Author Topic: Most photos - new "midstock" site! (Read 78987 times)

Suvakov · « **Reply #50 on:** September 21, 2007, 16:20 »

Hello everybody,

just wanted to inform you that Mostphotos has added Paypal and Moneybookers to our system. Minimum payout 10 euro, equals one sold image.

Best regards

//R

Suvakov · « **Reply #51 on:** October 16, 2007, 12:50 »

Thank you all that believe in us and upload images on Mostphotos.com!

Customer interviews and sales calls
We grow by about 1000 images a day in average and we ow it to you microstock photographers.
With this rate we will hit the magic 100.000 just before the Christmas sales and the customers single argument
against Mostphotos.com is slowly vanishing. To this date we have some 32.000 images, some six weeks after launch.
Even if sales are still slow, we have picked up the beat without buying of photographers or faking sales on the site, making false impressions that
the sales have taking off big time.

The report from the customers interviews is:
- "Great idea and concept" - they love the democratic approach, the prices are "outstanding" compared to the conventional
image banks as Scanpix, Getty and the rest. 80% of the interviewed customers don't mind that the bank is small for the time being, as long as it grows with
todays average rate. 20% find the concept appealing but want to wait with registration and purchases until we hit between 100.000-200.000 images.

Over all i find the results very positive and will continue to do sales calls to customers even more frequent than before, to match the effort
you all make to our common site.

Technical improvements:
The rating system just turned "Artificial Intelligent" this week! The system is scanning for search word spamers and is continuously monitoring the search words and relevance to viewed images. This means that images with non relevant search words will be identified over time and the "popular" words will be automatically removed. So sorry all spamers - your scam efforts wont be worth while.

Further more the rating system now work with more variables than before and there by identifying good images with better accuracy then before
and depending less on bad or good ratings from other members. Since all ratings nowdays are public and after we removed the opportunity to vote if you have not uploaded images yourself, so called "power raters" have drastically dropped, now even more marginalized with the new rating variables.

Surprisingly enough even professional microstock photographers get quickly familiar with the vote/comment/and rating system of Mostphotos. Often find themselves rating and commenting even if they never intended to do so in the first place. Maybe photographers are more generous to their fellow colleagues than the average Joe, but sharing experience and helping each others seems to be common in the photographer community, i m h o that is.

Mostphotos in the media
Democratic foundations are popular in Scandinavia as well as in the whole world in general. We are getting good press and we work with pressreleases in our marketing. Our first release was viewed by 12(!) journalists during one month on the leading pressrelease agency in Sweden. Yes... i know... that is almost pathetic. But the second release was viewed 108 times in six hours. Hopfully we will get more and more attention from media from now on.

Intrestingly enough one of the biggest photo magazines mentioned us in their newsletter today and we have not even spoken to the newermind payed them off??!! This resulted in that some 80 semi- and professional photographers registered their accounts in six hours and started to upload images immediately. Is it not funny what power the media holds today?!

Enough for today - its back to the business calls again. Don´t you just hate those cold calls??! Newertheless they still have to be done.

Best regards

Radislav Suvakov

swedstock · « **Reply #52 on:** October 16, 2007, 13:37 »

Great news Radde!
I had two sales last week, for 25 Euro each.
More than LO has produced for me in six months

Suvakov · « **Reply #53 on:** October 16, 2007, 14:19 »

moori:
That is my point - why do excellent photographers reduce their own trademark for cents when they can build their trademark.... oh my Good.... Hasselhof just started singing "I have been looking for Freedom" on the radio... and i forgot what i was thinking.... (that is a really bad song!!!) Pardon.
... build their trademark on a site that pays almost 20 times more for every sold image?

By opening the gates for all images that meet our simple technical requirements we simply concentrate to become The BIGGEST place for easy access, afordable images on the internet. Our belive in that every image have a potential buyer is proven almost every day. Sometimes the hole crew laugh when we see what images that are sold so having a rewiever that decide what image is "good" or not is useless. The image we consider is bad was accepted as good enough and bought by the buyer for 25 Euro! So who is right and who is wrong?
The customer of course!

