Sounds interesting but you need to inform people of the competitive commission rates you intend to pay them. No-one is going to sign up till they know this useful little fact.
Competitive could be from your perspective and its 2 cents a shot.

"I got so frustrated by the lack of authentic, diverse imagery available."

Try Blend.  That's sort of their focus.

I'm not a candidate for your agency - I have no images of people of color in my portfolio - but if I were, I'd want to see the artist supply agreement, royalty schedule and, with a brand new agency, some sort of summary of your marketing and promotion plans to make the agency competitive in the already crowded marketplace.

You need to understand that anyone who has been licensing stock for more than a few months is very wary of the "if we build it, they will come" school of agency business plan.

The only reason Stocksy, a brand new agency a few years back, was able to get people to license exclusive images with them was that it was started by people with a known track record (the folks who co-founded iStock). It isn't clear from your wording if you're looking for artist exclusivity or image exclusivity, but you should forget the former IMO.

You also mention businesses which are ready to subscribe. Subscriptions are not a contributor's greatest love, but when they work, the only reason they do is very high volume. Otherwise we're licensing a small number of items at a bargain basement price and it's a non-starter from the contributor's point of view. As you're looking for a specialist subject matter, I'm guessing your volumes will never approach Adobe Stock or Shutterstock levels. How subscriptions could work for contributors in that case is a mystery to me.

I'd also suggest creating some slideshow or Pinterest page of the sort of images you're looking for. Stocksy did this when it was starting and it gives potential contributors and idea of whether it's worth their while to consider an agency.

Not another one! Isn't this like the third so-called new company like within 30 days? 

Are Caucasian people, people of color too?

Don't be a poopyhead.

oops, wrong thread

seems like every discussion ends up in some type of a racial debate 

 

seems like every discussion ends up in some type of a racial debate 

It's not a racial debate but when the OP makes statements like "Our site celebrates diversity and inclusion and focuses on images (photos, illustrations and video) featuring people of color. "

Which by inference excludes caucasians then it is not celebrating diversity at all just ring fencing specific racial taxonomies.

and neither is it diverse or inclusive. It's marketing speak for lets jump on the latest diversity bandwagon.

"All men are created equal" and cats

Oh come on, people. Caucasians are over represented in stock. If the woman wants to start a site that focuses on people of color good for her. But she'll find a tough crowd here, just like anyone else starting a new stock site.

Quote from: Shelma1 on March 09, 2017, 06:02

Oh come on, people. Caucasians are over represented in stock. If the woman wants to start a site that focuses on people of color good for her. But she'll find a tough crowd here, just like anyone else starting a new stock site.

This is true but its not really because of bias by the sites....I'm sure SS and the like would accept more images of that nature...I don't do people shots anymore so for those that do whats stopping you filling this potential lucrative niche?

My port's easy enough to find, right?

Quote from: qunamax on March 07, 2017, 18:17

Are Caucasian people, people of color too?

Pink except in the Summertime when they are tan.

Or bright red.   

Try another name for Russian market. "Mocha Stock" = "Urine Drainage".