I made a list of things to consider to start a cooperative: http://tonytremblay.com/coop/

I also take name of people interested. Most non-exclusive contributors seems to be interested by the idea.

Some exclusives don't seem to like the idea. Even if I don't agree with them, I kind of understand.

I think, in the future, it's the only choice we will have.

And I won't let anyone discourage me.

Let's make the first move.

Why are we lazy?
Why are we such cowards?
Why we do not believe in your own potential?
We have about 10,000 people - is a big skilled force.
Let's make the first move.

Here's a little plan.
A. Divide the project into several parts
1 Legal status
2 The technical
3 Pricing
4 Advertising and promotion
B. Invite people to these tasks
C. Discuss and clarify the options
D. Every participant works for free and makes a very small part of

It is almost certainly not going to happen __ ever. The SS IPO document revealed the truth about the actual costs involved in running a microstock agency and it's probably fair to say that they were much higher than most of us realised. Assuming that our own 'co-operative' could be as effective and efficient as SS currently are (and that's a very big assumption) then the only gain we would make would be the 17% profit that they make __ which we would probably need to re-invest in the business anyway.

Yes, I know, you'll say we could control/raise prices. But that's not working for Istock is it? We can't get rid of subscriptions either, as many would like, because there will always be a market for them and agencies to provide for it. We can't un-invent subscriptions and we can't un-invent all the major agencies that currently dominate our marketplace either. If we don't provide for big chunks of the market then we can be sure that others will.

SS are already the closest we are likely to get as a co-operative. You'll soon be able to buy stock and thus share in the profits and growth of the company you have helped to build. You'll be able to pore over the quarterly financial reports and attend shareholders' meetings too. You'll even be able to sack the board if enough of you vote to do so.

Ever since IS introduced their exclusivity programme (in 2005?) Shutterstock have had to walk the tightrope of paying contributors as much as they could afford (to prevent them becoming exclusive) whilst retaining enough money to grow their business. IMHO they've done a fantastic job in doing so __ way better than any other agency. I've been with SS nearly 8 years and the growth in my monthly earnings has been almost directly in-line with the growth of my portfolio. Taking seasonal fluctuations into account it is still virtually a straight-line graph. Even in August I'll only be marginally short of a BME. Together with BigStock, Shutterstock now consistently generates about 50% of my microstock earnings and that is still rising. With every month that passes the significance of all other agencies diminishes in importance. I only bother uploading to 3 agencies nowadays (SS, IS & FT). The others aren't worth the time and hassle of doing so for me.

Instead of wringing hands and gnashing teeth maybe we should be grateful to have SS to rely on. We've probably got quite a good balance between the agencies right now. Things could certainly be much worse.

Quote

The people with the huge, marketable stock files that you need wouldn't have the time to be heavily involved in the background tasks. Those that have the time wouldn't be likely to be the big hitters.
In general.

I have thousands of pictures (now it is not much).
But if I am asked to do a job (2 - 3 hours) for our "cooperative" of the agency - I am happy to do

Quote from: Poncke on August 28, 2012, 12:08

Your review process, how will that work?

Just spitballing here, but one way to handle the review process is to break it into smaller components that can be gamified and let anyone who has an account (buyer, seller, affiliate or whoever) participate.  I've been thinking about experimenting with this at toonvectors.com.

Ideally, you have a series of quickly answerable yes/no questions or short fill-in-the-blank like the following:

• Do you like the quality of this image? Y/N
• Is this title relevant for the image? Y / N
• Is this description relevant for the image? Y / N
• Is this keyword relevant for the image? Y / N
• Write / edit title for this image.
• Write / edit description for this image.
• Write / edit keyword(s) for this image.

Points are awarded to the participant for answering these.  To prevent abuse, points are removed if the participant is deemed "wrong" - i.e. their Y/N answer does not agree with the consensus or their suggested titles, descriptions and keywords are deemed irrelevant.  Each participant has an overall confidence score which is calculated as the deviation from the consensus of others who answered the same question for the same image.  If a participant's confidence score drops too low, then they are suspended from reviewing (or banned in extreme cases).

Image quality and title/description/keyword relevancy scores for an image are calculated as an average weighted by participant confidence.  Each image has a separate title, description and keyword set for each language supported by the site. The currently highest ranking title and description in each language are used for the image and the participant who suggested them gets bonus points.  Only keywords above a certain relevancy threshold are applied to the image.  Furthermore, image quality and keyword scores are used as tie-breakers for search result relevancy sorting.

A newly submitted image would not be published until it has reached some minimum threshold of quality and relevancy.  Images are also removed from publication if they drop below thresholds of quality and relevancy - this could occur in two stages: 1) removed from search, and 2) permanently deleted.

Other aspects: a purchase counts as a positive quality vote (with likely more weight than a regular vote).  Embedded metadata counts as participation from the contributor for their own images.  It should be made possible for a contributor to gain a high enough participant confidence score to have their images auto-published.

So why would anyone participate in the review process?

• For quality sellers, the possibility of auto-publication along with some amount of control over search placement might be sufficient motivation.
• Some people might actually think it is "fun" just to participate and climb the ranks of a participant leader board.
• Participant points could be used as an input variable to calculate a voting share for site decisions.
• Participant points could be used as an input variable to calculate a slice for profit sharing if a percentage of site profits were allocated for this.

As an addendum, if pricing by image complexity tiers is supported on the site, then this could also be made part of the points game.  Plenty of other back-end maintenance tasks could be added as well.