Our goal is 4 milions commercial images by 2009/2010. Every active member uploads about 30 images on average to their gallery. We need ruffly 135.000 members to achive our goal. That means about 4000 image uploads/day to the end of 2010. Impossible? I dont think so... Just to illustrate the numbers - 4000 is upploaded to flickr in two (2) minutes....

Further more we predict that microstock will have serios problems ahead. More and more people compete over the same pennies. The whole Eastern block and the Asian continent is ready to start delivering. The established microstock photographers should use their advantage in skills and quality and move upp the payment ladder.
By only staying at the microsites they will be forced to produce more quantitys to stay ahead. Further more the customers already complaint that a significant amount of images are the same regardless wich microsite they visit, and it is partly true. About 10 percent of the pro stock photographers in the world submit almost 50% of the images on the Six Big Ones.
Even other micro sites are turning to alternatives. As you surely know, one of the upcomers, is now releaseing a "midstock" alternative within its microstock business. Good luck with that! Starting of on extremly low prices and then try to increse the price is a very hard task once the buers have adapted to the low price. Compare to the internet in general. What happends when a business wants to charge for services that have been for free in the past? No go. Espescially when the customer can not apprechiate the difference between a micro stock image and a mid stock image. Do you get my point?

To survive as a successfull stock photographer in the future will require to make and follow a carefull plan on how to take care of AND increase the value of your trademark - your images! It is a good idea to join a mid stock site and get up to 15 times more for one image and then slowly reduce the exposure of your images on microsites when the earnings pick up.
The goal is to upgrade your images and earn significant money on midstock and finally exit the microstock market completly. This will result in only one or two sites to maintain and upload - more profit and less work.
Then if you like, you can start the process all over again. Shifting from midstock to macrostock. If your plan is to only stick with the Big Six, you maby should review your plan once in a while... Not planning and staying inactive have never been the a good platform for success and prosper, and there are no signs that this will be the case today or in the future.

This is my plan for our members and im busting my balls every day on cold calls and visiting customers
to make success come true - for me and my fellow members. How many other Site Managers is out there
traveling by car, train and subways and working the customers instead of sitting on their *** in the office 9-5?

Thats why moori =)

Best regards

//Radislav Suvakov

Kngkyle · « **Reply #54 on:** October 16, 2007, 15:17 »

No watermarks? The preview size is HUGE for not having a watermark.

Suvakov · « **Reply #55 on:** October 16, 2007, 15:23 »

KngKyle:

Its optional for every user under personal settings. Some photographers mean that the watermark
is bad for sales some don't. As said, its optional once you sign up as a member.

//R

ragsac · « **Reply #56 on:** October 17, 2007, 00:06 »

I signed up last week and upon upload some of my images, i see the ratings and comments from other members.

I can't undestand is the rating system varies from say, -4.3 to + 34. Who determine my image ratings?

I received critics and positive comments immediately as i go to the latest uploads view.

Very easy in uploads just 2 clicks if FTP.

Suvakov · « **Reply #57 on:** October 17, 2007, 10:24 »

First it is important to know that the customers can not see comments or good or bad critique - this is only intended for the members.

Your index is a result of many variables as well as your image history on MP. "Newbies" have lower impact on ratings as well as lower startindex than for example members with many images and many sales.

I really don't want to go into details about the MP-index but to make you feel more secure i just want to ad that that if you are a serious stock photographer you don't have to worry about the ratingsystem. If you have intresting images, your MP-index will start rising. Further more the index is recalculated every day, depending on how good your images are and how well they sell.

You just keep uploading your best images and everything is gonna be allright.

