Again, do your own homework.  Hint look for the "it's my business" post.

Why would you think I have a personal issue with you?  You're the OP who started this thread.  I replied to post, someone mentioned you and I responded to that post.  

And do you really think I take you seriously?  You've been at this game for years and you haven't even got yourself a website or at least a blog yet because you prefer to waste your time on here.  If you lose revenue, you can blame yourself for sheer laziness.  Your OP is ridiculous.  You expect people with the skills, the drive and the enthusiam that you lack to step up and help you out promoting your work?   10 years ago it would have been a lot more complicated setting up webstie, but today, anyone can do it.

Quote from: sunnymars on August 25, 2010, 20:03

You typically got offended earlier when I mentioned branching out in other areas other than 'people'.  I was talking about your subject matter.  I didn't mean do weddings.  I was talking about creating images that you can sell as microstock and otherways but instead of considering the advice of a 'newbie' you went with the "who the fk are you to tell me what to do" when all I was trying to do was help you.

Sorry, can you tell me where I said the above?  This sounds like you have some sort of personal issue with me.  Since I don't know you at all I can't begin to imagine what triggered that.  Feel free to post whatever opinions you want, but don't expect me to take them seriously.  

Quote from: sunnymars on August 25, 2010, 20:03

lol It makes no difference to me if I have credibility at microstockgroup.com or anywhere relating to microstock.  I'm not after credibility.

Oh my, do we have a little attitude problem here? Just some good advice. Try to do some work instead of infesting forums here and at DT (where I sadly can't block you) with incomprehensible BS. Sweet dreams, and PLOINK.  

Did you notice that the number of her postings at DT exceeds her total number of images?  And equals her total number of sales?!  And this is someone who is lecturing us "old timers" on wasting time with useless forum postings?  Best laugh I have had in weeks!  Maybe I should Un-ignore her after all.  You can't pay to get entertainment this good

Ahh, all love peace and harmony here again  
Been catching up with this thread and i think there are some great ideas floating here! Still so much questionmarks... how to maintain quality, which is crucial imho (no clue..we all love our pics like they're our children and all would be hurt to be left out); would it be a website (costy + time intensive for the victims maintaining it), or a public lightbox (coming from which site, and where and how to host?)
ETA *snip*
(meh, my english is ditching me; cant get my point across, will try again at a more decent hour )

Thanks for the Economics 101 lesson.  I'm a Management Accountant/CPA

Quote from: sunnymars on August 25, 2010, 18:57

Do you really think their first point of contact will be some website with a group of desperate photographers listing a handful of their best photography.  Designers don't give a * who they buy from.

Take out the acrimony and this is a valid criticism. Our images are now a commodity. Just about the only way to compete when selling a commodity is to lower prices. So we have the fears of a 'race to the bottom' and .01 images, and these fears are well founded. Commodity sellers have to compete by lowering prices, it's Economics 101.

The alternative to selling images as a commodity is a 'franchise' or a brand. If "Designers don't give a * who they buy from" it is hard to establish any kind of franchise, but not necessarily impossible.

This thread is about the possibility of establishing a franchise or franchises for some imagists by competing with search, by using some kind of lightbox publishing idea. As christophertvarne and FD pointed out, buyers really do use lightboxes, of at least two different kinds. And Alias suggested ways to use social media and recommendations (with google SEO coming along as a result) to make the lightboxes highly visible.

Can somebody use lightboxes to put his or her images ahead of the pack, create a franchise in a sea of commodity-images? If so I am interested in participating. The real question is can it be done? If so, how?

Exactly right and if anyone doesn't believe that, they should go do some occasional design work for a few months.  I did and still am doing it from time to time.  I've picked up a few tips from it:

1.  I now understand the micro industry from top to bottom.

2.  I got into the designer's head.  Designers look for the cheapest, most original and current work and don't even give a thought about the artist or their reputation.  Also a lot of designers do their own work.

3.  I familiarised myself with current trends.

4.  I learnt that microstock is a little frowned upon lately and has a stigma attached to it.  A lot of clients go so far as to say in their brief "No microstock or clipart please!".

