Quote from: aspp on January 15, 2013, 06:13

If you transfer your allegiance from one site to another your new home will sooner or later let you down. Better to be non exclusive. People talk about building something new to replace Istock - but it would costs millions to keep a site running if that site has the sort of traffic you would need to make the sort of impact required to replace Istock. I am sure that most of us would rather be photographers.

The best hope/solution one day will be a system under which people have their own sites built to a common format and with a unified trusted payment system and search. A cell structure with a unified front end. Perhaps running on Amazon EC2 (everyone pays for their bit) but also designed to be portable enough to moved elsewhere either in whole or in part. That would be the revolution. A marketplace.

If you have an Amazon Kindle have you ever wondered why Kindle books often cost as much if not more than the paper version? After all, the ebook doesn't need paper, ink, printing or manual distribution or delivery. How can it cost more? Amazon always say, when people ask that question, that "It's the publisher who sets the price for e-books." That is true ... but it's not the full story.

Books have traditionally been sold in the trade by what became known as the 'Wholesale agreement'. The publisher gives the book a list price and then sells it to the retailer for half of that price (nominally). The retailer is free to sell the book at whatever price they want to (even as a loss-leader) but the publisher will always get their set amount.

When Steve Jobs wanted to sell music via iTunes he had to get the music industry onboard and so effectively bribed them with what became the 'Agency agreement'. The publisher sets their own price for their product and when a sale is made the money is split 70/30 in favour of the publisher. The Agency agreement then became the 'industry standard model' for the App Store and also for iBooks. Amazon didn't have any choice but to step in line if they wanted to be part of the future of e-books. If the price for a Kindle book is discounted it's because the publisher has decided so __ not Amazon.

I think the ideal solution for the stock industry, both micro and macro, would be for a major internet player, such as Amazon or Google, to offer us the 'Agency agreement' for our products. We get to set our own prices and we get to keep 70% of the sale price. Perfect. We could actually afford to sell our images much cheaper and still make more money.

Rather than start our own 'co-op agency' (which is never, ever going to work for more reasons than I can be bothered to list) we should concentrate our efforts on how we can persuade a suitably big player to take us onboard. Who would be the 'perfect partner' and why?

Smugmug, Zenfolio, etc. would be a good start for a partner.  Build us a mirror site that contains thousands of little "stock agencies" with a common search engine.  Each stock agency is responsible for content and following copyright laws etc.   I believe their current fees would shock many, but if we had a collective, we would hire the platform we use and give them our list of demands. 
You're nearly there!