MicrostockGroup

Agency Based Discussion => Macrografiks => Topic started by: fa on April 24, 2013, 11:31

Title: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: fa on April 24, 2013, 11:31
Hello,

I'm the founder of Macrografiks, a new agency focused on macros and still-life photography. We've been online for few months as a beta version, still building our gallery so we are looking for creative photographers to join our site:
http://macrografiks.com/ (http://macrografiks.com/)

We offer a Non-exclusive agreement for all contributors, so you are free to sell your work on other places. Our fixed royalties are:

60% for Standard Licenses
80% for Extended Licenses

For more information and how to apply visit our Join page:
http://macrografiks.com/join (http://macrografiks.com/join)

Attached you will find a small selection of the type of content that we are looking for. We aim for quality and our selection process is strict but we don’t look just for professionals. What we like the most are creative people who want to get involved on a regular basis, so they become an important part of our platform.

Feel free to ask questions in this topic, I’ll try to answer them soon. Also, you can contact us at: http://macrografiks.com/contact (http://macrografiks.com/contact)

All the best,
Francisco Aveledo
Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: CD123 on April 25, 2013, 17:28
I am afraid that at this stage your post is ignored to a large extent. Not due to the members not being friendly to new entrants, but due to the history of people starting up new stock sites in a time where most are struggling to survive and even the real big players are in a price war to keep market share.

If you want ANY reaction here, you will have to come up with much more than the intro you gave here. You will have to convince us why your site is going to survive and make money, while at least 10 of your predecessors did not and wasted a lot of the contributor's valuable time.

What are you offering which is different, which market are you targeting which is new, how are you going to target this market without just "having a stock site" and waiting for business to come in, or will you wait that the contributors bring them with their portfolios?

Let us hear it all please, else you will probably have to suffice with beginner contributors who are still prepared to throw their images at anything which remotely might bring in a Dollar or two..
Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: roede-orm on April 25, 2013, 17:52
Well written, I agree with CD123.
Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: fa on April 25, 2013, 18:31
I am afraid that at this stage your post is ignored to a large extent. Not due to the members not being friendly to new entrants, but due to the history of people starting up new stock sites in a time where most are struggling to survive and even the real big players are in a price war to keep market share.

If you want ANY reaction here, you will have to come up with much more than the intro you gave here. You will have to convince us why your site is going to survive and make money, while at least 10 of your predecessors did not and wasted a lot of the contributor's valuable time.

What are you offering which is different, which market are you targeting which is new, how are you going to target this market without just "having a stock site" and waiting for business to come in, or will you wait that the contributors bring them with their portfolios?

Let us hear it all please, else you will probably have to suffice with beginner contributors who are still prepared to throw their images at anything which remotely might bring in a Dollar or two..

Fair enough CD123! I understand your position but we all have to start from somewhere and the first step to take is to give a short introduction about the site, so those who could be interested will visit the web page and find out more about our offer. Probably a next step could be to show our project presentation where there is more information about the idea and the business in general, however we need to update this document with a less private information.

Our main target are designers and people working on creative areas, like design studios and ad agencies. We come from the design industry, we have been stock-image consumers so we understand how designers work and what they need when they look for resources. One of our main plans is to establish a direct connection between our content and our audience, by bringing ideas on how to use macros and still-life photography. We are still working on a new section in our website that will cover this part but as soon as we implement it I can post about it. However, the best way to be informed about news and updates is to subscribe to our newsletter on the footer of our website. Also you can follow us on different social media.

Thank you for your comment and your suggestion.
Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: CD123 on April 25, 2013, 18:36
So you target market is the same as all the big agencies and you are not bringing any spectacular new approach or strategy into the stock industry which will separate you from the rest.

I wish you well. 
Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: fa on April 25, 2013, 18:40
So you target market is the same as all the big agencies and you are not bringing any spectacular new approach or strategy into the stock industry which will separate you from the rest.

I wish you well.

I have not said we do not have a new approach or strategy, you are assuming that on your own.
Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: CD123 on April 25, 2013, 19:17
Due to the lack of any other info.......
Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: shiyali on April 26, 2013, 01:10
The OP already said that they are specializing on a different segment in the image market. It reminds me of a site a long time ago called justmacros.com. Unfortunately it did not last very long. Macrografiks looks well-designed, and I see no harm in submitting a bunch of images and see how it goes. I wish them well.
Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: roede-orm on April 26, 2013, 01:47
I wish them well.
Of course, I wish them well too. But I think the concept is pretty weak. The big agencies offer good macro shots at low prices too. And before a noticeable effect is achieved, you have to upload a larger amount of pictures. This costs time, which would otherwise certainly brings revenue. Therefore, I doubt if that will work. And I also think you can not start at 0 - or 0 + x. It would be interesting to know how many images are already available at the agency at the moment. röde-orm
Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: elvinstar on April 26, 2013, 09:56
It reminds me of a site a long time ago called justmacros.com. Unfortunately it did not last very long.