5.  I've made $3.5K's from it so far from various avenues.

6.  It makes me think outside the square and helps me come up with original work and work that I wouldn't do otherwise.

7.  Some of my leftovers go to microstock and/or PODs.
 

Not necessarily. We have clients that go to our competitors' websites, download the low-res/thumbnail and ask if we have the same images. Why would they do that if they don't care about where they license the images?

Is it because it is cheaper from you?Or perhaps you are a subscription site that they have already paid into? Maybe they have an account with you but your search engine is a mess so they can't find anything on it (in which case you need to do something).

Sunnymars, it may come as a shock to you but you are not the only person on the board and my question was addressed to someone else. The someone who I quoted. Someone who apparently is part of an agency and was able to say what actually goes on. So I was looking for actual information, not your idle speculations.

Thank you.

Sunnymars, it may come as a shock to you but you are not the only person on the board and my question was addressed to someone else. The someone who I quoted. Someone who apparently is part of an agency and was able to say what actually goes on. So I was looking for actual information, not your idle speculations.

Thank you.

Baldrick's, sorry I meant to quote the post above you since I was the one who first said that buyer's don't give a * who they buy from.

I too was looking for feedback from the same person.  I too did not care for YOUR idle speculations.


Thank you.

Can somebody use lightboxes to put his or her images ahead of the pack, create a franchise in a sea of commodity-images? If so I am interested in participating. The real question is can it be done? If so, how?

It will only have a small impact on your overall direct sales but the collateral impact on your search position might be more important. But in fact, we don't know that since the search algorithm is a very well guarded secret on all sites.

I don't have any real proof of impact of having independent light boxes, but you can catch some random sales for sure. What's interesting about those are that they are credit and not subscription sales. Last week I had 2 N/A credit sales of level 5 images on DT, and looking into my Google Analytics, I saw an exit to DT from my site (where the images are up) around the same time. That's no proof since it's incidental but that's one of the ways how an independent light box might work.

There is a valuable lesson in this: don't link your images to low-earning or sub sites, since the buyers there are already very knowledgeable about microstock. Many aren't. You should link to credit sales sites, or at least where a random credit sale is easy.

About the social networks, I always avoided them witnessing people wasting too much time on it. But as all sites are pushing FB and Twitter so much,  one could ask if their research didn't show those generate important sales in the overall traffic. They wouldn't make that programming and design effort on their site if they weren't convinced social networking was an asset.

Totally agree. Most clients are concerned about whether it's the right image and/or the right price. All other things are secondary. When you factor out price and the image, what else is left? Preference to particular agencies? Payment options? I don't know really.

They care which agency as long they can find a quality image they want at the right price.  No one was referring to an agent earlier, well at least I wasn't.  Buyers don't care which artist/photographer the images comes from as long as it's what they're looking for.  They're in a hurry so they're not going to click on an image, then click the contributor's port and let their bio content be the deciding factor on whether they purchase it or not. 

As FD said, I don't expect to catch frequent buyers like designers, who probably have one or two sites they search for images, possibly using subscription packages.  Instead, I would aim casual ones who will buy one or two images paying credits. In SP, I see searches like "buy stethoscope photo" from Google, and in fact many sales there are originated from Google, so this seems to be a valid strategy for casual buyers.

Nobody so far has touched on the important point of measureability, if you cant measure it you can't manage it. That's where the lightbox co-op idea falls apart. lightboxes are still good, but you are a little bit blind which I think is why everyone seems to say "I think they are working but i'm not sure exactly how much they are helping me"

If you send traffic to a lightbox from your own site then you can measure the traffic and look at sales results. you can use bit'ly to watch traffic if you use a social network to 'do your marketing for you', but if you try to build a network on an agencies site then unless they are happy with you all linking via 3rd party server to keep track of things then you have no idea of how many people are looking at the lightbox and who they are. I stock are quite good in that you can keep independent track off views of a single image over time by tracking the impressions of an image on another server in the description text, none of that is exactly childs play!

to really measure things properly go need to be able to correlate which visitors from which source lead to sales - if you can do that then you're in business. but you cant really do that unless you run your own site, and like others he have written I don't recommend that, you'll NEVER be able to match the agencies when it comes to site usability, range of images and trust.