/beta/static.php?page=faqbuyer)
this section now reads:
===============
We DO NOT compare prices, instead we send the buyer to the base agency (where the image was uploaded first) or directly to the photographer (if they are on the PicturEngine platform) to get the best possible price.
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so yes, the text has changed,- but they're still telling buyer's they'll get the best price when that is no longer true, since they are not promising to send them to the lowest price offering - and how can they if the are promising elsewhere that they're most definitely not comparing prices?
they are implicitly assuming that the first place a photographer uploads has the cheapest price AND that if the photographer offers it themselves it will be cheaper than any agency. neither is true
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ok, using site:picturengine.com i was able to find the new pages;
[url]http://www.picturengine.com/beta/static.php?page=link2&type=buyer[/url] ([url]http://www.picturengine.com/beta/static.php?page=link2&type=buyer[/url])
Features
Search, find and license images. It’s that simple! The world's stock photos consolidated into ONE search! Some images are exclusive to a single stock photo agency, some are listed with multiple agencies and some are available directly from the photographer. Image buyers get the best image at the best price with access to direct outlets from which the image can be licensed.
Individual photographers licensing images directly through PicturEngine receive 100% of the image license fee, and are encouraged to price images competitively. No middleman means the best images at the best price.
======================
[url]http://www.picturengine.com/beta/static.php?page=faqbuyer[/url] ([url]http://www.picturengine.com/beta/static.php?page=faqbuyer[/url])
this section now reads:
===============
We DO NOT compare prices, instead we send the buyer to the base agency (where the image was uploaded first) or directly to the photographer (if they are on the PicturEngine platform) to get the best possible price.
============
so yes, the text has changed,- but they're still telling buyer's they'll get the best price when that is no longer true, since they are not promising to send them to the lowest price offering - and how can they if the are promising elsewhere that they're most definitely not comparing prices?
they are implicitly assuming that the first place a photographer uploads has the cheapest price AND that if the photographer offers it themselves it will be cheaper than any agency. neither is true
Wow, that's pretty disappointing but it's what I expected. I'm going to attach a copy of a screenshot of that in case he changes it again on his site and accuses anyone of libel again.
Cascoly, sorry that you actually spent money on this. I almost did myself. Early on in the other thread I mentioned that my web hosting on my own site was up for renewal and I was waiting for PE to go live to make a decision on whether to renew my hosting or ditch my site and upload directly to PE. I considered ditching my site but now I'm really glad I renewed it.
The other thing that irks me and I keep forgetting to mention is that Justin keeps saying that PE is not an agent. How can they not be an agent when photographers upload their images on their site, they sell to buyers on their behalf and handling the transaction and the payment? Of course they're an agent. They're a search engine AND an agent. I can't see how he states that they're not.
This makes me wonder whether they'll be infringing copyright. As a search engine that doesn't make money from the site, they can claim to be a service provider and can protect themselves with "fair usage" and "safe harbor". But if they're making money on the same site, can they get away with it? I'm not sure. I suppose it depends how they display the other agents' images and what size they show. I can't remember what happens when you click on a thumb and the site's down right now - maintenance (removing evidence? lol). If they display the full sized watermarked image, the other agents might give them a hard time. It will be interesting to see.
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Cascoly, sorry that you actually spent money on this. I almost did myself. Early on in the other thread I mentioned that my web hosting on my own site was up for renewal and I was waiting for PE to go live to make a decision on whether to renew my hosting or ditch my site and upload directly to PE. I considered ditching my site but now I'm really glad I renewed it.
my smugmug renewal is up soon, so PS looked like a possible alternative -- but for me, it turned out i can stay at the $150 pro rate rather than the new smugmug $240 rate as that new version doesnt have anything i really need [you can still sell prints, images, etc at $150 - you just can't customize as much] -- so i'm set for now and will spend my time on some SEO work for my smugmug site. i recently worked out a way to display my smugmug gallery thumbnails on my cascoly website, adding backlinks and alt image text. eg
http://cascoly.com/photo/travel-india-markets.asp (http://cascoly.com/photo/travel-india-markets.asp)
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Well that's just it, it's not as if we're all going to disappear into a black hole if we don't sign up with PE. 30% of my income is from selling direct and I expect that to increase since I'm no longer supplying the micros with new content.
Even if PE pans out in the long term, they're not going to be a hit overnight since if don't want to put any real money into marketing. Google's not going to disappear if PE takes off. If anything, I expect Google to come up with something similar and put PE back in their place if they're vastly effected by them.
Like you I've been working on my backlinks too. It's work but it's worthwhile. I suppose if I don't see great improvement with SEO, I can always start a porn site and direct it to my site :D
By the way, I'm curious, what's smugmug like? Taking your costs into account, how does it stack up compared to the micros?
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....How can they not be an agent when photographers upload their images on their site...
It's a bit different. They use Rackspace. Contributors upload to Rackspace and give PE a key to access their files. It's not the conventional agent setup that other sites use but it's virtually the same. Perhaps the big difference is that if we don't make $480 in sales and cover the Rackspace fees, we end up losing money.