That was me.   ;)
I didn't want to say anything, but since you brought it up...

Things went well with that site, but I wasn't prepared for the hosting/bandwidth costs, so I shut it down.
Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: fa on April 26, 2013, 12:29
It reminds me of a site a long time ago called justmacros.com. Unfortunately it did not last very long.

That was me.   ;)
I didn't want to say anything, but since you brought it up...

Things went well with that site, but I wasn't prepared for the hosting/bandwidth costs, so I shut it down.

Hi elvinstar, pity you had to shut it down for that reason, I guess it was time ago when hosting and bandwidth were an issue. Any remains from that project?
Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: mlwinphoto on April 26, 2013, 13:01
Well, since my primary interest is macro nature photography I will be following your site with interest.  It's a niche market but there are buyers out there who are interested in well executed material for a wide variety of uses.  Best of luck and I hope to hop on for the ride at some point.
Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: Veneratio on April 26, 2013, 13:10
Hello,

I'm the founder of Macrografiks, a new agency focused on macros and still-life photography. We've been online for few months as a beta version, still building our gallery so we are looking for creative photographers to join our site:
[url]http://macrografiks.com/[/url] ([url]http://macrografiks.com/[/url])

We offer a Non-exclusive agreement for all contributors, so you are free to sell your work on other places. Our fixed royalties are:

60% for Standard Licenses
80% for Extended Licenses

For more information and how to apply visit our Join page:
[url]http://macrografiks.com/join[/url] ([url]http://macrografiks.com/join[/url])

Attached you will find a small selection of the type of content that we are looking for. We aim for quality and our selection process is strict but we don’t look just for professionals. What we like the most are creative people who want to get involved on a regular basis, so they become an important part of our platform.

Feel free to ask questions in this topic, I’ll try to answer them soon. Also, you can contact us at: [url]http://macrografiks.com/contact[/url] ([url]http://macrografiks.com/contact[/url])

All the best,
Francisco Aveledo


Hi Francisco,

What is the tech spec for submission of images? Any "want" list at the moment? Can you give us some more info regarding current number of images, where you are advertising other than social network sites, etc?
Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: fa on April 26, 2013, 14:44


Hi Francisco,

What is the tech spec for submission of images? Any "want" list at the moment? Can you give us some more info regarding current number of images, where you are advertising other than social network sites, etc?


Hi Veneratio, we deliver a Guideline(PDF) to selected contributors with all that information. We are going to make this guidelines public soon, after we make sure images there can not be copied, they are at a high quality inside the PDF.

We are looking for all subjects and styles within macro and still-life photography. The categories we need to cover the most at this time are:
- Body parts.
- Medicine and science.
- Conceptual
- Technology

However any category is welcome. A good collection of desirable content can be found on our 'Inspiration' Pinterest board below:
http://pinterest.com/macrografiks/inspiration (http://pinterest.com/macrografiks/inspiration)

We are still in the process of building our gallery and as most people know this takes time. Right now our gallery is small, around 10.000 images but there are many new contributors coming, specially experienced profiles with a good amount of content.

At this stage our main advertising methods are:
- Social Media
- Banner ads on design trend blogs and websites
- Designers networks

Once we reach a more complete gallery we are planning to:
- Produce print material for direct mail and P2P marketing.
- Project presentation in a Design conference(Barcelona, Spain)
- Cold calls to many advertising agencies and design studios around the world
- More banner ads
- Print ads on magazines and more...

Additionally, we are planning to implement a new section on our website that will serve as a platform between our content and designers, bringing ideas, suggestions and inspiration. Probably this will be our most important added value that no other agencies have. We don't want to offer just good content, we want to help designers on how to use that content. At this time I can't disclose more information about this part for obvious reason, that's why we suggest people to subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on Facebook, Google +, etc, on the footer of our website.

Later on, we are planning to introduce an On Demand service to our customers. So people can hire Macrografiks for exclusive and specific work, we will pass the projects to the right contributors and they will earn as any professional doing photography work, not just stock. But this is a more complex part for the future, we still have to consider many variables on this. So in a sense we want to become more of a creative agency rather than just a resource store.

Of course plans can change at any time, as a startup we are constantly changing our strategies and adapting to new requests and markets. We may end up doing other things in the near future, but so far this is our route.

I hope this helps!

Best
Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: Veneratio on April 26, 2013, 16:06


Hi Francisco,

What is the tech spec for submission of images? Any "want" list at the moment? Can you give us some more info regarding current number of images, where you are advertising other than social network sites, etc?


Hi Veneratio, we deliver a Guideline(PDF) to selected contributors with all that information. We are going to make this guidelines public soon, after we make sure images there can not be copied, they are at a high quality inside the PDF.