Best regards

//R

Clivia · « **Reply #58 on:** October 17, 2007, 11:36 »

I tried to register, - three times.
The first time I tried to enter who had refered me to the site, and it threw me out.
The second time I came to the bottom of the form and clicked to read the terms and conditions before I completed registration. When I clicked the back button to go back to the registration for, all my details had gone.
I completed the form again. I live in Cheshire in the UK. The form insists that there are no cities in Cheshire. It will not let me enter a city manually. It will not accept my registration without a city being entered.
The form is also quirky. When I tried to key in my nickname, each time the cursor jumped to the previous field. It took about three attempts before the cursor stayed where it belonged!
I give up. Sorry, I would have loved to upload a few images.

madelaide · « **Reply #59 on:** October 17, 2007, 15:53 »

Quote from: Suvakov on October 17, 2007, 10:24

First it is important to know that the customers can not see comments or good or bad critique - this is only intended for the members.

Suvakov,

I haven't signed up yet and I haven't even checked the site, but members rating members is an issue anywhere, especially if it can somehow (even if not done right now) be used for search ranking.

This is a huge cause of inflamed threads in ShutterPoint, where there are no inspections so members may upload whatever crap they want, and then they get angry when get a poor rating on that unfocused shot of a dog with shadows from direct flash - it's their pet and they love it!

Not showing ratings to non-members is a good thing, but remember that many sellers are buyers too. And strange numbers like those ragsac said look maybe useless.

Regards,
Adelaide

rosta · « **Reply #60 on:** October 17, 2007, 16:01 »

Ratings aside, I have had two images that fellow members found slight and easily correctable problems with. Once they pointed them out, I could see them clearly and immeaditly corrected the images and resubmitted them. Both these images have been up on some of the big six for months; none of the "inspectors" had noticed the problems.
I am now updating sites with the corrected images.
r

madelaide · « **Reply #61 on:** October 17, 2007, 16:06 »

Rosta,

This is the kind of feedback I like in SP as well. This simply doesn't require a numerical rating, though.

Regards,
Adelaide

Suvakov · « **Reply #62 on:** October 17, 2007, 18:17 »

clivia:

Thank you for pointing out the problems you experienced with the registration.
The problems you encountered are not acceptable in any registration procedure especially not on my site. The positive side is that you came to the right guy! I will make sure that the programmers fix it and i will inform you if you would like to visit us again in the future.

Best regards

Radislav Suvakov
Mostphotos.com

Suvakov · « **Reply #63 on:** October 17, 2007, 19:02 »

madeleide:

The rating system (numerical rating) is by fare the easiest and most effective way for the community to explain and introduce members and fellow photographers to the importance to share knowledge and give suggestions and critique on images. Its a good graphic aid to first give a numerical (graphic)"score" and then transform this "score" into words in a comment. Comments that amateurs as well as professionals can use to evolve i their photography technique or their images. Like rosta said in her post.

About the "dog&flash" photographers and inflamed threads of upset member: Please feel free to browse the MP forum for such treads, and you will find that its not a big issue on MP. Especially since we marginalized the vote-variable in the MP-index. MP members just seem to get over bad ratings with no substantial comments real quick. And i salute them for it - because that is a good quality in real life to. Not to waste time and energy on crap.

And regarding the fact that the owners love their pet - of course they do. Don't you think that a comment about HOW they should do to portray their pet in the best possible way would be well appreciated instead of just a " Wow - that is a bad picture and ugly dog"-comment?? Sure it would!
Why dont people comment something like this to a flash&dog artist? -"That is one cute puppy! Did you know that if you lower your camera to your dogs level, put the focus on his eye and mabye bounce your flash on the celing - i bet your images would match the beauty of your dog - what do you think?"

Beccause we don't believe in traditional image inspectors we need to have a alternative and the MP-index is the best we have come up with so far. The index is a complicated, never ending programming issue and will evolve over time to be even more accurate. It is not always important to know how the index is calculated and what "-2,5" means - its more important to know that it work!
Like my pension fond - I'm not familiar in detail how the system works to generate my future pension - I'm just interested that i does - and that it does it well.