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Why can Flickr and FAA offer unlimited upload for 35 dollar a year? I have made 430 dollar on FAA in 3 months, thats made it a well worth investment. An average commission per sale of 53 dollar. I realize you cant compare FAA with PE but I dont see my files selling that much to make 480 dollar back that easily. And FAA also gives me 100% commission + commission on their material sales.
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I suppose that volume subscriptions may drive prices down....just speculating though.
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I suppose that volume subscriptions may drive prices down....just speculating though.
Probably, but its hard to get volume when the entry price is so high.
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I suppose that volume subscriptions may drive prices down....just speculating though.
Probably, but its hard to get volume when the entry price is so high.
$30? Just to be clear I was referring to FAA's $30 a year fee. Their site says they have about 100k contributors but don't know how many of those have the premium package ($30). If it's half then we're looking at 1.5 mil. Not too much doe.
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Like you I've been working on my backlinks too. It's work but it's worthwhile. I suppose if I don't see great improvement with SEO, I can always start a porn site and direct it to my site :D
By the way, I'm curious, what's smugmug like? Taking your costs into account, how does it stack up compared to the micros?
smugmug is well designed & the tech support folks are extremely helpful. also, there's a large # of plugins and other features available. the gallery system is easy to use.
i had tried the opensource GALLERY2 earlier, but it took more maintenance
i dont make enough to pay for the yearly sub - but my sales thru FAA and Redbubble are minor also. my main use is as a convenient way to build ad traffic with captioned images to my hubpages, and my own website, and otherwise promote my website outside the agencies. for me, it's really not a replacement or even competitor to microstock, but addresses different audiences
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Like you I've been working on my backlinks too. It's work but it's worthwhile. I suppose if I don't see great improvement with SEO, I can always start a porn site and direct it to my site :D
By the way, I'm curious, what's smugmug like? Taking your costs into account, how does it stack up compared to the micros?
smugmug is well designed & the tech support folks are extremely helpful. also, there's a large # of plugins and other features available. the gallery system is easy to use.
i had tried the opensource GALLERY2 earlier, but it took more maintenance
i dont make enough to pay for the yearly sub - but my sales thru FAA and Redbubble are minor also. my main use is as a convenient way to build ad traffic with captioned images to my hubpages, and my own website, and otherwise promote my website outside the agencies. for me, it's really not a replacement or even competitor to microstock, but addresses different audiences
Thanks Steve, that was helpful. I was wondering whether I should pack up my own site and sell on a platform like Photoshelter or Smugmug but it seems that it wouldn't bring in any more traffic. For me it's about eventually replacing the microstocks. I might leave my dregs on some of the agents but anything worth anything will be sold exclusively through me.
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1st quarter is gone. Its April, 2nd quarter. Whats the status of this project? Is it out of beta? Has it launched?
Did anyone have any sales? Was it worth the investment?
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Wasn't it about to be launched a year ago? Seems like a very long delay after being told several times last year that the full launch was very close.
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I did a google search for it, found the front page and it still says Photographer Beta Now open. If you do an image search it still puts up the dialog saying this is limited and once it has launched all sites will be searched.
In other words I see no change at all from many months ago, and I hope no photographer has been paying them monthly fees as nothing's functional yet. All the articles Google search returned on the first page were from a year ago, so if there is anything going on, Google didn't find it.
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http://support.picturengine.com/customer/portal/articles/478852-when-will-the-site-be-%22live-%22 (http://support.picturengine.com/customer/portal/articles/478852-when-will-the-site-be-%22live-%22)
When will the site be "live?"
Last Updated: Aug 16, 2012
I wonder what have caused them to abandon the project? If they wait any longer, Symbiostock will take their place, if its not too late already.
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Whatever happened to PicturEngine?
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I don't know but for some reason I'm going to leave this link here :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
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Whatever happened to PicturEngine?
They are doing great.
Patience is virtue. ;)
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Whatever happened to PicturEngine?
They are doing great.
Patience is virtue. ;)
ROFL! why is there still no there there? the domain just points to a domain broker!!!!
last heard they were asking photogs to pay for a service they couldn't even see in action,and that was more than a year ago
they have a long way to go to gain ANY respectability after the misrepresentations they made here, and the failure to address MAJOR discrepancies in the way they were pitching to sellers vs buyers
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I hope nobody gave these people any money. I was suspicious about this group all along because some of the top peeps in here asked questions that they simply couldn't answer very convincingly.
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I hope nobody gave these people any money. I was suspicious about this group all along because some of the top peeps in here asked questions that they simply couldn't answer very convincingly.
I think some people did sign up. Not sure if any cost were involved, I believe it was 90 dollar or something. And after beta it would be 480 dollar/yr.
Anyhoo, I am sure he ran into issues. They shot past their go live dead line of April by 6 months and there hasnt been any communication from them from about 10 months I believe.