We are looking for all subjects and styles within macro and still-life photography. The categories we need to cover the most at this time are:
- Body parts.
- Medicine and science.
- Conceptual
- Technology

However any category is welcome. A good collection of desirable content can be found on our 'Inspiration' Pinterest board below:
[url]http://pinterest.com/macrografiks/inspiration[/url] ([url]http://pinterest.com/macrografiks/inspiration[/url])

We are still in the process of building our gallery and as most people know this takes time. Right now our gallery is small, around 10.000 images but there are many new contributors coming, specially experienced profiles with a good amount of content.

At this stage our main advertising methods are:
- Social Media
- Banner ads on design trend blogs and websites
- Designers networks

Once we reach a more complete gallery we are planning to:
- Produce print material for direct mail and P2P marketing.
- Website presentation on a Design conference(Barcelona, Spain)
- Cold calls to many advertising agencies and design studios around the world
- More banner ads
- Print ads on magazines and more...

Additionally, we are planning to implement a new section on our website that will serve as a platform between our content and designers, bringing ideas, suggestions and inspiration. Probably this will be our most important added value that no other agencies have. We don't want to offer just good content, we want to help designers on how to use that content. At this time I can't disclose more information about this part for obvious reason, that's why we suggest people to subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on Facebook, Google +, etc, on the footer of our website.

Later on, we are planning to introduce an On Demand service to our customers. So people can hire Macrografiks for exclusive and specific work, we will pass the projects to the right contributors and they will earn as any professional doing photography work, not just stock. But this is a more complex part for the future, we still have to consider many variables on this. So in a sense we want to become more of a creative agency rather than just a resource store.

Of course plans can change at any time, as a startup we are constantly changing our strategies and adapting to new requests and markets. We may end up doing other things in the near future, but so far this is our route.

I hope this helps!

Best


That's a great help Francisco, many thanks for coming back with more info so quickly. I am sure it will help.
Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: fa on April 26, 2013, 16:29
You're welcome!
Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: Cassa on May 07, 2013, 13:23
Hi. Great insights in this forum!! I am a contributor in Macrografiks and I am happy to be there. I don't mind that it is a new agency, it is growing at a steady pace with great new photographers, it has a variety of subjects that is also growing everyday and what I like the most besides its generous royalties percentage to photographers is that it is focused on Macros which I did not see before. I also appreciate Fa's help with any inconvenient one might have downloading photos and also his suggestions on the selections of photos. I highly recommend to give it a try.
Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: 08stock08 on May 24, 2013, 07:52
I got an intro/invitation mail from MG. I will try to join this week as soon as I get my system back. I am currently suffering with turn of bad luck, all my systems are down.
Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: fa on May 24, 2013, 11:56
I got an intro/invitation mail from MG. I will try to join this week as soon as I get my system back. I am currently suffering with turn of bad luck, all my systems are down.

Excellent! We will be waiting for your application. Best!
Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: dbvirago on July 19, 2013, 18:22
Signed up for an account and supplied a link to my port. How long does it normally take to process? thanks
Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: fa on July 20, 2013, 03:11
Signed up for an account and supplied a link to my port. How long does it normally take to process? thanks

Hi,

Usually the process take few days but depending on the number of applications it could take a couple of weeks or even more. We should be able to respond to all present applications during the next 3 days.

Best
Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: dbvirago on July 25, 2013, 10:54
The number of times that pages are either extremely slow to load, fail completely, or error out is just about to become a deal breaker.
Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: fa on July 25, 2013, 11:27
The number of times that pages are either extremely slow to load, fail completely, or error out is just about to become a deal breaker.

Usually the site performs very well and fast. However we did have an issue with our host provider last week and the site was very slow during few days. Apparently it was a problem with a hard disc that had to be replaced and all the information had to be synchronized again.

It's back to normal.
Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: dbvirago on July 25, 2013, 13:50
I don't remember on which days I kept getting errors uploading. When I finally got them up there, I chose categories. Then I did a select all and publish selected. Window flashes please wait. 3 hours later, it still asked me to please wait. Tried that 3 times. Finally tried to publish individually and get The pending upload id is invalid.

If this is normal, I'm not interested.
Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: fa on July 25, 2013, 18:25
I don't remember on which days I kept getting errors uploading. When I finally got them up there, I chose categories. Then I did a select all and publish selected. Window flashes please wait. 3 hours later, it still asked me to please wait. Tried that 3 times. Finally tried to publish individually and get The pending upload id is invalid.

If this is normal, I'm not interested.

Certainly not normal. Could you please send a ticket from the website(contact page or a 'ticket' widget at the top of the page) so we know which user you are. It will be easier for us to spot the problem and give you direct support.

Thanks
Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: stockastic on August 14, 2013, 10:30
Is anyone actually making any sales at MacroGrafiks?  I realize it's just getting started.  I've had about 2000 'views' but no sales, so I'm wondering if these views are 'real' and represent actual buyers.

Title: Re: Macrografiks - The new agency for macros and still-life photography
Post by: Beppe Grillo on August 14, 2013, 10:52
^
I have no sales yet but I have just uploaded 120 photos (and I have 120 views)

I think that all these views are the views by the curator/inspector of the site.