So come on - start uploading and stop worrying - your images are great, you will be just fine.

Best regards

Radislav Suvakov

Pixart · « **Reply #64 on:** October 17, 2007, 19:55 »

Look, I registered last night, but I'm not about to join the party if the speed issue isn't addressed. It just took 84 seconds to load from Central Canada, 7:45pm (cable high speed). This might be a surprize to you because I think there was another thread before and you thought all had been improved. I tried to pop some photos open last night and it was excruciating.

dbvirago · « **Reply #65 on:** October 17, 2007, 20:33 »

Can't connect at all now

micke · « **Reply #66 on:** October 18, 2007, 04:19 »

Hey everyone, I'm the project manager for Mostphotos.com.
Its sad to see that you have experienced problems registering and uploading images on our site but i i promise, we do everything we can to find solutions to the problems you listed.
Clivia, i would really appriciate if you could tell me what browser you where using when this problems occurred and if you have javascript enabled in your browser? We have a few Ajax solutions on the site that requires javascript to be enabled.

And regarding the speed issue, we are currently hosted on a 1gb/s connection and the site is running on two brand new 2,4ghz quad core high performance servers from dell so my best guess is that its a routingproblem. We have a few members from the states and Canada that reports good connections speeds, but we will try to solve it. It would be great if i could get the ip address for your ISPs gateways so we can do a trace route to try find the problem.

We are aware that its a problem to host the servers here in Sweden and the next step will be to set up some servers in the us and in some other locations. But we just launched so it would be great if you could have some patience with us until we are up and running full speed.

But as i said, we will try to fix the problems that you report and i hope you all will help us to be as good as we can be.

Sean Locke Photography · « **Reply #67 on:** October 18, 2007, 06:44 »

Quote from: Suvakov on October 16, 2007, 14:19

By opening the gates for all images that meet our simple technical requirements we simply concentrate to become The BIGGEST place for easy access, afordable images on the internet.
....
Further more we predict that microstock will have serios problems ahead. More and more people compete over the same pennies.

And this will be different in the future because ... ? How does raising the price not have more and more people competing over the same pennies. In fact, you have more people competing for less sales, especially if you are "opening the gates".

anonymous · « **Reply #68 on:** October 18, 2007, 07:50 »

the "country, city, and state" drop boxes don't even populate, can't make a selection, thusly cannot even get in to the site (7:45 am CST 101807)...
once you guys get that fixed, please drop the stupid "rating" system...you've got a lot of troll whores throwing 1 point ratings at good images...it's pointless and obnoxious.

dbvirago · « **Reply #69 on:** October 18, 2007, 09:40 »

I think it is a nice effort, but honestly, trying to populate a drop down from a database with every state/city in the world is a bit above and beyond. Keep it simple

epixx · « **Reply #70 on:** October 18, 2007, 10:57 »

Quote from: dbvirago on October 18, 2007, 09:40

I think it is a nice effort, but honestly, trying to populate a drop down from a database with every state/city in the world is a bit above and beyond. Keep it simple

That part actually worked fine for me. Even my little village in Thailand was there. But the rating system has to go. If the agency wants to rate the photos, fine with me. They're supposed to know what they are doing. But when every Paul, Dick and Harry are supposed to rate photos, the results will be original to say the least.

Bateleur · « **Reply #71 on:** October 18, 2007, 11:47 »

Is the web address

http://www.mostphotos.com ?

It's certainly a photo agency site, but is it the same one as being discussed?

Just want to check

swedstock · « **Reply #72 on:** October 18, 2007, 11:52 »

Quote from: epixx on October 18, 2007, 10:57

Quote from: dbvirago on October 18, 2007, 09:40
I think it is a nice effort, but honestly, trying to populate a drop down from a database with every state/city in the world is a bit above and beyond. Keep it simple

That part actually worked fine for me. Even my little village in Thailand was there. But the rating system has to go. If the agency wants to rate the photos, fine with me. They're supposed to know what they are doing. But when every Paul, Dick and Harry are supposed to rate photos, the results will be original to say the least.