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There's been quite a lot of activity behind the scenes in the last few weeks, and we've been in contact with Justin.
Things are still happening, though slowly.
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I've spoken with Justin in the last couple of days. He told me PicturEngine is on the verge of their Grand Opening. Sadly, he also told me this three months ago...and six months ago....and nine months ago... and also twelve months ago.
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I've spoken with Justin in the last couple of days. He told me PicturEngine is on the verge of their Grand Opening. Sadly, he also told me this three months ago...and six months ago....and nine months ago... and also twelve months ago.
is the grand opening going to happen before or after a live beta test????
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Whatever happened to PicturEngine?
They are doing great.
Patience is virtue. ;)
How are you doing there Maigi? Have you made any sales? Has anyone else?
Looks like they've finally gone live but I notice that the sim search still isn't available and the search can be really slow. It wasn't what I was expecting with all the high tech talk Justin was pushing.
Another thing I've noticed is that Google isn't indexing PE's photographers' images in their search. That could be a good thing if the site takes off, especially considering all the shenanigans on Google distributing high res pics.
Traffic wise they're not doing too well yet but they seem to be improving. On Alexa they're ranked globally on 1,294,869 but have jumped from 3,079,390 in the last three months. In the US, they're ranked 164,651.
I'm trying to decide whether to go with Symbiostock and later sign up with PE with the Advertising Plan, or wait till my hosting expires and sign up directly as a photographer on PE for $480. If I add up the cost of hosting myself and the advertising plan, it's a bit cheaper but then there are more headaches maintaining your own site. The RM calculator on PE looks great too. Hopefully Symbiostock introduces something similar.
Edit: Just noticed that the search options don't work. If I check the RF, microstock or Subscriptions box, RM still appears. The search results also don't incorporate other microstock agents.
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THere is no content, its an empty shell. Leo is working with Justin to get a Symbiostock connector.
But I am not paying one cent for anything. I have lost all trust in them.
My own site is ranked higher then them on Alexa, I am in the 600k somewhere.
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There is only a partial search available there right now. They still have not officially gone live.
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I started this thread almost a year ago complaining that they hadn't advanced yet and it looks like they haven't moved. What have they been doing?
Yeh, Ron, that's the first thing I thought when I saw their Alexa rating. Symbio hasn't been around long and they have them beat already. I also noticed they only have 10 people following them on Twitter and about 40 on Facebook. Where are all those interested 40,000 buyers?
I think I'll wait for Symbio's new licensing. Thinking this through, if Symbio takes off there's probably no need for PicturEngine.
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I don't see any point in giving PE money. Justin shouldn't of kept telling people that they were about to launch. One mistake is acceptable but this has happened too many times now. Get it ready before building up the hype.
I think it's very unlikely but if PE takes off, we could get a contributors site with 1 million images that would get in to the PE search for free. I think that's a better option than all of us paying PE every month.
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I don't see any point in giving PE money. Justin shouldn't of kept telling people that they were about to launch. One mistake is acceptable but this has happened too many times now. Get it ready before building up the hype.
I think it's very unlikely but if PE takes off, we could get a contributors site with 1 million images that would get in to the PE search for free. I think that's a better option than all of us paying PE every month.
Agreed.
I would have forgiven the days since there are always hiccups with most start ups. What put me off was his conflicting sales pitch to buyers and sellers.
Now that Symbio is available to us, I'm not sure if I want PE to succeed. If a buyer's going to choose someone else's image over mine, I'd rather it be one directly from the photographer who will earn 100% than from any agent that will earn half or more of the cut.
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I haven't looked at PE but one advantage could be that a buyer only have to register once to have buying access to the images. (at Symbiostock you still have to register for each site individually). I maybe would pay for a global simplified registering if priced reasonable.
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I haven't looked at PE but one advantage could be that a buyer only have to register once to have buying access to the images. (at Symbiostock you still have to register for each site individually). I maybe would pay for a global simplified registering if priced reasonable.
Registration has been simplified, all a buyer has to do is enter email and password and can go straight to purchase. There is no need to wait for an email, or copy in a random password. Its very straightforward now, saving minutes per visit. But yes, each site still requires that login.
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I haven't looked at PE but one advantage could be that a buyer only have to register once to have buying access to the images. (at Symbiostock you still have to register for each site individually). I maybe would pay for a global simplified registering if priced reasonable.
PE is just a search engine - you srill have to deal with each site separately:
from the PE site:
Image results include all of the big stock photo agencies, the best niche agencies, as well as individual photographers. Image buyers click right through to where the image is housed to purchase a usage license.
and
When you find an image you like, you have the option to search for similar images throughout the industry, ensuring a complete search. Once you find the right image, just click and license directly from the source.
eg, if you select an image from corbis, you get switched to the corbis site to pay
PE does now claim:
If an image is listed with an agency, and the photographer lists the same image on the PicturEngine platform, buyers see only the image listed by the photographer on the PicturEngine platform.
but how this will happen isn't specified and the demo doesn't show examples
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Good catch Steve