That was my initial thought as well, and I'm pretty sure that is what most new users think.
I changed my mind after using it for a while however, and it seems to me like most users on the site feels the same.
When using the site for a while they see the pro's of the system.
It seems like a stupid idea for an outsider but when you get to know more about how it works it is not really that bad.

Fisrt of all, the customer that browses for pictures is not one person. Just like the contributors it is "Paul, Dick and Harry", all with different taste and requirements.
Why should one reviewer decide what images are good or bad? A combined rating of 50 people must be more accurate that the opinion of one.
There is of course the technical issue but really crappy looking pictures will get low votes by most users and end up last in searches anyway. I have spoken admins of MP in the site chat and they say that they are amazed what people are actually interested in buying. They say they are amazed how good some pics sell even though they can be mediocer to say the least from a professional photgraphers viewpoint. Some customers want pictures they don't find elsewhere, unique pictures and most are beeing used in small prints and on the web. Digital noise doesn't really matter then, does it?

It is also important to understand that the rating is only a part of the MP-index.
It doesn't really matter if one or two people would rate your pictures down either (and if these people are doing it often they woun't get away with it)
It doesn't affect the overall rating much and the MP-index is based upon other things, sales, view, good keywording, how good your other pictures are, and more.
Don't get stuck with the rating system. It is not as bad as you think, seriously.

See the oppurtunity to sell pictures with good cash return instead, pictures that may not have been accepted by IS or SS but still can useable for a lot of customers.
I sure like the fact that two red paint brushes on white background that SS/IS didn't want, gave me 12,5o Euro in one sale.

swedstock · « **Reply #73 on:** October 18, 2007, 11:54 »

Quote from: Bateleur on October 18, 2007, 11:47

Is the web address

http://www.mostphotos.com ?

It's certainly a photo agency site, but is it the same one as being discussed?

Just want to check

yup, thats the one.

madelaide · « **Reply #74 on:** October 18, 2007, 13:40 »

Quote from: Suvakov on October 17, 2007, 19:02

The rating system (numerical rating) is by fare the easiest and most effective way for the community to explain and introduce members and fellow photographers to the importance to share knowledge and give suggestions and critique on images. Its a good graphic aid to first give a numerical (graphic)"score" and then transform this "score" into words in a comment. Comments that amateurs as well as professionals can use to evolve i their photography technique or their images. Like rosta said in her post.

Suvakov,

In theory, I agree with all you said. But my experience in SP is that some people, when they find a place they can upload whatever they want with a chance to sell it, they do upload crap. This is one huge problem in SP, because if you search for something you get a lot of substandard images (you get great ones too). I have rated images below any level of quality, and they are not removed by the photogs. And the more you make it look like "this is a place where you give and receive critique", more people think it's ok to upload anything to get advice.

The idea is nice for a photog community, a message board. But when it's about business, I prefer more quality control. It doesn't have to be like Crestock when it comes to rejections, but a minimum level of quality must be kept. At least for signing up, I think it would be advisable to ask for samples of images (that's what I have asked SP staff for ages, and unfortunately never saw).

I'll take a look at the site, but this "community" feel doesn't really attract me in a selling outlet.

Regards,
Adelaide

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Author Topic: Most photos - new "midstock" site! (Read 78987 times)

Suvakov

Suvakov

swedstock

Suvakov

Kngkyle

Suvakov

ragsac

Suvakov

Clivia

madelaide

rosta

madelaide

Suvakov

Suvakov

Pixart

dbvirago

micke

Sean Locke Photography

anonymous

dbvirago

epixx

Bateleur

swedstock

swedstock

madelaide

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